An apparatus for non-contact 3D hand gesture recognition with code-based light sensing is provided, including a plurality of light emitters, at least a light sensor, and a controller, wherein the controller is connected to and controls the plurality of light emitters to emit lights containing a respective identification code. The emitted lights can be reflected by an object, for example, a hand in our application. The at least a light sensor can identify the original light emitter of each respective reflected light through the identification code as well as computing the power level of each respective reflected light to determine the distance or location of the object. The hand gesture recognition can be deduced based on the power levels of respective reflected lights over a time period.