Arduino Based Home Automation Dusk To Dawn Lighting Timer Based On Vintage Sangamo Suntracker

Details of my simple home-automation lighting timer project, using an Arduino microcontroller and an RF remote socket system which was inspired by the vintage Sangamo Weston S351 Suntracker 'dawn until dusk' round pattern time switch.
No machining at all this time from The Recreational Machinist (though I did make the brackets and standoffs from acetal). And for a change, no background music.
Made with subtitles -click the CC box.
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Some links with background information:
History about daylight saving in the UK: www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK...
Anyone interested in the 1968 British Standard Time experiment might like to read some of the parliamentary debate of the time that led to it being abandoned: api.parliament.uk/historic-ha...
Information on the possibility of the UK no longer observing daylight savings: www.wired.co.uk/article/dayli...
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I'm not posting my clumsy, inelegantly written code (it would be very hard for others to follow) but I thought it worth including details of some of the most useful libraries I experimented with during development.
DM Kishi’s Dusk2Dawn library ( github.com/dmkishi/Dusk2Dawn ) does the heavy lifting in regard to sunset and sunrise times.
The library gives apparent times and in my application any difference between apparent, civil, nautical and astronomical is of little importance -so long as my lights come on.
Mikal Hart’s TinyGPS++ ( arduiniana.org/libraries/tinyg... ) library takes care of GPS NMEA data stream processing.
Adafruit’s RTClib (github.com/adafruit/RTClib ) interfaces the real time clock.
Bill Greiman’s SSD1306Ascii (arduinolibraries.info/librari... ) is the lightweight library which drives the 128x64 pixel OLED display with text.
Naguissa’s uEEPROMLib (github.com/Naguissa/uRTCLib ) takes care of non volatile storage of latitude and longitude coordinates.
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For the material I couldn't capture myself, my thanks goes to the following:
Sunrise and sunset time lapse footage by Beachfront B-Roll.
www.beachfrontbroll.com/
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License ( creativecommons.org/licenses/b... )
Lord Wilson photo by Allan Warren.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. ( creativecommons.org/licenses/... )
Dawn Chorus audio by sean.townsend.
freesound.org/s/98371/
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License ( creativecommons.org/licenses/b... )
Owl Hoots by Breviceps
freesound.org/s/465697/
Licensed under a Creative Commons 0 License. ( creativecommons.org/publicdom... )
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Shot: HDC-HS700 1920x1080 50P AVCHD
Edit: FCP7 ProRes 422
Mic: DR-05

[@mrporridge2304]

I followed almost none of that but still kept me hooked right until the end... excellent stuff, thank you!

[@SilverEchoes]

This was fascinating. Thanks for sharing your build.

[@ExSheriffFattyBoySkinnyArms]

Its official, this is the most interesting channel on yt, bar none!

[@MikaTheAboveAverageDog]

Thank you for another video, keep them coming!

[@nikond90ful1]

Thanks for the video. Very interesting.

[@GuyBarry1]

Very good!

[@Asyss_Complex]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

[@TheGuigui68]

Excellent work, the cleanlyness of the hardware and software is Amazing! Thank you for sharing this!

[@motorrad1527]

welcome back :-) hope there are more videos in the pipeline?

[@SpamMouse]

Brilliant. The sort of thing many of us wish we had the time/motivation to develop, personally I'd add a simple web-interface for easy access edits.

[@rajeshroshan2877]

Yes, I was thinking the same thing and also a status indicators like graphs/colour codes etc for a nice panel.

[@ianbertenshaw4350]

I have been working on a similar project but not turning lights on/off , i want to turn on an esp32 that is set up to stream internet radio on certain days at certain times and record certain programmes . The most annoying thing has been that the DS1307 library and the DS3231 library are different with how they call the time .

[@andyjohnson4485]

Excellent project! What approach did you take in learning to code the arduino? I got myself in knots trying to learn this. The only programming I ever did was BASIC on a zx81 and that's where the confusion started! I don't think there is any crossover between the two🤔

[@IBWatchinUrVids]

Almost all languages are similar at the root of it all, it's more syntax changes that makes it difficult to switch. Best suggestion I have is to get into an Arduino, download some sample sketches for whatever you're interested in, and give it a try. Play with numbers, try making some edits, and Google for answers when you get stuck. There's a LOT of pre-written code out there, when I need to make something quick and dirty, it's usually made of code snippets. No need to reinvent the wheel, unless you want to :)

[@davewilliams6172]

@@IBWatchinUrVids My main problem is combining several sketches to read an array of different sensors then send the data to Google sheets...I never liked coding and still don't lol

[@cannonroberts5129]

Where did ya go bud?

[@tomf3150]

Sync your rtc clock with gps frame.

[@zaprodk]

You need to remove the zener diode on the RTC board or it WILL charge the CR2032 rendering it dead very soon. These boards were designed by someone that wasn't thinking, and as such expect a LIR2032 cell, and not a primary cell. The mAh rating on the LIR2032 is laughable, so it makes absolutely no sense to use a rechargeable cell instead of a primary.

[@davewilliams6172]

So that's what killed it...I had that problem and thought it was a faulty board!