DIY ESP32-CAM Based Color Reader for Color Blind With Real Time Color Recognition With OLED Display and LED Indicator

Hello readers thanks for your interest in my project, In this Instructables I will show you how I made this color detector for the color blind people.

Did you know that color blind people can't see the red, green, blue and yellow colors? Or sometimes a combination of these colors?

Yeah they don't! We as humans can see colors that fall within the rainbow spectrum but sadly few are not able to see the colors like a normal person and they should not feel left out.

I wanted to help these people in some way, and hence after a lot of trial and errors i came up with this idea.

Now you may wonder, Above you are saying that color blind can't see those abovesaid colors, How is your device going to help?

Well the colorblind people can see the rgb colors in white and black and i made use of this to give them a second chance to know the colors.

Let me give an instance, Let's say the colorblind person received many gifts on his/her birthday, But sadly they are not able to see the actual colors, In this case they can simply use my device.

All they have to do is keep the object infront of this device and in a few seconds it will read the color and display the name of the color on the OLED display also.

Again question would arise who just read that the color is displayed on led and how will a colorblind person know that? The indicator was just added with the intention to double check if the color read by the camera is right or wrong.

The working logic behind this device is very simple, the ESP32-CAM module is programmed to read the dominant color of the object that comes infront of it.

This color is then detected using the codes and the same is displayed on the OLED and led indicator.

Powered by USB and it can fit any pocket!

Now with this all being said im sure that you are also thinking to build one! Yes by this way you can build and give it to someone that really helps them, Make sure to check the video given in the last steps.

These are the supplies that you need to make this color detector device

ESP32CAM Module from here

Small Breadboard

WS2812B Single LED

Jumper Cables

FTDI module

OLED module

Sheet of board

Soldering Iron and Lead

3D Printer that i use

PLA Filament

Sheet of Paper

Glue

Scissors

USB Cable

Arduino IDE

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To make the frame for this project, I will use 3d printed parts. You can also use cardboard and other materials to make the frame for this project.

Tinkercad was used to design the frame, I took the measuremens of standard components and made this design.

You are free to modify my stl, If you think to add new features i appreciate your effort and you can seek my help also.

I have given the STL file below that was used in this project. You can download and simply use that file.

I recommend to use the standard parts inside this frame because other designs may not fit very well for my design considerations.

After you have the design, you can simply export it to slicing software. In my case, i will be using cura slicer.

You can use the exact same settings that i used at the time of slicing, There is no need of any rafts or supports at the time of printing.

There are only 2 parts that is need to be printed, and the first one is the mainframe itself, whereas the second one is the lid or the top cover that will case all the electronics and make it invisible to the outside.

The printing time is less for the lid part but it may take some time to print the main frame overall print time will not exceed an hour if you have much faster print the time will be even more lesser.

We need to build 2 circuits to make this project, The first is the programming circuit where you will be connecting the ftdi module to camera module just for the programming.

Post this circuit once you have the code inside the camera module you can simply make the second circuit and this circuit will be the working circuit and you can try to shrink the circuit as much as you can.

Now i will tell you the connections that you need to follow to make the first circuit.

The FTDI pins Rx is connected to Tx of the camera module, The Tx from FTDI to Rx of the esp32 cam.

The 5v and gnd pins are connected to respective pin on the camera module, The important thing here is you have to connect jumper cables between gnd and gpio0, When you upload the code to board press on reset button on module.

Select Ai thinker cam module as the board and click on the proper port and if any libarary is missing directly you can download the library from git.

Now once you have the code on the esp32cam board, disconnect the jumper cables that was between Gpio0 and gnd.

Build the second and final circuit using the second circuit diagram, Here we are connecting the OLED module and the LED strip to the esp32cam.

I will be powering the board via the USB supply, Make sure to test the circuit first

I will be using the breadboard to test the working of my circuit, You can follow your setup to do this in my case i found this very useful.

After the testing is complete, You can remove the breadboard and connect the components with jumper cables.

Here is a tip instead of having 3 seperate gnd connections you can merge all 3 wires into 1 and connect to the module.

These will help the conections to look cleaner and it will also fit in the case with ease and save lots of space.

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The printed part will be usually clean and does not need any post processing, If your filament contains moisture then you can expect lots of tiny webs and this needs to be cleaned before you place the electronics inside.

Start by placing the camera module first and then you can place the led strip, At first you simply place the components and once you are sure about the placement you can secure it with the glue.

Now Place the FTDI board in the base and with double sided adhesive glue it to the base, Connect the USB cable here and connect to power supply.

Make sure the OLED and LED are working fine, Because now you are casing the electronics inside this 3d printed frame.

In the end close the lid, use superglue to secure the edges.

Now the led emits color directly by combining the RGB tiny leds from inside, So to have a clean diffused light i will simply cover the LED top part using the square paper.

Use paper glue to stick this sheet to the frame and let it dry before you put this project to test.

At this point you are done with the building part, Now the most awaited part of this project is the testing and putting it to real time use and we will see it how.

Using this is very easy job and who built this will have a true sense of joy seeing their creation put to use.

I have made it simple by enabling the power source via the USB power, Just connect the USB cable and you are good to go.

Once you power this device, it will start to search for the objects color that you bring infront of the camera.

There is one important thing that you need to take care of here, when you are using this device make sure you are not exposing the camera directly to the light source by doing this you may get incorrect color readings.

For the testing i place this device under the light and kept the object infront of the camera and i was able to get pretty much correct color readings.

If you place multicolor objects you will get results of the most dominant color.

This was all about using this project, If you still have any questions i strongly recommend you to check out the building video and also the testing part.

Hope you will build this and post in the i made it section, Let us give the color blind people a second chance to resee the color, Thanks and have a great day.