Ambient light color Temperature and intensity - Real Time

Projects General Guidance
1

I am trying to get started building a real time Ambient Light Color Temperature and Intensity monitor.
I know I can use a Photoresistor for the light intensity but what can I use to measure Light Color Temperature and how would I convert it to the Kelvin scale?

Any Ideas?

2

Use a light color sensor to measure the intensity of red/green/blue light, as well as absolute intensity.

I've used the TCS3472x series, there's also a TSL-something that would work for the task. There are a number of ones with libraries supplied. Just don't get one of the crappy ones with the frequency output, you can get nice I2C ones, or at least the one that does analog RGB output. You can get em pre-mounted on breakout boards (and you should, unless you enjoy soldering 0.65mm pitch DFN-6 packages, which all the good color sensors seem to come in...)

Once you get red/green/blue/clear levels, then you need to sort out how to translate the ratios into color temperature - that's all math, though, nothing specific to Arduino.

3

I was just looking at the AdaFruit TCS34725 but I am not sure the IR Filter will mess the reading up. I would need to read all spectrum of light not just visible and they are out of stock anyhow. Any suggestions on a good source and part number?

thanks!