TSL2591 light sensor quit responding

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JohnMayo45
 
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TSL2591 light sensor quit responding

Post by JohnMayo45 »

I am using a TSL2591 light sensor on my Arduino Uno R3. It was working perfectly for a couple of days on the bench. Then I installed it outside yesterday in a plastic project box with a clear plastic cover, aimed south toward the sun. It was a cloudy day, with a temperature of about 45 degrees, and it gave me appropriate lux readings (about 8,000 to 11,000) with a gain setting of 25X (medium) and an integration time of 300ms.

Then, this morning it was responding as expected as the sun starting coming up. Suddenly, when the direct sun hit the sensor, the output dropped to zero. It did not respond at all during the day. At sundown, a small response was seen, but it was intermittent on and off.

Should I have used a gain of 1 for the bright Colorado sun we have here? Have I destroyed the sensor?

I don't think it overheated. The air temp this morning when it failed was about 30 degrees.

Anybody have a suggestion?

Thanks,
John

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: TSL2591 light sensor quit responding

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Direct sun with higher gain settings might result in maxxed out readings, but it should not cause lasting damage. One possible explanation for the failure is that the heat of the sun caused a marginal solder joint to fail. If you can post some photos showing your soldering and connections we can take a look.

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JohnMayo45
 
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Re: TSL2591 light sensor quit responding

Post by JohnMayo45 »

I was able to modify the software this morning to lower the gain to 1X, and now I am getting good readings. I had 25X gain which was overloading something in the sensor.

All is well today!

Thanks for your reply.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: TSL2591 light sensor quit responding

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Good to hear that is working. Thanks for the follow-up.

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