The Skittle starts its journey in a red Skittles bag, which we pour into a 3D-printed funnel. We designed the funnel using the extrude feature in Onshape, printed it, and attached it to the top of our sorter using superglue.

Once in the funnel, the Skittles fall into our grabber, also called the centerpiece. We made it by printing a custom cardboard shape multiple times and gluing the layers together to make it sturdy. This centerpiece is attached to the servo horn of a positional servo, which is mounted on a long piece of cardboard connected to the wall of our sorter. The servo horn goes through a small hole in the wall so the centerpiece can spin freely without anything getting in the way.

The positional servo starts at the bottom of the funnel at 180 degrees, where it pauses for 1 second. Then, it rotates to 115 degrees, positioning the Skittle near the color sensor, and waits there for 0.5 seconds or until a color is detected. Once the sensor picks up the color, the servo moves to 0 degrees, which allows the Skittle to drop out of the centerpiece.

To make this work, we wrote code using if-then statements based on the RGB values sensed by the color sensor. When the code detects a certain range of red, green, and blue values, the servo moves to release the Skittle and also triggers the next part of our sorter: the ramp.

After falling from the centerpiece, the Skittle lands on a guiding piece of cardboard that leads into our ramp. The ramp is shaped kind of like a lightbulb, which gives it more surface area so the Skittle doesn’t miss. It's connected to a second positional servo, which also runs based on the same if-then statements used for the centerpiece. Once the color is detected, this second servo moves the ramp to the right angle so the Skittle rolls into the correct color-coded bin.

The ramp’s servo is attached to a small piece of cardboard at the bottom of the sorter, and the ramp goes through a hole in the middle layer so it lines up perfectly with the centerpiece.

Finally, the Skittle glides down the ramp and lands in its designated bin. These bins were also designed in Onshape, and we added glass panels for an aesthetic touch which allows viewers to watch the bins fill with colorful Skittles!