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Study of simple spectrophotometer design using LDR sensors based on

arduino uno microcontroller
To cite this article: Anis Yuniati and Rochan Rifai 2019 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1153 012099

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9th International Conference on Physics and Its Applications (ICOPIA) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1153 (2019) 012099 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1153/1/012099

Study of simple spectrophotometer design using LDR sensors

based on arduino uno microcontroller

Anis Yuniati1 and Rochan Rifai

Department of Physics, UIN Sunan Kalijaga,
Jl. Marsda Adisucipto Caturtunggal Depok Sleman Yogyakarta 55281, INDONESIA

E-mail : [email protected]

Abstract. A spectrophotometer is an apparatus that can be used to identify the constituent

elements of a material. Spectrophotometer uses the principle of interaction between the light
spectrum that has a certain frequency with the material so that it can be measured the
transmittance or absorbance of the sample as a function of concentration. The purpose of this
research is to design a simple spectrophotometer using LDR sensor to convert the scale of light
intensity into an electric scale, 28BYJ stepper motor and ULN 2003 driver motor controlled by
Arduino Uno microcontroller for light spectrum selection, Op-Amp system as a signal amplifier
and LCD 20x4 to display the output intensity value. The test results on Copper (II) Sulfate or
CuSO4.5H2O samples with the concentration of 0.15 M, 0.25 M, 0.4 M, 0.5 M, 0.7 M and 1 M
gave the absorbance value of 0.12, 0.32, 0.51, 0.66, 0.79, and 1.07 respectively in the red
spectrum. The other solutions used to test the spectrophotometer system are two types of food
dye solutions. This study provides a linear relationship between absorbance and concentration.

1. Introduction
A spectrophotometer is a common instrument that has been used widely in physics and chemistry to
analyze a substance by measuring the transmittance or absorbance of the sample as a function of
concentration. Qualitatively, the determination is based on the peaks generated on the spectrum of a
particular element at a certain wavelength, whereas the quantitative determination is based on the
absorbance value generated from the spectrum of the sample. The design principle of spectrophotometer
originates from Beer-Lambert's law that explaining the interaction between matter or chemicals with
electromagnetic waves that having a certain wavelength. Spectrophotometer consists of several main
components including polychromatic light source, monochromator, sample cell, detector and reader
system. Spectrophotometer is used in various fields of medical and science, so currently,
spectrophotometer has been widely produced to meet the needs of the laboratory. However,
spectrophotometers on the market have a fairly expensive price. The commercial spectrophotometer
produces a high accuracy in the data, but the instrument comes in a "black box" so the user has little
insight into the physical processes related to the measurements.
The need to design and build a spectrophotometer arises from educational objectives for the students.
Many low-cost spectrophotometers have been built with various designs. Knagge et al. used LEGO
pieces for construction of the optical support elements of the UV-visible spectrophotometer with a
silicon photo-detector and a Sylvania miniature-lamp light bulb that was powered by two 1.5-V batteries
for the light source [1]. Yeh et al. constructed a multi-wavelength spectrophotometer with plug-and-
measure LED light source modules and TCS230 chip from TAOS, Inc. as photo-detector [2]. For each
wavelength, they used a different LED, so they need to calibrate the instrument with a commercial
spectrophotometer with a standard solution to overcome the emission bandwidth. A cell phone

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9th International Conference on Physics and Its Applications (ICOPIA) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1153 (2019) 012099 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1153/1/012099

spectrometer has been built by Scheeline [3], with the aim to teach the principle of spectroscopy using
the equipment available to and owned by most students. By using a white LED light source, plastic
sample cuvette, holographic transmission grating, and any camera that produces JPG files, the designs
were able to teach the workings of optical instrumentation components and systems rather than the
analysis of sample solution. Albert et al. built a low-cost spectrophotometer with a simple design using
LEGO blocks [4]. The spectrum wavelengths were calculated using Fraunhofer diffraction equation
based on the size of the diffraction grating in this experiment. There are many more homemade
spectrophotometers built with various designs and components. Each of them has a different character,
and its own advantages. All of the instruments used increased understanding of the physical processes
of the spectrophotometer system.
In our work, we study the design of a low-cost, simple homemade spectrophotometer using LDR sensors
and Arduino Uno microcontroller. Arduino Uno is an open source electronic platform with the
microcontroller chip of ATMega328 type as the main component. Arduino Uno as a microcontroller has
a central role in this system. Arduino controls the movement of the stepper motor to determine the color
spectrum of the light, read the data from the sensor, and act as a data processing unit read from the
sensors. White light LED is used as the light source and a thin film diffraction grating is used as
monochromator. The light-dependent-resistor (LDR) is used as the light sensors and coupled with Op-
Amp system.

