Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

willemm.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 130 posts

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#121

Post by jacquesm »

mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #119
jacquesm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorting large volumes of Lego ... call me crazy :) (several metric tons worth)

I was hoping it was Lego sorting! Every kid's dream machine. I got to talk with Nathan Sawaya at an event where he brought boxes of mixed Lego for us to play with. (including some of the giant Lego boulder from the Mythbusters episode) He said paying his assistants to sort bulk used Lego was more expensive than ordering new bricks en masse. (In the context of his sculpture projects at least)

> He said paying his assistants to sort bulk used Lego was more expensive than ordering new bricks en masse.

That's roughly the economics of it. There is a cottage industry where people will sort lego in bulk by hand, effectively it's probably better to flip burgers on a $/hr base.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#122

Post by Finnucane »

lazaroclapp wrote: post #22
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 all fairness, wasting food needlessly can have important environmental impact issues, and if the legal limits are well calibrated, getting the "allowed" dose of fungus might be a good thing from an immunological perspective. Heavy metals not so much...

Arguably, separating out grains, etc., that would be actually unsafe to eat is not really wasting food. Throwing out food that is perfectly edible is wasteful.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#123

Post by astrodust »

BillyParadise wrote: post #68

You 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.

It 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.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#124

Post by Aissen »

jacquesm wrote: post #118
detaro wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really shapes and not counting colors/prints multiple times? (Not that it really matters to the scope of the problem ;))

No, if you multiply by colors it gets much worse. 100's of thousands of possibilities... Of course not all parts exist in all colors so that helps (a bit), but it is quite an interesting problem to work on. Every assumption you make will be challenged. Prints and stickers are counted separately but that's not a really huge number and they should be correctly identified (so the surface decoration matters as well in th…

Do you also plan to detect counterfeit pieces ?

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#125

Post by hipjiveguy »

jacquesm wrote: post #101
iDemonix wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can share: what are you working on, out of interest?

Sorting large volumes of Lego ... call me crazy :) (several metric tons worth)

cool! So why are you doing this? to sell them? and where did you get metric tons of lego?

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#126

Post by jacquesm »

Aissen wrote: post #124
jacquesm wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if you multiply by colors it gets much worse. 100's of thousands of possibilities... Of course not all parts exist in all colors so that helps (a bit), but it is quite an interesting problem to work on. Every assumption you make will be challenged. Prints and stickers are counted separately but that's not a really huge number and they should be correctly identified (so the surface decoration matters as well in th…

Do you also plan to detect counterfeit pieces ?

That's a really hard problem. In many cases there are subtle hints (color, the writing on the studs).

Spectrography might give a hint here due to the different formulation of the plastics but some of the knock-offs are now so good it can be very hard to tell them from the real thing.

I'm not really sure if 'counterfeit' is the right term, the companies selling these are not making pieces labeled 'lego', and in fact the Lego brand started out by copying an English product.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiddicraft

Damaged pieces and discolored pieces are also of interest and a very hard category to detect.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#127

Post by jacquesm »

hipjiveguy wrote: post #125
jacquesm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorting large volumes of Lego ... call me crazy :) (several metric tons worth)

cool! So why are you doing this? to sell them? and where did you get metric tons of lego?

> So why are you doing this?

Excellent question :) Because I'm mad ;)

> and where did you get metric tons of lego?

Auctions.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#129

Post by Aissen »

jacquesm wrote: post #126
Aissen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also plan to detect counterfeit pieces ?

That's a really hard problem. In many cases there are subtle hints (color, the writing on the studs). Spectrography might give a hint here due to the different formulation of the plastics but some of the knock-offs are now so good it can be very hard to tell them from the real thing. I'm not really sure if 'counterfeit' is the right term, the companies selling these are not making pieces labeled 'lego', and in fact t…

I didn't know about Kiddicraft, thanks TIL.

It might not be true at the piece level, but some sets on some websites(ali, etc.) are exact replicas of lego sets, bar the brand. Down to the manual. Hence the use of "counterfeit".

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#130

Post by jacquesm »

Aissen wrote: post #129
jacquesm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really hard problem. In many cases there are subtle hints (color, the writing on the studs). Spectrography might give a hint here due to the different formulation of the plastics but some of the knock-offs are now so good it can be very hard to tell them from the real thing. I'm not really sure if 'counterfeit' is the right term, the companies selling these are not making pieces labeled 'lego', and in fact t…

I didn't know about Kiddicraft, thanks TIL. It might not be true at the piece level, but some sets on some websites(ali, etc.) are exact replicas of lego sets, bar the brand. Down to the manual. Hence the use of "counterfeit".

Ouch, that's bad. I wasn't aware of those, and yes, I agree, that's a good use of the word counterfeit.
Post reply on HN