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posted by janrinok on Tuesday January 13 2015, @06:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the save-the-brown-ones-for-me dept.

And now a story for those who, like myself, enjoy using Raspberry Pis and Arduinos although the origin of the task has a more practical purpose:

Canoe Tech reports that M&M sorting machines are a popular project for people who like combining electronics, programming and machine building. Most of them send a single M&M down a chute to a simple color sensor where the color sensor will then take a second or two to figure out the color. A servo motor will then rotate a chute that will direct the M&M into the correct pot. But a new project created by the nameless blogger behind the reviewmylife blog, that uses an iPhone 5s as its brain is capable of sensing different colors and so can "sort" the M&Ms as they fall past. The iPhone communicates the information via Bluetooth to an Arduino board, which in turn fires off the correct electro magnet controlled gate. One practical application of the sorter could be creating a bowl of M&Ms - with all the brown ones removed. According to Dan and Chip Heath, that's just what rock band Van Halen demand in one of the riders to their standard contract. The band’s “M&M clause” was written into its contract to serve a very specific purpose. It was called Article 126, and it read as follows: “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.” The article was buried in the middle of countless technical specifications. When David Lee Roth would arrive at a new venue, he’d immediately walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl. If he saw a brown M&M, he’d demand a line check of the entire production. “Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error,” said Roth. “They didn’t read the contract. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show.”

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday January 13 2015, @07:53PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Tuesday January 13 2015, @07:53PM (#134508) Homepage

    Even Van Halen were aware of the dangers posed by the Brown Menace* back then. If the Brown Menace was present in the candy-dish, the stage was most likely unsafe and did not satisfy the weight or power requirements and/or other corners were cut resulting in an unsafe environment for the band and stage crew, maybe even the audience.

    Do not let the Brown Menace into your candy-dish -- your life may depend on it!

    * which is kinda ironic because Eddie's guitar tone was commonly referred to as the "brown sound"

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 14 2015, @03:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 14 2015, @03:04AM (#134623)

    The first thing I thought when I read such a thing is maybe the band had a mascot rabbit, and had a previous experience of ingesting a rabbit excreta they thought was candy.