2. Experimental Methods

Figure 1. A block diagram for the system setup of spectrophotometer.

The visible light spectrophotometer system is designed according to block diagrams in Figure 1. The
hardware assembly was done by installing the whole component into a system, by connecting several
components in accordance with their respective functions. The instrument of the spectrophotometer
system consists of the light sensor, the signal conditioner Op-Amp, the colour spectrum selector system,
the display system, and the power supply. The design schematic for an Arduino Uno based
spectrophotometer is shown in the Figure 2. For the installation of each system component refer to the
circuit diagram as shown in Figure 3.

2.1. The light sensor

The light detector sensor should be able to read the light intensity in the wavelength range of 380-750nm
(visible light spectrum range). There are various types of sensors that can be used but here we use the
LDR sensor (Light Dependent Resistor) that is easy to find and is low-cost. In addition, LDR has a good
performance to change the voltage in the wavelength range of visible light. LDR is made from
semiconductor material with high resistivity. When the source of light (photon) hits the material, the
conductivity of the material increases. The photons must have greater energy than the gap energy of the
material so that they can excite the electrons to the conduction band. The excited electrons from the
valence band to the conduction band will produce a flow of charge (current) as an intensity function.
The more intensity received, the more electric current flows and increases the conductivity of the

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9th International Conference on Physics and Its Applications (ICOPIA) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1153 (2019) 012099 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1153/1/012099

material. Therefore, when the light intensity is low (dark), the LDR resistivity is high and when the light
intensity is high (light), the LDR conductivity is high.

2.2. The signal conditioning

The LDR is combined with the Operational Amplifier (Op-Amp) so it will be able to get a good reading
of the intensity change when the system is applied in an isolated box (dark room). In this system, we
use inverting Op-Amp using LM741 with the input voltage -9V as in the circuit diagram. To generate a
maximum voltage of 5V to be read by Arduino microcontroller, we install 1KOhm resistor before the
Op-Amp circuit and 4.7KOhm feedback resistor. This circuit will produce a maximum voltage of 4.93V
or 1010 digital value from the maximum intensity value of the LED.

Figure 2. The design schematic for Arduino Uno based spectrophotometer

2.3. The color spectrum selector system

Arduino Uno is an open source platform and a suitable microcontroller to use in this design with easy
programming. In this section, Arduino acts as the data reader and signal processing of the sensor circuit,
displaying the processing results on the LCD, and controlling the stepper motor to determine the color
spectrum from the light source to the sample. In addition, Arduino also plays a role in sending the data
processing to Microsoft Excel. The output signal from the sensor is in the range of 0-5 V, read by
Arduino through analogue pin A2. This value is converted into 10bit data in the range 0-1023
representing the intensity value. In addition, Arduino also drives the stepper motor through the
ULN2003 driver motor to rotate the light source and select the color spectrum passed through the
sample. The stepper motor is moved through the command given on the 4x4 keypad matrix. The step of
the stepper motor rotor and the intensity value of the color spectrum will be displayed on the LCD. The
data is also sent by Arduino to Microsoft Excel via serial communication using PLX-DAQ software.
The data is then processed to determine the absorbance value by the formula A = log (I/I0).

2.4. The Display system

We built the spectrophotometer into three separate sections, in a "black box" with the display system in
the box cover. The data acquisition system of the spectrophotometer will display the data from the sensor
and stepper motor using LCD 20x4. We used a 4x4 matrix keypad to set the movement of the stepper
motor for the color selection. The keypad consists of buttons A, B, and C. A button is used to perform
the scanning of the light into the samples from red to purple, while the B button is used to perform the
light scanning from purple to red. In the color scanning process, the sample will have an absorbance

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9th International Conference on Physics and Its Applications (ICOPIA) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1153 (2019) 012099 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1153/1/012099

value for particular color. If we already know the highest absorption of a color based on the stepper
position, we can directly input the value by pressing C button and enter the value of the stepper position
that corresponds with the color.

2.5. The power supply

The power supply in the circuit is made from four DC output voltages of +9 and -9V for the sensor
circuit, 5V for the driver motor, and 3.3V for the LED. The power supply consists of 1A transformer,
diode bridge, voltage regulator, and some capacitors as filters as seen on the circuit diagram. The
magnitude of the slope voltage is regulated by the voltage regulator, i.e + 9V using LM7809, -9V using
LM7909 and + 5V using LM7805. The voltage of 3.3V for the LED is generated by DC Stepdown
Adjustable Converter which is composed of LM2596. By using the DC Stepdown Adjustable Converter,
the voltage and the current for LED can be more stable.

