8 ms·
High speed M&M sorting machine
- seanemmer 12y agobut can it sort Skittles?
- Zikes 12y agoI'd like to see a variant of this capable of separating a mixture of M&Ms and Skittles.
- nbsymr 12y agoSo it puts all M&Ms in one pot and Skittles in the other? Or so that it can deal with all the different colours between the two? The first would be tricky!
- icebraining 12y agoWeight them with enough accuracy; <1g → M&M, >1g → Skittle. http://www.scientificameriken.com/candy4.asp http://www.scientificameriken.com/candy4.asp
- tbrake 12y agoI have never been in a mixed skittles/M&M scenario but would weight be easier than color in that instance? http://www.scientificameriken.com/candy4.asp http://www.scientificameriken.com/candy4.asp
- forrest_t 12y agoif only this existed back in Van Halen's heyday http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen#Contract_riders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen#Contract_riders
- agmcleod 12y agoCame in here to see if someone would mention it. Glad to see I was not let down ;)
- ipsin 12y agoI first heard the story as an urban-legend-style tale about the crazy foibles of famous people, but I love that it was driven by practical considerations.
- acomjean 12y agoSmoking gun is more ad riddled than I remember it, but they post a fair number of concert riders. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage
- batguano 12y ago"This American Life" did a great segment explaining (as does your wikipedia link) why the M&M's were a legit safety concern--and not just a prima-donna move by self-indulgent rock stars: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/386/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/386/t...
- MichaelApproved 12y agoIIRC, the reason they have strange requests is so they know the crew actually went through the list and fulfilled all requests. Asking for only red M&M sounds silly but if you see a bowl of red M&Ms in your trailer, you know the crew was more likely to be diligent with the other requests. Those other requests being sound equipment and safty measures. The point wasn't to have red M&Ms, though they taste good, it was a test to see how well the crew followed instructions.
- 51Cards 12y agoVery cool. I just picked up a couple Mindstorms kits and have been debating my first build challenge. This looks perfect (though it won't be as quick I'm sure) Edit: Just playing with the math regarding the speed of this machine considering the M&Ms are in free fall. Nicely done!
- legumepacket 12y ago"I just picked up a couple Mindstorms kits" "I just bought a couple of Mindstorm kits"
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- 51Cards 12y agoThank you, however: - adding "bought" makes an assumption on their source - "Mindstorms", plural, is the name of the kit
- Igglyboo 12y agoJust to add on to this for any non-native speakers. "picked up" in this context could be replaced with "acquired" without changing the meaning.
- dale386 12y agoIs the code posted anywhere?
- frisco 12y agoIt's a little M&M flow sorter! They even kind of look like cells. If you really want your mind to be blown, go read about flow cytometers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_cytometry#Fluorescence-activated_cell_sorting_.28FACS.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_cytometry#Fluorescence-act... Fluorescence-activated cell sorting uses the same idea as in the M&M sorter linked here, except with lasers instead of an iPhone camera and uses an electron gun to deposit charge onto a droplet containing exactly one cell as it falls through a magnetic field to sort it into bins. Madness!
- Animats 12y agoThat's low-speed sorting. This is high-speed sorting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DogZJmThRSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DogZJmThRSE That's a high-speed computer-vision optical pea sorter. Yes, each and every pea in that huge flow of peas is examined by a computer vision system. Tiny high-speed air jets are kicking out the rejects during the brief period the peas are in free flight. Here's a blueberry sorting machine, throwing out anything that doesn't look like a round blue blueberry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CyWvnh4YtE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CyWvnh4YtE That machine could sort M&Ms by color, easily. The food industry has lots of machines like that. The technology was first applied to large fruit like tomatoes. It's now so cheap it's applied to rice and grains.
- stinos 12y agoHa, came here to post this as well. High speed is relative :] I've done similar hardware things in the past and my initial ideas when I read the orignal article were: - what kind of sensor are they using that they need 2 seconds to scan? - in comparision with 2 seconds, a phone camera with results sent over bluetooth is indeed fast. Not my branch at all, but I wonder what latencies he's looking at? Should surely be tens if not hundreds of mSec?
- whyaduck 12y agoI develop sort/test software for a semiconductor manufacturer. The M&M sorter looks pretty fast to me :)
- wahsd 12y agoI don't get a sense how the first machine actually does the physical separation, but the second one seems to be an air jet or something? That second machine seems to have quite a lot of false positives, but I guess better waste some blueberries than have to deal with customers finding beetles in their berries.
- Animats 12y agoThe pea-sorting machine, like all the small-item sorters, uses a row of small air jets controlled by the computers. Here's a more advertising-like video with slow-motion imagery of the action at the air jet station. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbSxlZ6J1h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbSxlZ6J1h4 It's amazing that individual sorting of rice grains is affordable, but it is. Larger fruit and vegetable items used to be graded by people, but there are machines for that, too. Machinery like this helps to make "Amazon Fresh" possible. With computers inspecting produce, there's less need for people to shop for it themselves. Webvan tried to do this 15 years ago and had quality complaints. That problem has been solved.
- ChuckMcM 12y agooh the glue, the glue! M&M sorters are great projects though. I am impressed that the bluetooth link has the frequency response to actually get to the blue ones before they have fallen what appears to be a few inches.
- mrestko 12y agoThis reminds me of a FACS machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_cytometry#Fluorescence-activated_cell_sorting_.28FACS.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_cytometry#Fluorescence-act...)
- razzberryman 12y agoVery nice. If you want to reduce the shadows for sorting browns, try backlighting the chute so that shadows can't appear on it. Basically, turn the chute into a photography light box.
- nbsymr 12y agoThanks for the idea. I had thought about lighting the chute - But I hadn't though about backlighting it. That sounds like it could work :)
- comrh 12y agoThe sound is very rhythmic. One part of a sort machine band.
- jorjordandan 12y agoSomebody buy this guy a 3d printer.
- moron4hire 12y agoHobby 3D printers are basically only good enough to print their own replacement parts before they break again.
- jshprentz 12y agoHere is a Skittles sorter built from 3D printed parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSEHDBSynVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSEHDBSynVo It looks like a hobby 3D printer was more than good enough.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]