As an Arduino novice,
I decided to create a simple NIGHT LIGHT and see what I can develop from it.

When it becomes DARK, the LED lights will light ON automatically, but when its LIGHT the LEDs will stay OFF

FMP: Ones and Zeros (Digital Nature)

** The beginnings of the development of this project has been made with very little or almost no access to the internet. Because of a fault with the broadband, and also having no broadband at all.

"NIGHT LIGHT"

I followed this tutorial for creating a simple Night Light and bought the materials.

Arduino UNO

Wires

Breadboard

5mm LEDs

Photocell/ LDR

4.6K resistor

220ohm resistor

As this was the very first time for me to work with wires and electronic materials, I was unsure of what I was doing, and without access to the internet, I resorted to a trial and error method. Like cutting the wire and exposing the ends.

Firstly, I set-up the resistors and sensor according to the tutorial, however, since the breadboard I had and the one in the tutorial was different, I first guessed where to put the series of the LEDs as the shop assistant's instruction was to just put them in a line with the sensor.

After making all the connections on the Arduino, I added the sample code stated in the tutorial and uploaded the code.

However, I realised that the LED lights were not doing any function but the built-in LED was lighted.

This is when I knew that I had placed the LEDs wrong on the breadboard. So I tested out just 1 LED. But unfortunately it still wasn't working. I realised I didn't connect the output pin in this case pin 13 to the breadboard.

After finally connecting the pin13 the breadboard, the LED was finally working but not how I was expecting.
Instead of the LED to turn ON when the photocell detected darkness, it stayed off. the LED lit up when it light.

After analyzing the code I realised that the sensor value if statement should be:

sensorValue > 400 instead of the original sensorValue < 400

After changing this the LED's function was corrected: When it's DARK, the LED turns ON.

The original code would have made the project somehow like a mimicking brightness status device, but a tiny tweak to the code had made it's function different.