Those of you who've been following the development of the MCU-based ANLC will probably remember that I turned to a micrcocontroller since I want to switch the load off not at the ambient light level (corresponding sensor voltage) at which we want to turn on the load, nor at the load turn-on ambient light level + some hysteresis, but rather at the very crack of dawn, which corresponds to a light level significantly less than that at load turn-on. So you might be wondering what algorithm I'm currently using to implement that.
With all other factors (clouds, city lights, etc.) kept constant, one characteristic of dawn is that the light level rises evenly and continuously (thanks to the very stable rotation speed of the earth and nearly constant light output of the sun). And this increase will not exceed a certain dV/dt--which we've measured (at least in my particular location in the globe which happens to be 15° north of the equator) to be almost 6mV/s (@Vdd = 5V).
So one way of ruling out other light sources is to look at whether dV/dt > 0 but < 6mV/s and whether this is sustained over time. If it's currently very dark (night time) and these conditions are met then there is a good probability we are witnessing dawn/sunrise. If not then there is a good chance the light source isn't the sun.
In addition we'd want to monitor for the above conditions as close to actual dawn as possible. We don't, for instance, want to check after just a couple of hours after dusk. And speaking of time of day, our circuit doesn't actually know what time of day it really is. For instance just because ambient light level has dropped below the trip point doesn't mean it really is dusk. It may be midday but the sky is so heavy with dark nimbus clouds that the light level has dipped to a point that the load has been turned on. The algorithm needs to take this into consideration.
One way of gaining confidence that it really is nighttime is to monitor the amount of time the load has been on. If the shortest night during the entire year is, say 10 hours, then we can be fairly sure that it's night if the load has been on for at least 8 hours. We can thus wait 8 hours after the load has been on before beginning to check for dawn conditions.
We can also monitor the sensor voltage to find out if it's really nighttime, but the night time reading/value will depend on where we install the sensor and how much artificial light sources will be polluting it. As I mentioned before I placed the sensor on the roof and shielded it on the sides to minimize the effects of streetlights, billboard lights, et al.
Besides just waiting x hours to begin monitoring for dawn dV/dt, we also want to find out the maximum light level for an hour or two before the time we begin checking for dawn because we only want to start applying our dawn dV/dt criteria when ambient light level exceeds this value. Given that this is the maximum ambient light level close to dawn, there is a greater probability that light whose intensity exceeds it and which keeps increasing but has a rate of increase less than the max dV/dt is in fact indicative of the first rays of the sun trickling in and not some other light source.
While I've implemented the above set of detection conditions for several days now--and so far so good--I imagine they do not provide a foolproof way of determining the onset of dawn. For example, if our firmware is already monitoring for dawn conditions and clouds begin rolling in, gradually reflecting more of the city lights thus increasing the sky light level and if the clouds move in at just the right rate so that max dV/dt isn't exceeded, then our firmware will be fooled into switching the load off.
One way of further improving the system is to add another sensor. We set the sensors up such that one receives light mainly from the eastern part of sky while the other from the western half (this can be as simple as having the LDRs side by side with an opaque board between them to block light from the eastern/western side of the sky from falling on the west/east LDR). We can then monitor for differences in light levels detected. Surely the eastern part of the sky will be brighter at dawn. As a bonus we can use this setup to detect dusk as well.
For now, however, I'm sticking to a simple single-LDR sensor. There won't be need to make it any more complex if the algorithm works or a better algorithm can improve dawn detection.
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