ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Here's a nice YouTube video of an NXT-based coin sorter. While it certainly doesn't compete with CoinStar yet as far as speed goes, it shows not only an interesting problem and solution... but a whole lot of wonderful mechanisms, as well as a pretty well done video explanation: I can't quite see how it only grabs one coin, but the two-stage grab-&-dump mechanism driven by a single motor is one of my favorite techniques. Very often, you do not need more motors, just a clever mechanical solution to get multiple motions out of a single motor, as kevquest does here. The actual sorting mechanism is also very well done, and adaptable - by adjusting those limiting elements, a lot of different sized objects could be sorted. Yet another important point is the sorting tray - I've seen a lot of folks get hung up on linear motion, and go through a lot of exertion to try to get it, when many times it's simply not needed - like here, where a carrousel style system is perfect...