One thing that I’ve learned about ams is that the company is all about sensors. If you need to sense something, whether it’s consumer, industrial health care, automotive, or something else, there’s a good chance ams has an answer for you.

The company’s latest offering is a miniature spectral sensor chip that brings laboratory-grade multi-channel color analysis and measurement capability to portable and mobile devices. The AS7341 is suited for applications that require color analysis, automatic white balancing and color matching, including mobile phones and accessories.

The AS7341’s combination of multi-channel measurement capability, flicker detection, high sensitivity, and small size produces precise spectral measurements in a wide range of lighting conditions. The device’s technology can accurately reproduce colors and minimize distortion of ambient light sources, resulting in sharper, clearer and more true-to-color photographs. The AS7341 also will enable consumers to use their mobile devices to match the colors of objects such as fabrics through using color references like the Pantone Color System.

The AS7341, which is basically a complete spectral sensing system, is housed in a 3.1- by 2.0- by 1.0-mm LGA package with aperture. It’s an 11-channel device that provides accurate and precise characterizations of the spectral content of a directly measured light source, or of a reflective surface. Eight of the channels cover eight equally-spaced portions of the visible light spectrum. The device also features a near infrared channel, a clear channel, and a channel dedicated to the detection of typical ambient light flicker at a 50-Hz frequency, up to 1kHz.

The AS7341 is available for sampling, with volume production starting shortly. In lots of 10,000, it sells for $2.00 each. An evaluation board is also available.