PWM help (input changing duty cycle)

Question

Is there a way to adjust the duty cycle (PWM) based upon input gained by a sensor. For example, if the sensor picks up a really high value, it would increase the duty cycle for an LED making it brighter. Can we also do this task without a potentiometer? Can all of this be done "hands-free" by the Arduino?

• Gerben: Yes, yes, and yes. Totally possible.

Answer 1

The example at the bottom of this Arduino reference page does exactly that. If you want to change the way the value varies, you can just modify the variables in a loop or in whatever approach you prefer instead of analogread'ing it.

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/AnalogWrite

Answer 2

There is a simple project that can be done with a photo-resistor for an analog input, a light levels sensor circuit, and an LED for an output.

The software requirement is to have a loop with a delay that reads from the analog pin the photo-resistor is attached and use that value to set the Duty Cycle for the PWM output pin driving the LED illumination level.

You can then test by shading the photo-resistor from the ambient light (I used a sheet of paper rolled up into a tube and placed over the photo-resistor on the breadboard), putting it into darkness, and by using a flashlight to provide more light than ambient in order to test the range and watch the LED dim and brighten.

I have done this project with a Raspberry Pi, which required an MCP3008 Analog to Digital Converter to interface to the photo-resistor circuit since the Pi has only digital pins. Arduino has analog pins so the ADC is not necessary.

The project that I did with my Raspberry Pi is at URL: https://github.com/RichardChambers/raspberrypi/tree/master/project08 with C source code and a link to the manufacturer of the experiment kit I am using which has the details for the actual circuit. What I did was to make the LED illumination level track to the inverse of the value reported by the photo-resistor circuit. So when the light level was low as reported by the photo-resistor then I made the LED brighter.