Little Bird
BH1745 Luminance and Colour Sensor Breakout
A really sophisticated and accurate colour and luminance sensor breakout that's Raspberry Pi and Arduino compatible. As well as detecting RGB colour an...
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A really sophisticated and accurate colour and luminance sensor breakout that's Raspberry Pi and Arduino compatible. As well as detecting RGB colour and light level, it has added bells and whistles like 50/60Hz light noise rejection, a wide detection range, and two illumination LEDs.
This type of sensor is the same as you'd find in phones, tablets, and laptops where they're used to detect ambient light temperature and adjust the colour temperature of the display accordingly.
The BH1745 Luminance and Colour Sensor Breakout has an I2C interface and is 3.3V or 5V compatible. Like our other Pimoroni breakouts, we've designed it so that you can solder a piece of right-angle header onto it and then pop it straight onto the bottom left 5 pins on your Raspberry Pi's GPIO header (pins 1, 3, 5, 6, 9).
It's also compatible with our fancy new Breakout Garden, where using breakouts is as easy just popping it into one of the six slots and starting to grow your project, create, and code.
Features
- BH1745 Luminance and Colour Sensor Breakout
- Two white illumination LEDs
- Red, green, blue, and luminance measurements
- 0.005 to 40,000 lx detection range
- 50/60Hz light noise rejection
- IR cut filter
- 16 bit data output
- 3.3V or 5V compatible
- I2C interface, with address select via ADDR cuttable trace (0x38 or 0x39)
- Reverse polarity protection
- Raspberry Pi-compatible pinout (pins 1, 3, 5, 7, 9)
- Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3B+, 3, 2, B+, A+, Zero, and Zero W
- Python library
- Datasheet
Kit includes
- BH1745 Luminance and Colour Sensor Breakout
- 1x5 male header
- 1x5 female right angle header
Software
We've put together a Python library that you can use to read data from your BH1745 Luminance and Colour Sensor Breakout, and an easy one-line installer to install everything.
Our software does not support Raspbian Wheezy.
Notes
- The trace between the solder pads (marked ADDR) can be cut (carefully with a craft knife) to change the I2C address from the default of 0x38 to 0x39, meaning that you can use up to two sensors on the same Raspberry Pi or Arduino. If cut, the pads can be bridged again by soldering to reset the address to 0x38.
- Dimensions:
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- breakout
- A breakout board carries a small or fine-pitched component and brings its connections out to standard, breadboard- and header-friendly pins. Describing a part as a breakout means it can be wired into a project without soldering directly to the component's tiny contacts.
- GPIO
- General-purpose input/output pins are microcontroller pins you can set in software to read signals, switch devices on and off, or connect to peripherals. The number of GPIO pins matters because it limits how many buttons, LEDs, sensors, and other parts you can wire directly to the board.
- I2C
- I2C is a two-wire communication bus used by many sensors and small modules. It matters because several I2C devices can share the same two wires, but each device needs a compatible address and your controller must support I2C.
- I2C address
- An I2C address is the number a device uses so a microcontroller can tell it apart from other devices on the same I2C bus. It matters because two devices with the same fixed address may conflict if used together.
- reverse polarity protection
- A circuit feature that helps protect the board if power is connected the wrong way around. It matters because it can reduce the chance of damaging the breakout during wiring mistakes, especially in classroom or prototyping use.
- RGB
- Short for red, green and blue, the three primary colours of light that are mixed in varying amounts to make a wide range of colours. In electronics RGB can refer to an LED or pixel that blends these three colours, or to a colour signal or interface that carries separate red, green and blue channels.
Find this product in
Sensors & Input
Related Tutorials
Free guides on learn.littlebird.com.au
