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High speed M&M sorting machine

reviewmylife.co.uk

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Re: High speed M&M sorting machine

#11
post #6
post #2

I'd like to see a variant of this capable of separating a mixture of M&Ms and Skittles.

So 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!

Weight them with enough accuracy; 1g → Skittle.

http://www.scientificameriken.com/candy4.asp

Re: High speed M&M sorting machine

#12
post #4

if only this existed back in Van Halen's heyday http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen#Contract_riders

Came in here to see if someone would mention it. Glad to see I was not let down ;)

I 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.

Re: High speed M&M sorting machine

#14

if only this existed back in Van Halen's heyday http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen#Contract_riders

"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/t...

Re: High speed M&M sorting machine

#15
post #12
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came in here to see if someone would mention it. Glad to see I was not let down ;)

I 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.

Smoking gun is more ad riddled than I remember it, but they post a fair number of concert riders.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage

Re: High speed M&M sorting machine

#16
It'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-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!

Re: High speed M&M sorting machine

#17
That's low-speed sorting. This is high-speed sorting:

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

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.

Re: High speed M&M sorting machine

#18
oh 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.

Re: High speed M&M sorting machine

#19
post #17

That's low-speed sorting. This is high-speed sorting: 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'…

Ha, 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?

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