So why do I feel obsolete?
Well, after spending the weekend getting a nice low-level light detector circuit working using a high-intensity red LED and a cheap LM324 opamp with one channel giving gain and another acting as a comparator so I could feed it into an AVR, I discover this: http://www.mouser.com/taos/
Everything I could need, wrapped up into a nice little package selling for $1.37 in single units! And the only reason I even needed the AVR was because a 555 couldn't handle the time delay (the project is to turn on the light in a chicken coop for 3 hours when it got dark outside so the hens have enough light to trigger their laying instinct as the days get shorter).
No-one, it seems, except for chip manufacturers needs people with analog expertise anymore. I guess it took a light detector with I2C output for $1.37 to drive that through my thick skull
I'll just go back into my quiet little corner and keep churning out code!
