12 ms·
A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine
- dankohn1 10y agoYour video is even more compelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceGlMV4sHnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceGlMV4sHnk
- jt2190 10y agoSo is the write up. My favorite part: > I started working on this machine in May ’16 and only finished it in December. It took a lot of time to design and build the machine, and I kept optimizing the parts and software after the first prototype was done. Including all prototypes and spare parts, I spent nearly €500 on this machine. Well worth it, considering everything I learned. https://willemm.nl/mm-skittles-sorting-machine/ https://willemm.nl/mm-skittles-sorting-machine/
- sneak 10y agoBonus points for the How It's Made-esque robo-industrial synthpop soundtrack. Reminds me of Mr. Wizard.
- prashnts 10y agoIt's brilliant! Well done for such a fantastic job designing the hopper and sort units. Plus the sound it makes while sorting is very pleasing. :)
- saghm 10y agoThis is really cool! I love how it lights up with the color of the candy it's sorting each time. I'm curious, have you tried putting both Skittles and M&M's in the same batch? I'd be interested to see if it determines that the purple Skittles and the brown M&M's are the same color, for example
- pimlottc 10y agoI've often idly thought about such a machine but this is much more beautiful than anything I would come up with, well done! I expect you'll be working on some statistical analysis on M&M color distribution now that you've got this part finished? Also, what's the difference between processing M&Ms and Skittles? Is it just the expected colors?
- dammitcoetzee 10y agoThis one is so fast! Nice Job!
- gjkood 10y agoFantastic job! Functional and beautiful at the same time. This is the kind of stuff that I love to read about in the mornings. I know this machine will not solve world hunger or bring about world peace but I know this would bring peace to my family. I apologize in advance but I am going to "borrow" your design and work with my kids to recreate this. Thank you for giving me something worthwhile and productive to do with my kids today. Atleast give them something inspiring and fun to look forward to.
- DoctorNick 10y agoThe perfect machine for when you're hosting Van Halen concerts: http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp
- stevefeinstein 10y agoI bet he could sell a budget version which only removes one color and sell it to every concert venue in the world.
- nycmattw 10y agoYou know what would be even better? Sorting the difference between M&Ms and Skittles :)
- crusso 10y agoTop marks for: 1. Showing a diversity of maker skills 2. Making something that actually works 3. Industrial design savvy 4. Entertaining video You've given me some motivation to get off of HN and work on one of my side projects for the rest of today.
- joezydeco 10y agoMechanically, it could have been done a bit simpler. This is an old project that has been around a long time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku9PKRoH1CE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku9PKRoH1CE
- Animats 10y agoHere's the commercial version.[1] This machine is sorting peas by color. Peas. Individual peas. Each individual pea is examined by cameras for size, color, and looking like a pea. Rejects are kicked into the reject hopper by an air jet. There are machines like this for most fruit. Typical throughput is a ton per hour. Most fruit and berries go through such machines today. That's why the fruit at the supermarket is so consistent. The process looks like magic. Color-mixed items go in, and single-color items come out, on a line going so fast that no human can see what's happening. It's amazing to see computer vision systems that fast. These machines work by putting the items on a conveyor belt, then dropping them on a much faster conveyor to spread them out. The fast conveyor goes past cameras, and at the end, launches the items into free flight for a few inches. While in flight, computer-controlled air jets knock out the rejects. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyGR6A5MWG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyGR6A5MWG0
- yesbabyyes 10y agoA friend of mine works for a consulting company specializing in optics. They invented a machine for one client which sorts wheat grains. The machine does spectrography of each individual grain, looking for moulds and fungi as well as heavy metals and more. It's a big rotating drum with small chambers for each grain. After doing the spectrography it shoots each grain off into either the selected or rejected direction. But it doesn't just reject every bad seed, instead it will optimize to keep within legally accepted limits.
- Drdrdrq 10y ago> But it doesn't just reject every bad seed, instead it will optimize to keep within legally accepted limits. This is just... I guess the emotion you feel when reading the last paragraph defines you as either technical guy (outrage / resignation, depending on your age and experience) or managerial guy (pure delight). I am guessing there is a switch that makes it sort properly, you know, for VIP?
- mmirate 10y agoSo if someone reacts with delight to that last paragraph, then they must lack technical knowledge? This seems inaccurate.
- matart 10y agoI didn't see it anywhere but are you willing to provide the 3D printing files?
- anjc 10y agoVery cool
- ktta 10y agoHere's the google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nt1C4j4CvjYJ:https://willemm.nl/mm-skittles-sorting-machine https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nt1C4j...
- Girlang 10y agoI thought it would separate a bowl of mixed M&M's and Skittles into M&M's and Skittles. Now _that_ would be useful
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- BlytheSchuma 10y agoAnyone here found a good pill sorting machine yet? All the ones I've found just seem to be vaporware.
