The last project I developed the first week of Physical Computing was Mimicry, together with Dean McNamee. It is a lamp that imitates the color that is captured by an ‘eye’.
Here the video of the prototype:
A color sensor reads the color of the object placed against it, and wirelessly transfers the data to the lamp, that gently shifts from its current color to the object’s one.
We developed a DIY sensor, really effective and fast enough for this project. A RGB led shines alternating red, blue and green light out of the eye. The reflected light for each channel is measured with a photoresistor. Once the three channels are known, the hue of the object is computed and transferred using XBee to the lamp.
We added some red led’s to the group of RGB led’s, since this channel was slightly weaker than the others. We also used a sandblasted acetate sheet to diffuse the light.
We used wood to build the eye’s housing, and foamboard for the Arduino’s box.
Some more pictures about this project here.