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There are some debates that split the world down the middle. Serious stuff: M&Ms, or Smarties*? Yes, the two chocolate beans may bear a superficial resemblance to each other, but you’re either a Smartie lover, or an M&M lover. No compromises.

[Maximusvo] has sensibly dodged all questions of brand loyalty in his text if not in his images even though it’s obvious what kind of confectionery he’s working with in his candy vending machine. The hard-shell chocolates are loaded into a hopper, from which a colourful cascade is released onto a scale. When the desired weight has been accumulated, it is tipped into a drawer for the hungry recipient.

Behind it all is an Arduino with a motor to release the beans, a load cell to weigh them, and an LCD display to give a status report. A motor vibrates the chute to ensure they move down it, but as can be seen in the video demo below the break it’s not doing an entirely successful job. There is an external buzzer to indicate delivery, and aside from the wooden construction of the machine there are 3D printed parts in the scale.

Most of the vending machines we’ve shown you have involved not Smarties or M&Ms, but cans of soda. Perhaps your high school locker can house one, or failing that you’d like to raid someone else’s machine.

*European chocolate Smarties, that is, not American candy sweets.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks
Nov
07

Playing with sweets, photoresistors and Twitter

arduino, diy, StarterKit, sweets, tutorial, twitter Commenti disabilitati su Playing with sweets, photoresistors and Twitter 

TweetSweet
Martin sent us this fun project called TweetSweets, inspired by Labby’s twitter-enabled candy machine

How does it work? Easily explained:

- User1 sends a tweet with #givejacksweets
• Processing searches for the hashtag, sends a tweet thanking them and passes ‘sweets’ to Arduino
• Arduino activates sweet dispenser for 0.5 seconds
• Photoresistor detects when User2 collects them, and passes to Processing
• Processing takes a photo of User2 and tweets this to the User1
• User1 and User2 both smile :)

I’ve also cobbled together bits of code from other sources, including:

• a bit of Scott Fitzgerald’s PhotoResistor code from the Arduino Starter Kit book
• Twitter Processing sketch based on RobotGrrl Just a simple Processing and Twitter thingy majiggy‘ that I used for ‘I Am Iron Man
• Webcam code from Samuel Cox’s WeddingBooth
• Yonas Sandbak’s PostToWeb class

Funny thing is that this project didn’t start out involving sweets at all. Originally, I had planned to use NFC cards to allow people to quickly tap in, have a picture taken and then manipulate that image once it was on the server. Somewhere along the line I must have gotten hungry!

 



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