- makwarth 10y agoVery cool - thanks for sharing!
- acheron 10y agoNow that green skittles have changed from "lime" to "apple" (my lawsuit regarding calling the flavor assortment "original" will be filed any day now), I need a machine like this to sort the green ones into the trash where they belong.
- barry_bonds 10y agoI would counter sue the shit outta you.
- aubreykilian 10y agoFlavour-based sorting? That's Version 2.0!
- dugluak 10y agoA lego sorting machine by shape and color would be so great
- ljk 10y agoby length: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlCSlJuD65A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlCSlJuD65A
- yesbabyyes 10y agoThis one is pretty impressive. :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Gs6-6p7qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Gs6-6p7qw
- dugluak 10y agoImpressive indeed ! I meant something that can be used at home. Like this M&M one
- patrickk 10y agoCoin sorting via weight or size would also be cool.
- aubreykilian 10y agoTechnically something with just different sized slots for the coins will work, and let gravity take care of the rest...
- obitoo 10y agoIndeed, I had these as a kid in the 80s. Coins are simply inserted in the top right and roll down before falling into a stack. Hours of fascination! https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/303781937345711623/ https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/303781937345711623/
- myfonj 10y agoIf you are into this kind of things, check out the pebble sorting artistic installation, Jller: https://vimeo.com/167126696 https://vimeo.com/167126696
- source99 10y agoThis is very cool. Well done and great write up. I don't think I could punch that much effort into something i wasn't going to commercialize.
- Reason077 10y agoMars, Inc. could save us all a lot of trouble by pre-sorting them at the factory!
- overcast 10y agoI remember doing the same thing in my Digital Electronics class in junior high. Except it was marbles, and we used BASIC.
- femto113 10y agoAm I the only one who read the headline and thought the machine was created to undo this monstrosity? http://imgur.com/kXfGutB http://imgur.com/kXfGutB
- asafira 10y agoThis is still an awesome project, but anyone else notice the machine makes a mistake? @ 1:10, in the background, you can see a purple skittle with green ones. (Technically it we don't see it make the mistake, but it probably had made a mistake...) Awesome job! Any stats on its error rate?
- jacquesm 10y agoWhat a nice job this person did. Coincidentially I'm working on something similar at the moment only with an order of complexity that is several magnitudes larger than the one on display here (39000 different shapes, several 10's of possible colors). But my contraption doesn't nearly look as nice as this one and definitely is not ready for any kind of production. I've been working on this for the last two years or so, it has just about every bit of my skills exercised (optical, mechanical, software, electronics) and every time there is a minor breakthrough I feel like throwing a party. Likely this piece of gear will never see the light of day in a commercial setting but it's the most fun I've had in a long long time. Disillusioned with web programming (security really spoiled the fun I used to have making web stuff) I figured I should do something that will make programming fun again and at least on that count I have succeeded. And on another note, I've gained a lot of respect for the visual cortex and it's preprocessing capabilities.
- taneq 10y agoJust remember that the moment you stick an Ethernet port or WiFi connection on it, security becomes just as important again.
- jacquesm 10y agoNetworking this particular device is useless so not planning on that, but yes, you're 100% right. Many producers of SCADA stuff and industrial controllers that worked just fine as long as they were isolated have found this out the hard way over the last couple of years. And I don't doubt that there are many still to come, insecure protocols, world-open ports whose only protection is that probably nobody knows what sits behind that port.
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- jvanloov 10y ago> [...] and every time there is a minor breakthrough I feel like throwing a party Yes! It's become a deliberate strategy of mine to set the subgoal complexity in my personal projects such that I get a small "yes! it works!"-rush about once per week or so. It's what keeps me going on larger projects, even if occasionally some part takes longer to do.
- elihu 10y agoI wish I had a link, but this reminds me of a machine that was at the OMSI Maker Faire in Portland last summer that measured the shininess of pennies and then directed them into a large board with columns (kind of like a giant connect-four board). The machine sorted the pennies to match a greyscale image given as input, so that the final output is a penny mural ready to be encased in epoxy.
- BillyParadise 10y agoYou could probably sell one of these into every concert theatre in the world. I'm wracking my brain and exercising my google-fu, but I can't seem to find/remember which famous musician wanted only one color of candy on their rider. Or was it everything except the green ones. Or something like that.
- sahinabi 10y agovan halen - apparently they don't want the green ones : http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp
- BillyParadise 10y agosilly me, forgot to check snopes. Thanks for the link!
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- astrodust 10y agoIt was just a test for the venue provider, which is a really clever way of sneaking in a kill-switch as well. > So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl ... well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error. They didn't read the contract. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.
- zaf 10y agoFor our high school end of year CDT (Craft, Design and Technology) project, my best friend built a snooker ball sorter. It was awesome.
- exabrial 10y agoThank goodness this problem is finally solved.