Long-Range Colour Sensor OV3660 (In Development)

The LEGO colour sensor must be within 1-2 cm of an object to read reliably, and colours wash out at a distance; photo-diode colour sensors are easily fooled by ambient light. On competition fields the coloured blocks and markers are often 10-30 cm ahead of the robot, so the robot has to drive up before it knows the colour.

The Long-Range Colour Sensor OV3660 uses a 3-megapixel image sensor and reads only a small window in the centre of the frame (20×20 or 40×40 pixels): a distant colour block fills that window with one uniform colour, so the decision is fast and stable without analysing a whole image like a camera.

• Colour at a distance: centre-window colour detection stays accurate far away; window size is adjustable.
• 120 fps update: hardware crop and scale inside the image sensor; the controller only moves the small window, so updates are faster than ordinary colour sensors.
• 🔇 Clean analog power: the sensor's three supply rails are regulated and filtered separately, so noise does not make colour thresholds jump.
• Colour plus uniformity: besides the colour, it reports how uniform the brightness in the window is, which tells you whether you are actually on the block.
• Hub powered: no battery needed.

Platform	How
LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3	Emulates an official sensor; read it with the standard blocks
LEGO SPIKE Prime / Robot Inventor	Emulates the official colour sensor; Pybricks and official-app libraries
LEGO SPIKE Essential	Not supported
Arduino / ESP32 / Raspberry Pi	MBC universal I2C protocol

Item	Status
Circuit architecture, power, pin-out	✅ Final (2026-07)
Capture and colour firmware	✅ Being validated on a dev board
Custom board	⏳ Not fabricated yet
EV3 / SPIKE / I2C communication	⏳ After the board is made
Launch date, price	TBD

Tip

Need colour vision now? The SharpShot Vision camera sensor lets you set the colour to track on its own screen and gives blob position and area, plus colour at points and line following.