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High Speed DIY M&M Sorting Machine Uses iPhone Brain
HughPickens.com writes: Canoe Tech reports that M&M sorting machines are a popular project for people who like combining electronics, programming and machine building. Most of them send a single M&M down a chute to a simple color sensor where the color sensor will then take a second or two to figure out the color. A servo motor will then rotate a chute that will direct the M&M into the correct pot. But a new project created by the nameless blogger behind the reviewmylife blog that uses an iPhone 5s as its brain is capable of sensing different colors and so can "sort" the M&Ms as they fall past. The iPhone communicates the information via Bluetooth to an Arduino board, which in turn fires off the correct electro magnet controlled gate. One practical application of the sorter could be creating a bowl of M&Ms — with all the brown ones removed.
I must be getting old. I did this in college 20+ years ago in my process automation course. I assure you that color-sorting photocells don't take a second or two to figure out the color.
It was all done with standard industrial stuff on Allen Bradley PLCs.
People do this for a hobby? I don't get it.
One practical application of the sorter could be creating a bowl of M&Ms — with all the brown ones removed.
Wow, and to think that until I read this line, I was thinking to myself, "How useless."
"One practical application of the sorter could be creating a bowl of M&Ms - with all the brown ones removed."
According to Dan and Chip Heath, that's just what rock band Van Halen demand in one of the riders to their standard contract. The band's "M&M clause" was written into its contract to serve a very speciïc purpose. It was called Article 126, and it read as follows: "There will be no brown M&M's in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation." The article was buried in the middle of countless technical speciïcations. When David Lee Roth would arrive at a new venue, he'd immediately walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl. If he saw a brown M&M, he'd demand a line check of the entire production. "Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error," said Roth. "They didn't read the contract. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show."
If only this technology had existed to create bowls of green-only M&M's when I was a teenager, maybe I could've gotten laid!
Sure, this can sort by colors. But, is it capable of filtering out the Ws?
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One practical application of the sorter could be creating a bowl of M&Ms — with all the brown ones removed.
Really? When you can order M&Ms directly from the company in whatever colors you want? And if you live in the right place, you can go to M&M's World and get your own messages printed on them.
But yeah, that's just not practical.
with all the brown ones removed.
The brown ones are naked!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Are you trying to match the M&M's to the decor of a room or something? Do the brown ones clash with your shoes?
Ok, sure, I realize that the green ones have some special magic that improves your chances of making a home run in baseball. But I just don't see any way that the brown ones are otherwise special.
This makes me wonder if it would be possible to build a machine to sort perler beads. For those who don't know, these are small (under 5mm) plastic beads. You place them on a tray to make a design (Doctor Who, One-up mushroom from Super Mario Brothers, etc), then iron the beads so they melt and fuse. It's an inexpensive (relatively speaking) craft that can be really fun because of the wide range of design possibilities.
The major problem is that the cheapest way to get beads is by the tub. This is - as you might expect - a tub of various colors of beads... all mixed together. Want a black bead? You need to hunt through the tub to find one. Or you can do what we do and manually sort through thousands of beads and group similar colors together in another container.
The M&M sorting machine makes me wonder if you could make a machine that would sort the beads. You could even simplify it and only match a specific color bead. Incoming beads would either be sent to the "matching" tray or would go to the "doesn't match" pile. (The latter could be resorted to match another color, repeating until no beads were left.)
Anyone into robotics know how much a DIY project like this would cost and what level of expertise this would require? This might be an interesting project to tackle with my older son who is in his middle school Lego Robotics team.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
One practical application of the sorter could be creating a bowl of M&Ms — with all the brown ones
So you just want to single out the brown ones, huh?
I'm brown, you insensitive clod!
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
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One practical application of the sorter could be creating a bowl of M&Ms — with all the brown ones [removed]
So you just want to single out the brown ones, huh?
The brown ones live another day. The rest get eaten.
So, what if you wanted to filter out all the W's - can your machine do that? What about skittles, did you want to limit yourself to one type of sweet?
Why UNIX?
[......] uses an iPhone 5s as its brain is capable of sensing different colors [......]
Brain? Fuck off! This is news for nerds, not news for retards.
Neat. But way to slow for an industrial sorting process. Use a fast PLC with a vision system. Use bursts of high pressure air to blow the M&M into the appropriate chute as it goes by on a high speed conveyor. blah, blah, blah. Actually, isn't it faster just to buy the M&M's in bulk, pre-sorted, directly from M&M Mars ?
Ok firstly, I'm not cool with this blatant racism but far more important than racism is not targeting the fucking BLUE ones which are an abomination.
I once purchased a pack and every single one was blue, I was horrified, I washed the bastards in vinegar, then water, then let them dry on a towel*. Disgusting blue ones, ugh.
*(I'm not joking)
The internet is full of articles where people basically lose their shit when someone uses an Arduino instead of discrete logic and here's an article talking about using an iPhone as if its CPU has a special instruction for identifying colour instead of a simple $2 MCU.
What next? Lets build a Beowulf cluster of Macbook Airs just to turn off the living room lights via the internet! I'm sure the news for retards site will run with it.
A brown Enimen?
Yes, old iPhones belong in a landfill, not repurposed for other things. Geez, it's like the author's a damn *reader* or something - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makers_%28novel%29
Anyone knows which is the fastest M&M/Skittles/etc sorting machine in the world?
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Maria, for those who haven't heard the sad tale, was a dedicated employee at the M&M factory. She got up early every morning, packing the 5 children off to school, and bracing herself for the arduous bus ride to work. Despite her best efforts she was fired from her desperately needed job. Her only failure seems to have been that she dutifully discarded the 'W' candies that passed her inspection station.
...omphaloskepsis often...
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