color sensor

cbri

Hi, what kind of materials does the color sensor work with? Does it work with things like colored glass (translucent) or somewhat reflective depending on the light?

Thanks,

Craig

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Colored glass can exhibit three different colors you might want to consider:

1. Transmissive color: the color you see when you shine a white light through the glass.
2. Diffuse reflective color: the color you see when the glass is observed outdoors on a cloudy day.
3. Specular reflective color: the color you see when viewing a white light source reflected in the glass's shiny surface.

The TCS230-DB color sensor is optimized for gauging diffuse reflective color, using its off-axis white LEDs for illumination. But there's no reason you couldn't use it for transmissive color measurement. You'd simply not trigger the LEDs, but use a diffuse white backlight instead. As with any color measurement, you'd want to do a white balance calibration using the backlight alone as a target. Since the glass may block a considerable fraction of the backlight's radiation, you will probably need to increase the count time for each RGB component by a fixed ratio, to improve resolution.

-Phil