I’ve been thinking about picking up the super-common HS1010A lux meter for quite a while. Like most things, I don’t really need it but it would be fun to play with.
Well, I was on the Banggood website yesterday and noticed a banner ad for a new lux meter with built-in Bluetooth for recording readings. It’s the UNI-T UT383BT and is currently selling for what seems like a good price, $16.66. It appears to be a Bluetooth-enabled version of the UT383.
It uses an app called iENV. Here’s some info on the app according to it’s Google Play Store listing.
It seems like being able to record readings via Bluetooth would make logging a lot more convenient so I snatched one up. Anybody else grab one or have experience with the regular UT383?
Edit: I’m not promoting this lux meter or anything, nor was I incentivized to buy it. Just looking see what ya’ll think about it.
The UT-383 is qua spectral sensitivity comparable to the many other cheap luxmeters (so pretty bad), apart from that it is even cheaper than most. :+1:
So it is good for ballpark figures, in that aspect it is a great upgrade from just using our eyes to estimate brightness. But for any ambition towards precision you need a much different quality (and price! ) luxmeter.
I still like this bluetooth version because it makes for very easy runtime measurements, and although it is terrible in absolute precision, relative to itself it should be pretty decent.
I’m mostly after run-time graphs and the like, not necessarily highly accurate numbers (though that would be appreciated). Are there any budget lux meters that are better than others?
I’m only an amateur at this, but I’d really like to build one using an ESP8266 / Arduino. I’ve done a bit with them before, but I need to research how to use one to take lux readings. With that, I could have it automatically log readings to a database or Google Sheet right from the device. I wonder if this TSL2561 might do the trick. I can handle the code, it’s creating electronic circuits from scratch (without a “how to” guide) that I’m not so good with. Hmm…
I would like to know too but I have no idea, and no one has. I have found no one in the world who does regular testing of luxmeters at any level (say, the HKJ of luxmeters). On a very basic amateur level I tested just a few luxmeters, I have done tests on 4 of them, and even at my level nothing else of the sort can be found on the internet.
My impression sofar is that any luxmeter under 350 dollar has large spectral errors causing errors in excess of 15% when measuring low CRI cool white leds as opposed to high CRI warmer leds (this is because a good optical filter that adjusts the sensor’s wavelength sensitivity towards the V-lambda curve, which is a standard for the sensitivity of the human eye, is extremely expensive to make). And this is on top of any other errors that a luxmeter can have.
So it pays off hugely (in money and time spent) to be satisfied with the approximate numbers that cheap luxmeters produce.
Ohh… they have one with an even higher lux range for only $1 more: TSL2591
That’s it, the tinkerer in me can’t take it any more. I think I’m going to order one of those and hook it up to a Wemos D1 Mini. Embed the TSL2591 in the end of a Texas Ace-style “integrating tube” and see where that gets me.
Now about that lux meter I ordered last night… :person_facepalming:
) luxmeter.
