Watch enough How It’s Made, and you’ll soon become very enthusiastic about computer vision and compressed air. In factories all around the world, production lines automatically sort the wheat from the chaff by running a product underneath a camera and blowing defective product off the line.
For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Fabien] is attempting this same task. He’s building a machine that will rapidly sort candy with computer vision and precisely controlled jets of air. He’s also planning for the Van Halen reunion and building a CNC harmonica.
Right now, the design has a hopper full of M&Ms dropping through a channel where a camera looks at each individual piece of candy. A Raspberry Pi, camera, and OpenMV detect all the red, yellow, brown, and blue M&Ms, and send that information to a computer controlling a suite of pneumatic valves. When these valves open, candy of different colors is shuffled off into it’s own bin. It’s the perfect device for someone responsible for reading Van Halen’s rider.
In an interesting little side project, [Fabien] needed a way to test the pneumatic valves before building the color sensor and candy chute. He had a harmonica lying around, and built something we’re surprised we’ve never seen before. It’s a CNC harmonica, capable of belting out a few tunes. You can check out that testing video after the break.
+1 for embedded Ada programming! Adacores stm32 build works really well btw. Worth a look, and.., it’s free.
If you like embedded Ada, we have a couple of surprises for you in the weeks to come :)
You have seen it before. This harmonica, even. Two months ago. http://hackaday.com/2016/04/06/automatic-pneumatic-harmonica/
wow, self-plagiarism, really? lol, just kidding. Obviously the additional “The HackadayPrize2016 is Sponsored by:” part is super important, enough to replicate an article.
Thanks for the article. Now that my project is selected for the final I have no excuses not to finish it. BTW it’s Fabien not Fabian ;)
Well done Fabien. You have inspired me to take up a new hobby.