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A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

willemm.nl

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Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#51

Post by d-crane »

Animats wrote: post #11

Here'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…

I just fell into a serious rabbit hole watching every video I could find on this. The speed and accuracy of these things is wild, thanks for sharing it.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#52

Post by biot »

nishs wrote: post #49
yesbabyyes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 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.…

I apologize in advance for my ignorance. Why are the different kinds of wheat grains mixed in the first place?

Because a field of wheat isn't uniform. The goal is to make all the wheat perfect, but nature foils that by spoiling some of the wheat with mold/fungi; other parts of the field may grow over soil that has a higher heavy metal content. As truckloads of this non-uniform wheat are processed, the machinery sorts the grains to get a mostly uniform end product, rejecting grains that fall outside of an acceptable threshold.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#53

Post by ue_ »

jacobolus wrote: post #43
Drdrdrq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

In the 1970s, the USA sold a large amount of wheat to the USSR in a famous deal. The contract stipulated that the wheat would contain something like (I heard this from a friend whose friend knew something about it; in searching I can’t find a source online, so the story might be apocryphal. I also might be off on the precise percentage.)

That doesn't sound like a very nice thing to do. I wonder if capitalism is to blame, as I would certainly blame capitalism, or good old fashioned egotistical rivalry that I'm told was common in many areas of life then between the USSR and the US.

I'd say that feeding humans or even livestock is more important than profits. Or at least, it ought to be.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#54

Post by jacquesm »

What 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.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#55

Post by jacquesm »

Animats wrote: post #11

Here'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…

That's incredibly fast. The precision timing to actuate the puff of air from above is super impressive, a bit too long or too short or mistimed and a whole pile of good stuff gets rejected or bad stuff ends up in the product. Amazing video, thank you for posting that.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#56

Post by taneq »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #18
yesbabyyes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 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. 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?

Well, kind of both. As an engineer I applaud the fact that it optimizes for maximum usage while remaining in-spec. I'd still hope they preferentially discard the really nasty stuff. A few slightly discoloured grains per kg is much better than an entire dead mouse every 100kg.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#57

Post by taneq »

jacquesm wrote: post #54

What 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…

Just remember that the moment you stick an Ethernet port or WiFi connection on it, security becomes just as important again.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#58

Post by LeifCarrotson »

ue_ wrote: post #53
jacobolus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1970s, the USA sold a large amount of wheat to the USSR in a famous deal. The contract stipulated that the wheat would contain something like (I heard this from a friend whose friend knew something about it; in searching I can’t find a source online, so the story might be apocryphal. I also might be off on the precise percentage.)

That doesn't sound like a very nice thing to do. I wonder if capitalism is to blame, as I would certainly blame capitalism, or good old fashioned egotistical rivalry that I'm told was common in many areas of life then between the USSR and the US. I'd say that feeding humans or even livestock is more important than profits. Or at least, it ought to be.

Or classical capitalism, because 99 ton of wheat plus one ton of sand is one ton of wheat cheaper than 100 tons of wheat. Sand is heavy and cheap.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#59

Post by LeifCarrotson »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #18
yesbabyyes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 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. 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?

I think it probably has to be your first gig as a technical guy to not feel resignation. I mean, "good" grains and "bad" grains? They don't come labeled. It's a noisy, messy spectrum.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#60

Post by jacquesm »

taneq wrote: post #57
jacquesm wrote: post #54

What 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…

Just remember that the moment you stick an Ethernet port or WiFi connection on it, security becomes just as important again.

Networking 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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