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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

#21

Post by mmirate »

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?

So if someone reacts with delight to that last paragraph, then they must lack technical knowledge? This seems inaccurate.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#22

Post by lazaroclapp »

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?

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...

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#24

Post by jt2190 »

dang wrote: post #17
jt2190 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is the write up. My favorite part: > I started working on this machine in May ’16 and only finished it in December. It took a lot of time to design and build the machine, and I kept optimizing the parts and software after the first prototype was done. Including all prototypes and spare parts, I spent nearly €500 on this machine. Well worth it, considering everything I learned. https://willemm.nl/mm-skittles-sortin…

Thanks! Url changed to that from http://imgur.com/a/M539W .

Google cache is here:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#25

Post by yesbabyyes »

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 know, it's horrible, right?! But also perfectly obvious.

I haven't seen the machine but I envision a panel of knobs you can turn to adjust the acceptable levels of mercury, ergot fungus, mildew... ;-)

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#27

Post by Hello71 »

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?

It seems far more reasonable to me that increasing the true positive rate (bad grains rejected) will also increase the false positive rate (good grains rejected), so it's not the value of the bad grains included (which is almost certainly very small) but instead the value of the good grains which would accidentally be destroyed.
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