Hey everyone. straight to the point, we grow areca nuts in our area. So while processing it, we need to separate different kinds of varieties in it. And that is a very tedious process and consumes a lot of time. So I thought of building one machine to separate them. The best plan was to use image recognition to it. But the problem is every project related to image processing found on the internet uses OpenCV, which means it requires an internet connection, which is something I am avoiding. I basically want it to work without any internet connections. But for me, image recognition, AI, and machine learning concepts are entirely new but I want to build one such machine, so please help me out.

 

Good luck. I hope you are reading a lot. If your only problem is internet connectivity you're almost done. and don't chew any nuts as they are not good for your health!!

 

A year ago we had a long thread on sorting nuts. There was several youtube videos on sorting nuts.
I think some people sorted by color which was easy. Some sort by "broken" which is harder.
I cannot find the thread now, but there were many good ideas talked about.

 

Hey everyone. straight to the point, we grow areca nuts in our area. So while processing it, we need to separate different kinds of varieties in it. And that is a very tedious process and consumes a lot of time. So I thought of building one machine to separate them. The best plan was to use image recognition to it. But the problem is every project related to image processing found on the internet uses OpenCV, which means it requires an internet connection, which is something I am avoiding. I basically want it to work without any internet connections. But for me, image recognition, AI, and machine learning concepts are entirely new but I want to build one such machine, so please help me out.

Good luck, there is investor money available if you take the time or invest in development to solve this. If you get there, let me know. I can likely get you $750k to $2.5M from a team of private equity investors in this area. No promises big today but that was the range about 2.5 years ago when the market was a bit hotter.

 

During my career I've come across and worked on a number of manufacturing processes and have been amazed how many times I've seen money spent trying to sort/orient components where the chain has been broken. I've recently saw an incredible video of automated keyboard switch manufacture where the whole process is orchestrated to maintain position and orientation of individual items brought together, including final testing, only for the final product to be dropped in a box, when they should have been put in tubes or trays so the user can easily incorporate into auto assembly.

In this case my question is, do different kinds grow on the same tree? If not, surely the most cost effective sorting method is to segregate when they are harvested. If you are not the grower, you may have to pay more for them but the total added value cost will be lower.

Just an idea, sorry it doesn't address your question directly.

 

My favorite ideas for sorting things like nuts, or orienting cylinders parts for assembly are vibratory sorters/feeders as shown here.
In the example, cylinders that are too short, are ejected through the side or bottom gates. Parts are oriented on the spiral feeder so it is easy to just have the. Fall though the feeder if they are too small in diameter, or too short. Air pressure can be used to knock the parts off the track if measured by optical methods which is also easy when the part is oriented in the table.
At the end of the line, the part can be ejected back into the feeder hopper if it is oriented upside down. In that case, the feeder will have to supply parts to the final stage at 2x or more the rate of consumption by the next manufacturing stage to keep up (assuming cylinders have even probability of arriving at the last stage opening down vs opening on top (deep-drawn cylinder cartridge shape).
nuts can be processed in the same way with multiple vibratory tables. Sorted by tree species to get nut types. Then to get nut size.

 

Search for "optical sorting machine" in YouTube. This kind of task is not for beginners.

 

uses OpenCV, which means it requires an internet connection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCV

Really? I haven't used OpenCV but what I've read about it doesn't imply that it needs an internet connection. You will
need an internet connection to get the code, but you need an internet connection to post here too...

 

I stumbled across https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/Grove-Vision-AI-Module/ and wonder if this is going in the right direction?