Thanks for the write-up! It's definitely important to mention the single-channel aspect of the sensors because I guess many people probably don't understand that.
The typical digital camera of today works the same way, just with 3 filters (R, G, B) kind of like a CRT pixel array in reverse[0].
This kind of mimics the human eye, which is sensitive to those three approximate color frequencies, but it's interesting to note other species besides humans (and, apparently, even some humans)[1] have vision that work with more "filters", or on different spectra (such as honeybees).
I've always found it kind of amazing that so many satellite imaging devices work on far greater spectral ranges with far more color filters, being able to discern far more information than we could with the naked eye (but in essentially the same way).
