Introduction
The AMS AS726X series of spectral sensing engines are miniaturised broad band spectrometers, that are also available as modules for use with e.g. Arduino.
Breakout boards, modules, with the AMS AS726X sensor are available from from both Sparkfun and adafruit. The main difference is that the Sparkfun components come with their qwiic connectors that does not need soldering (unless you want to).
Cheaper alternative, alternative, from Amazon.
Adafruit
Adafruit only offers the visible sensor engine as an integrated module. The Adafruit component costs 20 USD.
Adafruit offers a nice blog on wiring including a small TFT-screen “Adafruit AS7262 6-Channel Visible Light / Color Sensor Breakout”
The Adafruit AMS AS7262 breakout board is available in Sweden from Elfa, priced at 237.50 SKE incl. VAT.
Sparkfun
Sparkfun offers the AMS AS726X sensor engines as barebone components:
At time of writing this (January 2020) they are approximately 9 USD each.
Sparkfun also offers modules with integrated the AMS AS726X sensor engines and light sources. Only two of the three sensors components are offered as single breakout boards:
These two modules are priced at approximately 26 USD each.
Sparkfun also offers a breakout board that combines all three AMS spectrometers to an 18 channel spectrometer (SparkFun Triad Spectroscopy Sensor - AS7265x), prized at approximately 65 USD.
Sparfun presentation with video on AS726X NIR/VIS Spectral Sensor Hookup Guide
I bought the Sparkfun modules from digi-key Sweden, they arrived within 48 hours at my doorstep (now shipment cost). I was rather impressed by that.
Pimoroni
There is, at least, one more producer, pimoroni.com, that offers the AMS AS7262 visible spectrometer, at a slightly lower price.
Mikroelektronika (Mikroe)
Mikroe offers the AS7261 RGB+NIR sensor as a breakout board, but not specifically for Arduino.
University of Novi Sad have demo project for creating a AS7261 XYZ Sensor - Colorimeter. The project include wiring to an Arduino board, include a 3D-printed shell, and a demo video on youtube and code written in Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW). The STL model is under the repo subfolder stl and the LabVIEW file under the directory code/AS7261-VI.
