Electronic – Distance sensor IR

Check the wires are wired correctly from the JST on the sensor to your project. Check the order on that particular model looking at the connector with the sensor facing away from you the output pin is the left one, middle is ground and right is VCC. Check these where you connect them to your project. As having them connected the wrong way round could damage them and will give you this reading.

Consider using a simple light level sensor and providing separate red, green, and blue illumination. Flash them separately and record the light levels to determine the color. This would reduce your dependency on the outside light source, and the "flash" could be a tiny fraction of a second long.

This would be like using a red light to illuminate a barcode to give better contrast than scanning without the red light.