Sorting of white clothes from a mixed pile is a tiring and monotonous step that people follow before washing especially in a commercial setup. The Laundry Sorter system is built with an aim of automating this task. A user drops a cloth into the sorter which will fall on a plate attached to a servo motor. The sorter will then determine the colour of the cloth and slide it in different directions so that the dress can fall into two separate baskets. If the cloth is coloured, then the servo motor will rotate anti clockwise and drops it to the coloured cloth basket. If the cloth is of white colour, then the servo motor rotates in clockwise direction and drops it in the white colour cloth bin.

Step 1: Components Required:

Arduino UNO Board x 1
USB cable x 1
Servo Motor x 1
TCS 230/3200 Colour Sensor x 1
Breadboard x 1
Connecting Wires (Male to Male) x 20
Connecting Wires (Male to Female) 20

Step 2: Colour Sensor Interfacing With Arduino UNO

Colour Sensor

The TCS230 senses colour light with the help of an 8 x 8 array of photodiodes.

Then using a Current-to-Frequency Converter the readings from the photodiodes are converted into a square wave with a frequency directly proportional to the light intensity. Finally, using the Arduino Board we can read the square wave output and get the results for the colour.

If we take a closer look at the sensor we can see how it detects various colours. The photodiodes have three different colour filters. Sixteen of them have red filters, another 16 have green filters, another 16 have blue filters and the other 16 photodiodes are clear with no filters.
Each 16 photodiodes are connected in parallel, so using the two control pins S2 and S3 we can select which of them will be read. So, for example, if we want to detect red colour, we can just use the 16 red filtered photodiodes by setting the two pins to low logic level as per the table.

The sensor has two more control pins, S0 and S1 which are used for scaling the output frequency. The frequency can be scaled to three different pre-set values of 100 %, 20 % or 2%. This frequency-scaling function allows the output of the sensor to be optimized for various frequency counters or microcontrollers.

Circuit Connections:

All the Connections will be done using Male to Female Wire.
1. Connect S0 pin of Colour Sensor to Digital Pin 2 of Arduino UNO
2. Connect S1 pin of Colour Sensor to Digital Pin 3 of Arduino UNO
3. Connect S2 pin of Colour Sensor to Digital Pin 4 of Arduino UNO
4. Connect S3 pin of Colour Sensor to Digital Pin 5 of Arduino UNO
5. Connect OUT pin of Colour Sensor to Digital Pin 6 of Arduino UNO
6. Connect VCC pin of Colour Sensor to 5v of Arduino UNO using breadboard
7. Connect GND pin of Colour Sensor to GND of Arduino UNO using breadboard

Step 3: Servo Motor Interfacing With Arduino UNO:

Servo Motor:

A servo motor is a rotary actuator that allows for precise control of angular position. It consists of a motor coupled to a sensor for position feedback. By varying the pulse width of the output voltage to a servo, you can move a servo to a specific position.

Circuit Connections:

Servo motor has three Terminals

The Orange wire of the Servo Motor is the signal wire which will be connected to Digital PWM Pin 11 on the Arduino UNO.
The Brown wire of the Servo Motor is the GND Wire which will be connected to the breadboard where GND of the Arduino UNO is connected.
The Red wire of the Servo Motor is the VCC wire and it will be connected to the breadboard where 5V pin of the Arduino UNO is connected.
The connections of the Servo Motor will be done using Male to Male connecting wire.