Planet Arduino

You can sense a lot of things with the right sensor, and [Nikhil Nailwal] is here to show us how to sense colors using a TCS230. The project is a simple demo. It displays the color and lights up an LED to correspond to the detected color.

If you haven’t seen the TCS230 before, it is a chip with an array of photosensors, for different light wavelengths. The controlling chip — an Arduino, in this case — can read the intensity of the selected color.

The TCS230 uses a 4 x 4 array of photodiodes, along with a Bayer filter. That is, there are four detectors for red, four for green, and four for blue. There are also four unfiltered detectors that aid in low lighting detection.

The host computer controls two lines to select which group of four detectors to read. The output is a frequency from around 2 to 500 kHz that indicates the intensity. You can scale the output frequency if you don’t want to deal with higher frequencies.

From what we understand, the sensor’s resolution isn’t that great. But for simple color detection, it is easy to use and effective. There are very similar chips like the TCS3200 that have more sensors, but work in the same way.

We’ve seen similar projects, but we are always struck how simple this sensor is to use. Combine these with an RGB LED and you can make a chameleon.

Are you a bit obsessive compulsive with lots of certain things? We are too. Like Skittles! If you’re the kind of person who likes to sort their Skittles, you should seriously look into making your own 3D printed Skittles Sorter.

Built more to challenge his new 3D printer, [MrPrezident] was looking for a project to combine mechanical design with a bit of image recognition prowess — so he came up with this clever, and compact, Skittle sorting machine.

It uses an Arduino Uno with a ZITRADES color sensor module to identify the color of each candy. A small LED helps illuminate the Skittles to ensure an accurate color reading. Then, depending on the color, a series of gears rotate the Skittles piece to its designated color repository.

Theoretically it should also work with M&M’s (which are a bit smaller) but unfortunately, there are 6 colors of M&M’s and only 5 colors of Skittles. What would the machine do then!? We don’t see a reject bin!

Regardless, we’re quite impressed with how compact he ended up making it — [MrPrezident] has certainly been keeping up with his STEM promises!

And if you need something a bit faster to satiate your OCD… try this one instead. It’s capable of sorting Skittles or M&M’s at a rate of 80 pieces per minute!