Hello guys I am working on a project that involves identifying packets based on their color. I am currently looking into selecting an appropriate color sensor that could be interfaced with Arduino. All the color sensors that I came across had very small range (around 2 cm at the max) but my need is that it should sense colors with atleast a clearance of 5 cm. Please suggest me a sensor suitable for my need or any way to improve the range of the sensors available.

Sensors I came across: TCS230, TCS3472 & TCS3200

PS: I am a newbie in regard to all this so any kind of feedback would be helpful to me. Thanks!

 

I highly suggest getting a professional color sensor from companies like Tri-tronics, Sick, Keyence, Banner
http://www.ttco.com/industrial/colorwise.aspx
http://www.ttco.com/industrial/colorwise/lid.aspx
Call them and speak with their application engineering department and discuss your needs..

The higher cost of these professional packaged devices will easily be offset by the time you spent "monkeying" with a "hobby type" setups that you have been looking for already..

 

If the sensing can be done in a darkened area, how about flashing red, green and blue LEDs in turn, and use a panchromatic light sensor to detect reflected light? Like these:
http://www.hamamatsu.com/jp/en/4008.html

 

The lighting in the area cannot be controlled and it also the area will always be lighted either using natural lights or by using other means. Thanks for the reply. Really appreciate it.
Further comments and inputs are appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

The lighting in the area cannot be controlled ...

And you want to work with color? Good luck. You'll need a way to compensate/calibrate for ambient lighting. If the colors you are detecting are not similar to each other, your odds go up. But detecting subtle color differences is hard for a human, let alone a machine.

 

Another approach, using a computer rather than an Arduino, would be a camera pointed at the scene with image analysis software running. It's not a totally crazy idea if you consider that webcams hardly cost anything, and there are free software packages available to do the processing. Or could it be done with a cell phone using Android--is there an app for that?

Edited to add--something like this, maybe?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.leizersoft.coloranalysis&hl=en

 

That was actually the first thing that popped into my mind. Get a used (free) smartphone and run one of the many, many color analysis apps on it. Cheaper and better than anything you're likely to build yourself.