Method and apparatus for determining presence and operation of components in a printed circuit board

A method for determining presence, brightness and/or color of components in a printed circuit board, the method comprising:

• connecting an enclosure module to the printed circuit board, the enclosure module including a plurality of sensor boards, each sensor board including a microcontroller and a plurality of sensors and a plurality of fiber optic cables, and each sensor including a plurality of color receptors, wherein at least one of the plurality of sensors is connected to a respective component with one of the plurality of fiber optic cables;
• providing an oscillator in combination with the plurality of sensor boards to allow the microcontroller and the plurality of sensors to operate at a high speed to detect fast changes in light from the LED;
• dynamically sampling with the plurality of color receptors and the microcontroller a light output of each of the components in a DC mode or a pulsing mode;
• determining with the microcontroller a count for each color receptor of the plurality of color receptors for each sensor;
• converting with the microcontroller a wavelength of a color to a frequency for each component;
• determining with the microcontroller a brightness of the component from a relationship of the count relative to the frequency for each component;
• encoding with the microcontroller the frequency to a pulse width for each component;
• and
• measuring with the microcontroller at least one of a DC average of the pulse width to obtain the brightness of each component.