Figure 3. Circuit diagram for Arduino Uno based spectrophotometer

3. Results and Discussion

In our system, the rotation of the stepper motor will determine the color spectrum from the light source
to the sample. The degree of rotation of the rotor will have a relation with the color selected, so it can
be used to approximate the range of the wavelength of the color spectrum from the light source. The
rotor will rotate from 0 to 720. From the observation, the approximation of the color spectrum versus
degree of rotation of the rotor is described in table 1.
Table 1. The approximation of color spectrum as the change of degree of rotation.
Degree of rotation of the rotor Spectrum color
468 - 720 Red
409 - 468 Orange
371 - 409 Yellow
225 - 371 Green
137 - 225 Blue
0 - 137 Violet

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9th International Conference on Physics and Its Applications (ICOPIA) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1153 (2019) 012099 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1153/1/012099

Figure 4. Spectrum of CuSO4.5H2O for some Figure 5. Absorbance versus concentration for
various concentration solution CuSO4

Figure 6. Spectrum of light green solution for Figure 7. Absorbance plot of light-green food
some various concentration dye solution
The performance of the Arduino based spectrophotometer is tested by measuring the absorption of some
solutions. The first measurement is a CuSO4.5H2O solution with various concentrations as shown in
figure 4. The profile of CuSO4.5H2O shows the same range of wavelength absorbed by the solution that
is in the red spectrum. The spectrophotometer system is able to differentiate the concentration of the
solution, indicated by the absorption value of different concentrations as shown in figure 5. The solution
with the higher value of concentration has a higher absorption value. The increasing of absorption value
is linearly proportional to the concentration of the solution. However, the absorption value measured by
our system cannot be compared with the measurement of commercial spectrophotometer since the
system is built with limited instruments.
The other solutions used to test the spectrophotometer system are two types of food dye, namely red
(strawberry flavor) solution and light green (melon flavor) solution. Measurements were made by
dropping some quantities of food dye concentration with water-filled cuvette. The number of drops will
indicate the different concentration of solutions. The spectrum of light-green solutions in figure 6 show
the uniform profile of several different concentrations. The solution absorbs the light in the range of the
green and blue spectrums. This can be caused by the color of the solution that has a light green instead
of green. The more the number of drops given, the greater the concentration of the solution, and the
greater the absorbance value of the solution, as shown in figure 7. The same phenomenon is also shown
by the red solution. In figure 8, the spectrum of the light absorbed by the red solution is the green

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9th International Conference on Physics and Its Applications (ICOPIA) IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1153 (2019) 012099 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1153/1/012099

spectrum. The ratio between absorbance and the concentration of the red solution is shown in figure 9.
The absorbance value increase for the higher concentration of the solution.

Figure 8. Spectrum of red solution for some Figure 9. Absorbance plot of red food dye
various concentration solution

4. Conclusion
The Arduino based spectrophotometer has been used to analyze the absorbance of several solutions with
various concentrations. In the CuSO4.5H2O and food dye solutions, the absorbance value is increased
by increasing the concentration. Even though this system cannot accurately measure the wavelength
absorbed by the sample, it still can be used to conduct experiments on Beer-Lambert’s law and study
the physical process of spectrophotometry that is often hidden in a commercial spectrophotometer. The
design can be used for educational purpose at the undergraduate level with low-cost instruments. The
system can be improved by substituting some components and by calibrating with the standard
spectrophotometer.

5. References

[1] K. Knagge and D. Raftery, "Construction and Evaluation of a LEGO Spectrophotometer for
Student Use," The Chemical Educator, vol. 7, pp. 371-375, December 01 2002.
[2] Y. Tai-Sheng and T. Shih-Shin, "A Low Cost LED Based Spectrometer," Journal of the
Chinese Chemical Society, vol. 53, pp. 1067-1072, 2006.
[3] A. Scheeline, "Teaching, Learning, and Using Spectroscopy with Commercial, Off-the-Shelf
Technology," Applied Spectroscopy, vol. 64, pp. 256A-268A, 2010.
[4] D. R. Albert, M. A. Todt, and H. F. Davis, "A Low-Cost Quantitative Absorption
Spectrophotometer," Journal of Chemical Education, vol. 89, pp. 1432-1435, 2012/10/09
2012.