1.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE SENSOR

The TCS3200 chip is designed to detect the color of the light falling on it. It

has an array of photodiodes (a matrix of 8x8, for a total of 64 sensors).

These photodiodes are covered with four types of filters. Sixteen sensors

have a RED filter and thus can only measure the red component in the inci-

dent light. Another sixteen have a GREEN filter and sixteen have a BLUE

filter. Each visible color can be divided into three basic colors. So these

three types of filtered sensors help measure the weighting of each of the

primary colors in the incident light. The remaining 16 sensors have a clear

filter.

The TCS3200 converts the intensity of the incident lighting into a f

requency. The output waveform is a square wave with 50% duty cycle. You

can use the timer of a MCU to measure the period of the pulse to

determine the frequency. The output of the TCS3200 is available on one

line, which means that only 1 pin is available as output.

The intensity of the red, green, blue and clear channels can be determined

by using the inputs, S2 and S3, which are used to select the sensors, to

provide their output on the output line. That means, the inputs S2 and S3

are used to control what kind of sensors give their signal to the output

line. There are also two other inputs S0 and S1, which are used to regulate

the output frequency. That means that with these inputs the intensity of

the frequency of the channels RED, GREEN, BLUE and CLEAR can be

regulated.

1.2 PIN ASSIGNMENT OF THE SENSOR

Pin Name Description

GND Ground of the power supply. All volta-

ges are referenced to GND

OE Enable for OUT (active low)

OUT Output frequency

S0, S1 Inputs for selecting the scaling of the

output frequency

S2, S3 Inputs for selecting the photodiode type

VDD Supply voltage