EYE on NPI - ams OSRAM AS7343 Spectral Sensor

Adafruit Industries

This week's EYE ON NPI is making the rainbow connection - it's the ams OSRAM AS7343 Spectral Sensor (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/a/ams/as7343-spectral-sensor). This is a great update to the AS7341 11-channel sensor (https://www.digikey.com/short/p4vv8b5w) we released a STEMMA QT breakout (https://www.digikey.com/short/n8bv0j9w) for a few years ago. ams OSRAM's AS7343 is a 14-channel, highly versatile, multi-purpose spectral sensor that enables consumer, commercial, industrial, and laboratory applications. It is optimized for reflective, transmissive, and emissive measurements including color matching, fluid or reagent analysis, or general spectral reconstruction. The spectral response is defined by individual channels covering approximately 380 nm to 1,000 nm with 12+2 channels: 12 in the visible spectrum (VIS) to near-infrared (NIR) range, a clear channel, and a flicker channel. The AS7343 is an interesting bird - most light sensors only support RGB and maybe IR / Clear diodes. That means you can often get a fairly good 'human eye spectral response' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_sensitivity) of the color that is being detected. However, the sensors cannot determine whether they are seeing something that is truly 'orange wavelength' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_color) or if it's a mix of RGB that just looks orange. This doesn't matter too much for if you're trying to detect the color of a Skittle (https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/06/this-candy-sorting-machine-isnt-the-hero-the-world-wants-but-its-the-hero-the-world-needs/) but if you're trying to determine the spectral radiation of a material (https://publiclab.org/notes/homechemist/08-24-2018/diy-high-resolution-spectrometer) - you really want to be able to detect the actual wavelengths. The AS7343 is a remarkably inexpensive sensor for being able to detect 14 channels: 12 wavelengths plus a clear and flicker output channel. That's also 4 more wavelengths than the AS7341! Great for scientific experimentation, LED color calibration, miniature optical spectrometers, etc. Interfacing is pretty simple: you just need I2C and a 1.8V power supply. It even looks like it's pin-compatible with the AS7341 so you could probably use our open source breakout board files (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-AS7341-PCB) and our Arduino/C (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_AS7341) or Python (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_AS7341) libraries to jump-start your design. Best of all, the ams OSRAM AS7343 Spectral Sensor (https://www.digikey.com/short/qw708dhm) is available and in stock at Digi-Key right now for immediate shipment. Order today and you can be sensing the rainbow by tomorrow afternoon. See ams YouTube videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dylVmxE9Tzg&list=PLhZuLuU8MQ21LfAdzdyeVAQyfijClgZR7&index=5