Building a Talking color detector

[Editor's note: this is the first installment in a relatively large project. The engineering challenge faced by these students was to create a talking color detector. I've elected to print the entire project documentation at th urging of several professionals who have reviewed the project.]

The motivation for this project comes from the fact that one of group members, Marc S. Hernandez, is colorblind. A need was realized for a device to assist people with their color perception inabilities. Other applications for helping different groups with similar needs were also realized and provided additional motivation.

The main goal of this project is to create a hand held, battery powered device that when held to a specific color will speak the color name, display the color name and or display some sort of color code, possibly RGB. There may also be some sort of data storage device built in for storing multiple color codes for later retrieval. This device will have use in elementary education where it will help young children quickly learn their colors. It also has application to assist those disabled with forms of colorblindness and total blindness as well. Painters, designers and other people who would like to obtain color information and specification for later application may also use it. This device has some interesting options that may be associated with its production. Research, prototyping and optimization will be needed to determine what the final design will be. The initial idea is as follows:

The device can be broken down into four major parts. They are, the color sensing circuit, a microcontroller, the data storage device, and the output device. The proposed design for the color sensor will be three photocells with three different color filters only allowing a particular color through to each photocell. The voltage output of the photocell will correspond to the intensity of a particular color. This information will be used to calculate the particular color that is of interest. The sensor will then pass the information, to the microcontroller through an A/D converter. The microcontroller will decode information from the sensor and pass it to the output device and or the data storage device, depending on what the user desires. The data storage device will simply store the color information for later retrieval and pass it through the output device. The output device may be audible or text based. If it is audible it will speak the name of the color. This output is preferred in application for assisting small children in learning. If the output device is text based it will display the name of the color or a color code on a built in LCD.