Colour sensor for cameras, displays and smart devices

AMS TCS3408 Color Sensor is an ultra-high sensitivity light-to-digital converter that features Ambient Light Sensing, colour (RGB) sensing, and selective flicker detection. The ambient light and colour sensing functions give five concurrent ambient light sensing channels: Red, Green, Blue, Clear, and Wideband. The RGB and clear channels feature a UV/IR blocking filter. This architecture precisely measures ambient light and facilitates the calculation of illuminance, chromaticity, and colour temperature to control display appearance. The architecture of the engine offers a self-maximising dynamic range, ambient light subtraction, data output and interrupt-driven 1.8V I2C communications interface.

The sensor incorporates direct detection of 50Hz or 60Hz ambient light flicker. Flicker detection is performed in parallel with ambient light, and colour sensing possesses independent gain configuration and also suppresses cross-coupling from any 940nm IR, if generated by adjacent circuits, such as a ToF sensor. The flicker detection engine is also able to buffer data for calculating other flicker frequencies externally.

Typical device applications include cameras, smartphones, tablets, and display backlight control.