Measuring light levels with camera

[jsavage]

I am looking for a simple way to measure light levels using a raspberry pi camera. I am not looking for a calibrated answer but either a decimal between 0 and 1 or an integer value. Having read the documentation for the picamera library I was hoping that camera.exposure_speed might provide a value that I could use as a proxy for light intensity but when I tested this I have found it to return the same value (33158) day and night .

The code I am using is as follows: (Loosely based on an example in the documentation)

Code: Select all

import time
import picamera
with picamera.PiCamera() as camera:
    camera.resolution = (1280, 720)
    camera.framerate = 30
    # Wait for the automatic gain control to settle
    time.sleep(2)
    # Now fix the values
    camera.shutter_speed = camera.exposure_speed
    lightValue = camera.exposure_speed

print lightValue

Can anyone suggest an alternative approach using this library?

James

[6by9]

You're running at 30fps, so the max exposure time possible is 33ms (1000/30fps). I'd suggest you slow things down to 5fps if you want longer exposure times, and also select the night exposure mode to allow the AGC algorithm to select longer times.
Scene brightness is also affected by analogue gain inside the sensor, and digital gain applied in the image processing pipe. You need to look at those numbers too.

[towolf]

The binary EXIF field in the jpgs contains the Brightness Value. Isn’t that more of a measurement of scene brightness?

[jsavage]

Thanks folks. Attempting to use analog_gain revealed that I had installed the library through pip and apt-get and the one in use was the one that was not getting updated. Now that's fixed I am investigating analog_gain. It looks promising but suspect I am going to need to combine it with another value to be able to sense the range of values in one function.

I am going to look into the exif data idea tomorrow as an alternative solution but would prefer to get the answer by accessing the library.

I am sure this must have been done before.

Kind regards
James

[mikronauts]

Consider using a LDR and MCP3208 to measure the light level. For an example, see:

http://www.mikronauts.com/raspberry-pi/ ... eak-howto/

Thanks folks. Attempting to use analog_gain revealed that I had installed the library through pip and apt-get and the one in use was the one that was not getting updated. Now that's fixed I am investigating analog_gain. It looks promising but suspect I am going to need to combine it with another value to be able to sense the range of values in one function.

I am going to look into the exif data idea tomorrow as an alternative solution but would prefer to get the answer by accessing the library.

I am sure this must have been done before.

Kind regards
James

[pageauc]

This is a different approach but I use similar code in my pi-timolo project https://github.com/pageauc/pi-timolo

Sample light meter code

Code: Select all

import picamera
import picamera.array
import numpy as np
with picamera.PiCamera() as camera:
    camera.resolution = (100, 75)
    with picamera.array.PiRGBArray(camera) as stream:
        camera.exposure_mode = 'auto'
        camera.awb_mode = 'auto'
        camera.capture(stream, format='rgb')
        pixAverage = int(np.average(stream.array[...,1]))
print ("Light Meter pixAverage=%i" % pixAverage)

Claude ...

[jsavage]

Consider using a LDR and MCP3208 to measure the light level.

A agree that LDR is the simplest approach and have done this before just with an LDR, a resistor and a capacitor but the problem I am trying to solve is how to measure ambient light levels with the camera and nothing else. The reason I want to achieve this with software alone is that the camera and pi are already deployed as a security sensor and in use some distance away from me.
James

[amcdonley]

This is a very old thread, but a great question.

Sample light meter code

That code is a single measurement and with the auto exposure mode on. This causes the camera to adjust to differing lighting rather than reporting the increased lighting as an increased average light value.

This is my take on using the PiCamera as a basic light level sensor:

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/env python3

# file: light_meter.py

import picamera
import picamera.array
import numpy as np
from time import sleep


def main():
    with picamera.PiCamera() as camera:
        camera.resolution = (320, 240)
        with picamera.array.PiRGBArray(camera) as stream:
            camera.exposure_mode = 'auto'
            camera.awb_mode = 'auto'
            print("Initializing Pi Camera")
            sleep(2)
            camera.exposure_mode = 'off'
            while True:
                try:
                    camera.capture(stream, format='rgb')
                    # pixAverage = int(np.average(stream.array[...,1]))
                    pixAverage = np.average(stream.array[...,1])
                    print ("Light Meter pixAverage: {:.1f}".format(pixAverage))
                    sleep(1)
                    stream.truncate()
                    stream.seek(0)
                except KeyboardInterrupt:
                    print("\nExiting ..")
                    break

if __name__ == "__main__": main()

Executing:

Code: Select all

$ ./light_meter.py 
Initializing Pi Camera
Light Meter pixAverage: 94.1         <-- Ambient room lighting big window sunny
Light Meter pixAverage: 94.0
Light Meter pixAverage: 93.8
...
Light Meter pixAverage: 155.5      <-- White box 
Light Meter pixAverage: 179.1
Light Meter pixAverage: 180.7
...
Light Meter pixAverage: 21.3       <--  Black box
Light Meter pixAverage: 20.1
Light Meter pixAverage: 25.7
...
Light Meter pixAverage: 244.8    <-- Flashlight shining into Pi Camera
Light Meter pixAverage: 254.0
Light Meter pixAverage: 253.9
...
Light Meter pixAverage: 0.7     <-- Hand over the camera blocking light
Light Meter pixAverage: 0.4
Light Meter pixAverage: 0.7
...
Light Meter pixAverage: 85.3    <-- back to ambient room lighting with cloud
Light Meter pixAverage: 88.8
Light Meter pixAverage: 89.4
^C
Exiting ..