what about getting one of those garden lights they have in all the cheapie shops and robbing it for parts

 

Hi, thanks for the replies !


These are mostly solar-powered and no good for this project really

You can get such things off eBay for less than a fiver? Is it really worth making one?

I'm needing it to fit in quite a flat space and the ready made night lights will be a bit more trouble than it's worth to take to bits i think

If you really want to make one yourself you could try out arduino.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Projects/
You can get the uno cheap on eBay, or maplin do the starter kits.

I've had a look for starter kits but none are really suitable so far...

What i'm after is a grid of 9 LEDs which are activated by the main room light going off... and then perhaps having a delay on them so they turn themselves off after about 15/20 mins... something like this-cheap-dark-detecting-led-circuit/ but a little more involved.

Trouble is, i know nothing about electronics - only bits that people have told me, like i should use a CMOS 555 chip to time the LEDs off... but i have no idea what one of those is. lol

 

You can get such things off eBay for less than a fiver? Is it really worth making one?

 

If you really want to make one yourself you could try out arduino.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Projects/

You can get the uno cheap on eBay, or maplin do the starter kits.

 

The arduino will do all of that and more with just a light sensor. You can programme it with a laptop to do almost anything,

Here's the project, complete with the code

http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Night-Light/

For the delay, you can just alter the code to turn off after the time you want.

Beginners guide here, have a read and see how easy it is....

http://forefront.io/a/beginners-guide-to-arduino

 

the solar ones have a battery anyway ...could just junk the panel

if youre that unsure what to do then buy a ebay one thats ready to go

 

I guess it depends on what you exactly want to build, but you could probably build something using totally off the shelf parts.

For example, car park lights all use photocells - normally 240v, so effectively you could splice one in as a switch on a standard type lamp. That allows you to use 240v standard type stuff.

Or:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Timeguard-TGLED-Plug-In-LED-Night-Light-Dusk-Till-Dawn-Auto-Photocell-TGLEDNL-/231151457428?pt=UK_Home_Garden_Night_Lights_Fairy_Lights&hash=item35d1b35494

Theres tons on ebay, all I typed in was 'dusk till dawn nightlight'. Some of them also have a Timed PIR so will come on with movement and stay on for a little while.

I have spent ages making various things and I found that actually it was easy to find something on ebay, its normally cheap enough and does the job.

 

We have a string of red love heart shaped lights as decoration in the little one's room. We turn the main light off when she goes to bed and unplug the love hearts when we go to bed.

You could even buy a plug socket timer and plug a lamp into it, if you didn't want to go into the room.