I am testing three long range location beacons by reading their ambient light measurements.
It turns out that the measurements reported by the beacons vary greatly even though they are in the same room placed 2 cms apart from each other on the same table.
The readings I got are 24, 79 and 254. When I cover them with my hand, they all report close to 0, which is expected. However, the uncovered readings seem completely random. Is there a way to calibrate the light sensor?
Any thoughts?
Hmm, interesting. Could you do a simple experiment: pull your beacons out of their enclosures (there’s an opening behind the sticky tape, which you can peel off the beacon, we can send you new tape) and check if the measurements still differ? I wonder if it’s maybe different colors of the enclosures letting more or less light through.
Out of curiosity, how do you intend to use the ambient light data?
Hi Piotr,
I removed the plastic cover on 2 of my beacons and they both report 645 on my desk.
Your theory about colors makes sense since my highest light reporting beacon was the one with lemon casing.
I do not have a use case, just testing to understand the sensor capabilities (still disappointed about the lack of magnetometer reading by the way, any news about that?).
I had to cut open the casing since I did not want to yank the circuit out of it. Will you send new cases as well? How do I put them back in?
Thanks for sharing, good to know. Our main use case for the ambient light sensor is “Dark to Sleep” power saving mode, and that just needs the sensor readings to consistently go down below a certain threshold after dark. I guess we could easily measure the impact of different-color enclosures on the readings, and just adjust for it in the SDK with a little bit of math (:
Re: magnetometer, sadly, it’s taking longer than we expected, still working on that!