Hah, no. It has three LEDs in parallel, not a camera.
So, it effectively acts like a single pixel, and can only sense a single pixel worth of information. It’ll have to talk in blink patterns instead of QR codes. And since the screen can be just about anything, it’ll probably be pretty slow in order to make it compatible with a wide range of devices. DEL modified the circuit a bit to make it work, and figured out a way to somewhat amplify and center the signal to improve sensitivity, but it’ll still be a pretty slow one-directional data transfer.
It’ll probably be useful for people who build and sell lights, since it could eliminate some of the need for reflashing. For example, it might be possible to configure voltage calibration from a phone. But for most people it seems like more of a gimmicky novelty. And it could easily go too far and make the thing brickable, so it would be a bad idea to put it in receive mode at a disco party.
(I’m planning to give it at least some minimal data verification algorithms, so accidental configuration should be unlikely, but it’s not exactly going to crypto-sign and checksum each transaction)
So I’ve been wondering (and I can’t seem to find it in the thread using search) but how is the internal tube for the switch’s signal insulated from the main tube?