Sorting machine by color M & M's and Skittles on Arduino Uno

According to Gizmodo, the user under the nickname Ivc has created a machine that sorts pills (like M & M's, Skittles, etc.) by color.



The machine consists of a candy receiver, a color analysis unit and a distributing mechanism with a rotating tube, through which candies are served in glasses. In each glass are dragee of the same color.



Manages all this Atmel ATmega328 AVR microcontroller installed in Arduino Uno. The device contains an RGB sensor, an IR distance sensor, 2 servo drives, and also a part of the parts is designed and printed on a 3D printer.

')

How it works

Pills through the funnel for filing, gets through plastic tubes into a special wheel, made so that it fits only one candy (the system can detect candies stuck in the wheel). In total in a wheel 4 cells for candies. After the candy enters the individual cell, it is highlighted by a white LED, and the RGB sensor removes 3 color profiles from different angles. Then the profiles are compared with the pre-programmed (2 of 3 must match). RGB LED near the wheel, lights up a certain color.



After that, the wheel turns until the IR sensor sees an increased depth (i.e., an empty cell). After that gets on the distribution mechanism. The wheel in this case helps to speed up the sorting, since the bottleneck is precisely the distribution mechanism, which needs to have time to turn to the desired glass. And thanks to the wheel, the program knows the coming colors, and allows you to advance the turning tube to the desired glass.

Speed ​​and price of issue

Sorting speed reaches 80 pills per minute, or about 1.5 kg of candy in 5 minutes.



The whole thing cost $ 127.04, the author’s website has a detailed price list .

Demonstration of work

On the author's site you can read technical details , in the same place, the source codes of programs and 3D models are laid out (in the future they plan to post on Github).



Article on Gizmodo