So here it is! And it works pretty well. With my setup, the long pin on the LED actually goes to power and the other three hook up to the PMW pins on the Arduino and then go to ground (I stuck some resistors in there before taking that pins to ground). Here's what it looks like:
IR Proximity Color Mixer w/ Tri-Color LED from Katrina Bekessy on Vimeo
And here's some pics of the box itself and its innards:
The Box
Just a little cardboard gift box I cut up to make little windows with vellum paper...I used Velcro to keep the top closed.
The Insides!
Bascially the breadboard is stacked on top of the battery pack which is on top of the Arduino. Not elegant at all...
Close up of LED
Just a closer peek at the LED setup with the resistors
I found this webpage with a great example of a tri-color LED used with the exact IR sensor we're using. It gave code for averaging/normalizing the sensor readings so that it won't flicker at all. I tried to use it, but I couldn't get it to work correctly. If anyone else wants to take a stab at it, check it out: http://letsmakerobots.com/node/672
Here's a plain text file of my Arduino code. In a different file, I used the serial commands to read the range of my sensor...The highest it went was about 620, but I wasn't really sure what that meant or how to make that meaningful through the way it would change the colors of the LED.
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