Color detection with CMU

Tools

Has anyone played with using the CMU as a longer range color sensor? I have been using the TAOS color sensor for simple color detection and have very good results as long as·I stay in the one inch range, my problem is that the range is not always consistent. I would like to expand the range to a couple of inches and was thinking that I could used the CMUcam. Is it possible to use this as simple color recognition? IE. Calibrate it to a color and then use it to output if the color is present in the field of view?
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Thanks

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

One reason the TAOS TCS230 color sensor module works best at one inch is that the white LEDs are positioned for that distance. But if you provide your own lighting, you can use the TCS230-DB at longer distances. Any bright, broad-spectrum light source should work. (If you use fluorescent lighting, though, be sure to count pulses over integral multiples of 8.333ms. Otherwise, flicker could skew your readings.)

-Phil

Larry

To answer your question about the CMUcam, yes, you can use it as a long range color sensor.

you set the RGB color values and upper and lower bounds for each color.
the camera will tell you how many pixels of that color are in the field of view, what the size boundary of the color blob is, and where in the field the centroid of the pixels is.

its been used to locate an orange traffic cones for RoboMagellan contests.