According to the cold dark matter (CDM) hierarchical clustering theory of galaxy and large-scale structure formation, there should be numerous low-mass dark matter haloes present in the Universe today. If these haloes contain sufficient stars, they should be detectable as low-luminosity stellar systems or dwarf galaxies. We have previously described a new detection method for faint low surface brightness objects and we have shown that there are relatively large numbers of very faint dwarf galaxies in the nearby Virgo cluster. In this paper, we present results from a similar survey carried out on the Millennium Galaxy strip (MGS, cat. <VII/240>), which runs along the celestial equator and samples a very different galaxy environment.