Hi to all.
Am making one small sorter that will sort plastic pieces.
What kind of sensor can i use for such project ?
Plastic pieces have different colors but green, red and orange will prevail.
Important thing is that sensor must be set cca 40 cm from
this moving pieces, so i can not use TCS230.
A.
arnix:
Important thing is that sensor must be set cca 40 cm from
this moving pieces, so i can not use TCS230.
You might be able to use a colour sensor like that if you put a bit of tube around the sensor and used a high power white LED to illuminate the sample.
For example, with the sensor at the end of a 40mm length of 10mm diameter tube, the sensor would 'see' an area 20mm diameter at 40mm from the end of the tube.
Yours,
TonyWilk
Hmm, now that you mention this tube, i notice that there will be one major problem.
Let me describe a bit more...
The scanner will be mounted in some 45 x 10 cm (centimeters) box so i will need at least 5 scanners to correctly detect pieces. The scanned area is set cca 35 cm under scanner.
This number of sensors can be a big problem.
Is there some other way to scan such wide range ?
A.
arnix:
Let me describe a bit more...
Sorry, I think I'm having trouble imagining your setup...
Is it like some 45cm wide conveyor belt with bits of plastic randomly scattered on it ?
Can you give us some picture or scribbled diagram ?
Yours,
TonyWilk
Your description of requirements is sort of unclear, if you could give a more detailed description of what you're doing, that would help.
Having to have the sensor that far away makes it a lot harder.... I almost wonder if this is more of an application for a more powerful (computationally) device and some tool to interpret video (OpenCV maybe?) rather than trying to bully a light-color sensor into it.
Grey box is the place where i need to place some kind of sensor.
And this "box" should be cca 35 cm above moving track...
@DrAzzy
i have though about different approaches, that would include camera and some completely different setup, but this would be too expensive.
Btw. i can close the sides around and under box so that external light can be reduced significantly.
This could help recognizing colors...
A.
The Arduino-compatible Pixy camera can detect and report various colored blobs.
Google "white led spectrum" and look at the spectrum images. See if any of the LED spectrum images cover the colors and color intensities you want to examine. Pick LEDs that will do the job for your illumination.
Paul
arnix:
sorter hosted at ImgBB — ImgBBGrey box is the place where i need to place some kind of sensor.
And this "box" should be cca 35 cm above moving track...
...and that box is 45cm wide, you also said "i will need at least 5 scanners". Although I don;t think you've said how big the plastic pieces are - if you said 5 over 45cm, are they 10cm plastic bits?
I reckon you could do one of:
Yours,
TonyWilk
I have searched on yt for similar stuff and i found something that has quite the same role.
Pet bottle color sorter.
OK. my project will not sort pet bottles but the principle is totally the same.
You have some crashed plastic parts (60% of them are transparent and they are not under 10cm) and they are coming from moving track. They have different sizes and they can be overlapped ( exactly like in this video ).
RSP was first solution but i dont think that this can be used for STABLE 24/7 work so i would like to use arduino instead. Now, someone mentioned Pixy. I dont know how i missed that one, but it looks that this could solve bunch of problems regarding coding and tracking.
Now the tricky part. Sorting....
As far as i can see, there is one general approach in sorting plastic and thats air nozzle.
I dont know, if i follow this approach i need some big air compressor and few air nozzles to make this work, or ?
Other way is to create some robotic arm 
A.
arnix:
Now the tricky part. Sorting....
As far as i can see, there is one general approach in sorting plastic and thats air nozzle.
AFIK, you need quite a few air jets because the s/w has to pick a jet in the middle of the object (otherwise it flies off in any old direction).
If you are only selecting 2-3 different things, a drop-gate is possible. e.g. the part slides over 3 'trapdoors' into separate hoppers.
The other common one is some form of side-diverter; along the conveyor you have air-operated 'punching' cylinders which knock the part off the conveyor. Really needs parts to be linearly separated tho. I guess with light plastic, you could use air jets for this as well.
Yours,
TonyWilk
maybe this HaD post will yield some insight for you?