While most of us are content with popping M&Ms into our mouths regardless of color, there are some who are really picky about which color they eat and will actually go to great lengths to pick out and sort their chocolates by its color coating. Well it looks like one inventor by the handle of ReviewMyLife is pretty picky himself.
However instead of resorting to an expensive color sorter, he decided to make one himself which uses his iPhone to perform color recognition on the M&Ms that are feed through the chute. The iPhone will be used to recognize the various colors, which are then communicated over Bluetooth to the Arduino, after which the chocolates are sorted down the correct chute depending on their color.
So far it looks pretty impressive for a prototype that appeared to be hot glued together. However there are some failings, one of which is that the iPhone is unable to sort brown M&ms as their color confuses the phone and makes it think it’s orange. ReviewMyLife is hoping to expand on his project and swap out the iPhone for a Raspberry Pi and possibly 3D print some of its components.
It’s a pretty cool idea and if you’d like to learn more and perhaps see what you might need to put together something similar yourself, head on over to his website for the details. In the meantime you can watch the video above to see the M&M sorter in action.
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