In this video, I show that LEDs can work in reverse. They’re designed to emit light, but they can detect it too, like a mini solar cell.. So I decided to see if one could be used as a single pixel camera. To my surprise, the signals from an RGB LED were distinguishable enough to be used as a crude color sensor! Using a “raster scan” method, I was able to form colored images one pixel at a time, using my 3d printer as the scanner.
There’s another, more interesting way to form images with a single pixel camera, and it doesn’t require any moving parts at all! @okooptics demonstrated and explained this method well on his channel.