Have you seen the Arduino code? It’s complex. How about just a simple value for relative brightness? Can you point me in the right direction to talk to someone who has done this? I see it’s only a few lines of code, but many people were struggling with it in 2012 using a different microcontroller. It can be much simpler than this Arduino code below:
https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Sensors/Imaging/adjd_s311_cr99_example.pde