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  • Author Author: zengirl2
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FLORAbrella Update - Color My World

zengirl2

I just returned from an exciting Open Hardware Summit in Boston.  It was great to meet so many other people jazzed about controllers and educational kits.  I brought some of my FLORA parts hoping that I would work on them, but instead, I toured a hardware startup called Bolt, hacked my badge and mingled with a ton of other women equally passionate about gadgets.  Oh yeah, and I finally got to meet Limor Fried of Adafruit fame!  Here's a pic of me, Limor, and one of my fave tech friends, Brooks Zurn.  Yes, the skirt I'm wearing has LED's on it -- it mimics the orbit of the International Space Station.  Needless to say, my mind was spinning and I wrote down some more project ideas, as well as some new "to-do's" for me and Philadelphia image

 

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Okay, back to the FLORAbrella!  I decided to take out the Adafruit Color Sensor today.  I must say that this piece is amazingly compact.  In fact, I had to get out my magnifying glass just to make sure I was hooking it up correctly.  Usually I work with Adafruit's test programs first, but I was having difficulty getting them to work.  It may be because I was working with the FLORA instead of another type of Arduino.  Nevertheless, I went straight to a program I felt confident about -- the one for the "Chameleon Scarf".  This program has the sensor blink three times reminding you to give it a color swatch.  One you apply the color, it will turn your LED's the same color.  Check out my demo...

 

 

 

My next step will be to test my switch.  So much to do, but I love it.  Oh yeah, did I mention that one of the guys at my hackerspace says that he loves my videos because I act like I've had five Redbulls?  Just for the record, I'm a decaf Chai Latte with Almond Milk. 

  • in reply to zengirl2

    I just spotted this 'Neopixel Dialer' project on the Adafruit site.

    https://learn.adafruit.com/rgb-hsv-neopixel-dialer/introduction

     

     

    It may be of interest to people wanting to fine tune their Neopixel values interactively, perhaps whilst colour-matching 'out in the field'.

  • in reply to zengirl2

    I suspect that the Neopixel RGB value just needs a little bit of tweaking to more closely  match that of the colour space used by the sensor library.

     

    I've not looked yet but I'm assuming that the Adafruit TCS34725 library has been calibrated to match that of the LED supplied on the Adafruit board and thus produces a corrected output in the sRGB colour space, along the lines of the aforementioned TAOS TCS230 document.

     

    I first came across the TAOS TCS230 colour sensor being used as part of a low cost DIY colorimeter project for home cinema applications at this site:

     

    HCFR Colormeter - HCFR Mag
    http://www.homecinema-fr.com/colorimetre-hcfr/hcfr-colormeter/

    however I have only just recently acquired an AMS TCS3200 (modern equivalent) and an AMS TCS34725 (as part of the Adafruit TCS34725 module), to start experimenting with myself.

     

    I have seen a few negative reviews about the colour accuracy, however from what I've seen posted, people have just been taking the raw data from the TCS230 / TCS3200 and using it to drive a RGB LED without any calibration mapping between the two. The TAOS paper and the French Home Cinema project suggests that it can produce a lot better results however.

     

    Your design challenge entry popped up when I was doing a search for colour sensors here on the Element14 site. Thought the TAOS paper may be of interest to those working with the colour sensors.

     

    The FLORAbrella project looks great by the way !

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    I can only speak to how well it duplicated colors on my neopixels, and I know the bright colors worked well--pastels, not so great. Perhaps it has more to do with the Neopixel capability than the sensor.

  • in reply to DAB

    There is quite an interesting technical paper on colour accuracy of the TAOS TCS230 colour sensor here:

    http://ams.com/eng/content/view/download/145160

     

    Linked from the AMS TCS34725 web page at:

    Color Sensor – Color Light-To-Digital Converter – TCS34725 ams

     

    The paper uses the GretagMacbeth (now X-Rite) colour checker as a colour reference.

  • in reply to DAB

    Hey DAB,

     

    It's the Adafruit TCS34725 Color Sensor.  I believe in the description it even mentions that it can operate under tinted glass, which seems rather impressive.  I thought it did a pretty good job of matching the colors of my envelopes.  Also, video does not show it as well as with the naked eye.  Often on Becky's "Wearables" show she covers the LED's with diffusion to cut down the glare for video purposes.   I would say the rendered color was just a little lighter than the actual color.  You will notice that I put a piece of white paper under the sensor.  Having just gotten home from a green screen video shoot, I was scared that the green from my mat might interfere with the sensor LOL.  Anyway, I would say that it worked quite well, especially given the fact that I have some built-in fluorescents above my desk, one daylight bulb nearby so you can see me in the video, as well as a little bit of natural light coming in through a skylight.  Reading in depth on the tutorials, it's interesting to note that the whole idea of color sensors dealing with LED's presents the problem of colors that the eye can recognize vs. colors the eye can't recognize.  I had no idea it was that complicated and Adafruit definitely credits the coder for narrowing the information down.  As I said, this tiny sensor is pretty amazing and it's nice that I can enjoy the end product without having to invent the system.