Adafruit APDS9960 Proximity, Light, RGB, and Gesture Sensor

This breakout is packed with sensors! Add basic gesture sensing, RGB color sensing, proximity sensing, or ambient light sensing to your project with the Adafruit APDS9960 Proximity, Light, RGB, and Gesture Sensor.

When connected to a microcontroller (using our library code), it can detect simple gestures such as left to right, right to left, up to down, and down to up. It also measures the intensity of red, blue, green, and clear light or detects how close an object is to the sensor.

Utilizing an I2C interface, this sensor is simple to wire up. The APDS9960 from Avago Technologies includes an integrated IR LED and driver along with four directional photodiodes to sense reflected IR energy. Proximity detection measures distance up to a few centimeters with 8-bit resolution. Configurable interrupts are available for breaking proximity or color thresholds.

The sensor is mounted on a PCB with a 3.3V regulator and level shifting for easy use with 3.3V or 5V microcontrollers. Recently updated to be STEMMA QT compatible, it now includes SparkFun qwiic compatible connectors for the I2C bus, enabling quick plug-and-play connections with QT cables—no soldering required.

A comprehensive guide and software library are available to help you start using it in an Arduino IDE with just a few lines of code.