High Speed DIY M&M Sorting Machine Uses iPhone Brain 85
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 don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I bet you did not even use an iPhone, pleb.
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I bet you did not even use an iPhone, pleb.
And if you read TFA (which I bet you didn't) on the top of the list of improvements is to ditch the iPhone.
Try to get rid of the whole iPhone / Bluetooth setup. I think to do this you could try using a Raspberry Pi with a high speed (60/120FPS) capable camera directly attached. The Pi probably has the processing power to do the image processing.
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They could use a PLC. Like they did 20+ years ago...
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They could use a PLC. Like they did 20+ years ago...
These days you could run an application as simple as this directly in the camera from someone like Cognex [cognex.com]. (of course such a camera is capable of doing way more processing)
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BTW, you can get a cheap PLC for approx $50
Camera included ? And you don't need additional tools for programming ?
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An Arduino's probably much more accessible and versatile, particularly for the price...
That said, using a camera to do simple color detection is overkill, it's just that mobile cameras are so ubiquitous and there's A LOT of off-the-shelf software for hacking upon them.
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I must be getting old. I did this in college 20+ years ago in my process automation course.
When I was in grade school 30+ years ago, we sorted coins with toilet paper tubes and white glue. No fancy electronics was needed. As for sorting M&M's by color, I only need my index finger for that.
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2. Use index finger to sort M&M's by color (including brown ones).
3. ???
4. Profit!
Re: I don't get it (Score:3)
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You don't get that some people's hobby is to learn about electronics and build things for their own benefit?
That's quite sad.
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It isn't that it's not a worthwhile thing to do. It's that (A) the iPhone solution is meh, and (B) this whole subject is meh and not worthy of Slashdot. It has been done so often as to not be newsworthy.
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While I don't get the Whoosh, I do agree that this is not slashdot worthy. The iPhone part however could be nothing more than wanting to dip into programming on an iPhone.
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Moreover, this task is actually so simple that if i did it for a hobby i thought first: should not take mora that 3 ttl chips to implement it, but then i thought: woulf be interesting to get the transistor count below 10 per color channel if built directly using transistors, resistors and diodes.
But only if i get the headline "guy replaces iphone, bluetooth module and arduino by 20 transistors".
Practical (Score:5, Funny)
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 Potential Application For Rock Bands (Score:5, Informative)
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 [businessofsoftware.org]. 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."
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The article was buried in the middle of countless technical specifications.
Last year I was working on a Stacker/Reclaimer (Sort of but not like this [wikipedia.org]) and was reading through the 500+ page customer specification. Buried in the middle of the electrical section of the spec was a paragraph that said something along the lines of:
An ashtray shall be welded to the side of the operators control room.
When I saw that I thought it was probably something similar to the M&M clause.
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No specification to orientation? The spec writers weren't paying attention.
Re:One Potential Application For Rock Bands (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate to be a spoil sport but I have a copy of their rider.
While their stated intention is true (well at least that they stated it) but the details are quite wrong. The M&M caveat was included in the Backstage Rider which is generally handled by hospitality staff (for such a large production at least). It is not "buried in countless technical specifications" as this article suggests. The terms are also not quite so stated: "M&M's (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES)." This being in a rider whose overriding terms stating that the contract "...may be voided by (Van Halen) unless fully executed..." the surrounding forfeiture of the show may occur but not with full payment (only possible forfeit of paid deposits, expenditures).
Mr. Roth may have had good intentions when he had that written into their rider BUT his prima donna nature was showing in his lack of understanding of how the show was actually being executed. Specifically those responsible for procuring and maintaining backstage hospitality have absolutely *nothing to do with anything technical what-so-ever and so correlating a brown M&M to an issue with the production was misguided more likely incidental.
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Your last point being the more important. A couple things:
1) Van Halen (by the time they had this rider at least) weren't playing smaller/mid-sized venues. Their production (not to mention the vast majority of this hospitality rider) wouldn't fit in one.
2) If they got the bowl of M&M's at all then the high person on the totem pole did their job. They ripped out the pages related to hospitality and handed them to the hospitality staff most likely without reading because at that point it's not their job
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I can't believe that someone would just go through the riders and hand them out to whomever, and not check, especially if a condition wasn't met, the whole contract would be forfeited. If they had a rider stating that the trash cans in the green room had to be changed every 60 minutes, or the contract would be forfeited, would you trust some 16 year old to perform that and not check up on them? "Oh, sorry, Board of Directors, it wasn't my fault the show got cancelled, and couldn't recoup our losses, but
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Very handy if I am going to have Van Halen over for a gig!
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If I were young again! (Score:2)
Does It Filter Out the Defective Ones? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, this can sort by colors. But, is it capable of filtering out the Ws?
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Unlikely, as the "&" gives you the proper reading orientation of each candy.
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It's been a while since I had any, but I don't recall them putting the full name on each piece, so no & for reference.
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My bag contained all 3's. Wonder if it's a sign. [memory-alpha.org]
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Mine was full of 'E's.
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If they've already been alphabetized, it's easy.
A strange word choice... (Score:1)
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.
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It's just odd word choices all around. The headline suggests that this is important because it uses an iPhone as its brains (as if a high-speed M&M sorting machine isn't cool by itself), then the body goes on to says that the sorter's creator's blog uses an iPhone as its brains (wait, I thought it was the sorter itself that did that?), and then it strongly implies that other M&M sorting machines can't detect different colors, which makes one wonder how those machines ever managed to sort any M&M
wait, I want them! (Score:3)
with all the brown ones removed.
The brown ones are naked! [youtube.com]
Because the brown ones taste different! (Score:2)
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.
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The brown ones remind Van Halen of a shoddy set builder.
Perler Bead Sorting? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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This reminds me of a horror story from the 1940s-1950s era, before tranquilizers, before antipsychotics, when the very best treatment available wasn't much good and people who were, as they said then, crazy, were institutionalized.
There was this new orderly assigned to the day treatment room where, each day, the patients in need of some social interaction were brought in and sat on benches, each with a half dozen bowls, and spent the day picking colored beads out of a huge vat at the middle of the table, so
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The kit includes a color sensor... the rest is up to the imagination of the student building it: http://youtu.be/d4k9bWbtJEk [youtu.be]
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This is overall a good exercise.
For example, finding out if it is easier to just pull one color and have everything drop in an assorted bin versus sorting everything out by known colors and having a reject bin for something that the machine can't figure out. After that, maybe have the machine do another sort operation, so if it sorts correctly 99% of the time, a few sorts later will reduce the occurrence of the wrong color to an acceptably small margin.
This is the stuff that engineering is made of, and wou
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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 only thing you really need to know is - do you think they actually make them in mixed colors? Nah... they make a batch of a gazillion red beads, then blue beads, then green beads, then yellow beads... the tub is just their mix to maximize sales, they know that you'll end up with leftovers and will buy more expensive pure color packs to round it out. It's like how there's a silent conspiracy between hot dog sausages and hot dog bun makers, they avoid matching numbers so you'll always go out shopping more
Racism (Score:2, Funny)
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!
Looks like half a job (Score:2)
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?
Brain? (Score:2)
[......] 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.
too slow (Score:2)
The BROWN ones removed? (Score:2)
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)
Retarded iPhone clickbait (Score:2)
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.
Fastest in the world? (Score:2)
Anyone knows which is the fastest M&M/Skittles/etc sorting machine in the world?
M&Ws are OK? (Score:2)
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.