
Introduction to TCS3200
- TCS3200 is a color detecting sensor, it consists of TAOS TCS3200 RGB sensor chip and four white LEDs. It is used to detect visible color in a measurable range.
- It is a programmable sensor and color light to frequency converter. The board of this sensor is a monolithic integrated circuit which consists of configurable silicon photodiode and a current to frequency converter.
- The output of this sensor is a square wave (50% duty cycle), the frequency of output depends on the intensity of light (irradiance).
- An output frequency of this sensor can be scaled by two input control pinouts. Due to its digital input and digital output, it can easily be interfaced with other microcontrollers.
- The light to frequency converter of this sensor reads the 8 x 8 array of photodiodes. In this array of photodiodes, 16 photodiodes have green filters, 16 has blue filters, 16 has red filters and sixteen photodiodes have no filters.
- To minimize, the effect of non-uniformity of incident radiation all photodiodes are interdigitated. Same colored diodes are connected in parallel. We can use pin S2 and S3 to check which group of photo-diodes is active.
- The dimensions of photodiodes are 110um x 110um.
- Operating temperature of this sensor is -40°C to +85°C and it is available in 8-SOIC packages.
- This sensor is mostly used in RGB led industrial control projects and medical diagnostic types of equipment.
TCS3200 Pinout & Description
- There are main eight pinouts of TCS3200 which are described below.
Pin# | Type | Parameters |
Pin#4 | GND | This pin is the power supply ground. All voltages are reference to the ground. |
Pin#5 | VCC | It is a supply voltage. |
Pin#3 | OE | Enable for FO (Active low). |
Pin#6 | OUT | This pin is for output frequency (fo). |
Pin#1,2 | S0, S1 | Using these pins we can Select lines for output frequency scaling. |
Pin#7,8 | S2, S3 | Using these pins we can Select lines for photodiode type. |

Features of TCS3200
- These are the main features of TCS3200.
- Its operating voltage is 2.7v to 5.5v.
- Its operating current is 2 mA at 5 V.
- Its interface is digital TTL.
- It can easily convert light intensity to frequency with high resolution.
- There is no need for ADC.
- It operating temperature is -40 C to 85 C.
- It has a power down attribute.
- Its dimensions are 28.4x28.4mm(1.12x1.12").
- It is available in a 5mm x 6.2mm SOIC (D) package.
- It is programmable.
- It supports LED lamp light supplement control.
Working of TCS3200
- As we have already seen that TCS3200 has an 8 x 8 array of photodiodes, which are used for color sensing.
- When light falls on these photodiodes, then these light signals are converted into square waves and the frequency of these square waves is dependent on the intensity of falling light.
- After getting results from light to frequency converter, which is a square wave, we can simply fed them to any microcontroller like Arduino, PIC Microcontroller or Atmel etc and detect the color of falling light.
- If we observe a given diagram we can easily understand how the sensor can detect various colors.
- As we earlier discussed that photodiodes of the sensor have three different filters which are red, green, and blue while one group of photodiodes have no filter.
- All sixteen photodiodes of a sensor are connected in parallel, by using two pins S2 and S3 we can select which pin we have to use for color reading.
- Let's suppose we have to detect red color, we just have to use sixteen red filter photodiodes by setting two pin S2 and S3 to low logic level according to a given table.
- TCS3200 also has two more pins used for controlling purposes, and are named as S0, and S1.
- These two switches are used for tuning the frequency of square wave. We can set the output frequency to either 2%, 20% or 100%. These are builtin frequency values.
- This function tells us that we can optimize the sensor output for various counters and microcontrollers.
Applications of TCS3200
- These are some applications of TCS3200.
- As we know this is a color light sensor, so we use it in color detecting projects, otherwise we have to use MATLAB for color detection, which will need laptop (not a good option).
- TCS3200 is used for object sorting based on color.test strip reading,
- We can also sense ambient light using this sensor.
- We can also read color codes on LED strips.