Listen to the colours

Small pen-like instrument which plays three tones depending on RGB components of the tested surface, to help blind persons or daltonists

Voja Antonic

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Description

This instrument uses RGB LEDs to illuminate the tested surface and plays tones depending on phototransistor response.
When the key is pressed, it plays the tone (about 200 ms), with lower pitch if the red component is darker, and higher pitch if it is lighter. The same is for green and blue, so the whole sequence is about 600 ms. After that, if the momentary key is still ON, MCU goes to sleep mode, to save battery. The key simply switches power supply ON and OFF.
This instrument helps blind persons or daltonists to get more information about their surrounding. After some time they will not listen the tone pitches, but the "melody" of the colour.
The lower part of the inside surface of the enclosure must be black, and the photo transistor light shielded (with the black heat shrinkable tube or so), to ignore direct light from LEDs and to pick only the reflected light from the tested surface.

Details

I built the prototype with PIC12F675 and it generally worked as I expected. There is a brief demo at

There are some slight modifications, soon I shall update the schematics

Discussions

i-bek wrote 06/11/2015 at 14:17

Here is another one similar project, http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/f2012/dl487_kl524/dl487_kl524/index.html

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Voja Antonic wrote 06/11/2015 at 14:27

Interesting project, it's a pity that there is no demo

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Alex Rich wrote 05/14/2015 at 18:24

great project

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zakqwy wrote 05/13/2015 at 15:54

Cool idea! Definitely looking forward to a video--have you had a chance to breadboard the concept yet?

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Voja Antonic wrote 05/13/2015 at 16:18

Unfortunately not, I am too busy at the moment, but I shall do it in a month or two. By the way, the idea is almost 20 years old and it still waits for its turn :(

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zakqwy wrote 05/13/2015 at 16:21

I know how that goes. Keep us posted!

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Voja Antonic wrote 05/14/2015 at 16:23

Yet I was eager to see it working and built it overnight

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