I mentioned this idea in the previous video: If you make the marble channels vertical instead of horizontal, it would allow you to clear out a single digit at a time. So if the time was 14:12, you can specifically just clear out the 2. This would speed it up significantly.
It wouldn't be as dramatic as clearing all of the digits, but it would be faster. If clearing all the digits is necessary, then you could possibly save clearing all the digits specifically for an hour change.
Yeah but it doesn't look nearly as interesting that way. I think he can manage to get this up to speed with some software thinkering and an additional Marble loader at the top
With this setup I'm guessing you could "preload" the next number so that changing the minute is as fast as clearing the current one and allowing the new frame to roll in. Not sure if I'm explaining myself lol
@@leolego2 How does it not look interesting? It's literally what most digital clocks do and even analogue ones like the foldover numberplate thingies...
@@TheLsgaming Still love watching it, especially on his most recent try. He is working from the principles backwards to make the machine work before building a single part!
Built two whole different machines that had to be scrapped! Aside from the main ideas, they are all each unique machines! Also, minor misconception, Wintergatan is the name of the band he is the lead for, and Martin Molin is his name
This is exactly the kind of thing that would captivate me for hours on display at a museum, watching all the little pieces work, fantastic build. I'd love to see a 24 hour video of this going through a whole day of time, split up by hour so one could "set it" as a clock throughout the day
I have a feeling you'd like the rolling ball clock in my city. Search "rolling ball clock whangarei" and it should be the first link for the Whangarei District Council. I can't link the page unfortunately.
I had another Idea for this. Instead of using the Tower for unused marbles to come down, add an extra lane in the left (below the marble display) without stops. So you had 14 lanes, 13 for the Time and one below where you would see the owerflow marbles running down. I think, this would look nice
You might be able to make it run more effectively by doing some sort of "delta" processing where it only empties and loads the rows that have changed (for instance when going from 14:15 to 14:16, you only need to unload a few rows at the bottom).
Yeah. I noticed that too. With the length of the upper marble tunnels he could have also created some sort of multiple marble buffer that too delta the one after it. Making it so it each consecutive marble buffer would require less and less marble. It would make the whole marble machine way faster. Or even better, he could have used the marble elevator as the clock. Just make it wider to accommodate the 4 numbers and the divider and he would have been set.
I don't think it is a good idea? By the way the marbles are discarded, I mean. They don't come back up the same way they fell (mix at the bottom) For doing that he would have to close the mechanism, and it wouldn't allow marbles to be discarded and swapped every now and then. He could (kind of close it) to make it go back up again the way it did with a little path in the bottom for the discarded ones. But still, the algorithm wouldn't have to be changed, it would leave the first ones the way they came (saving a bit more time) and changing the last ones completely (having to wait every time for then to go down and up again bc no extra marbles can go down the closed path)
In my opinion, the machine would not be the same that way, but more importantly, i think that in the the way it works would take the same time to change one or few row as all of them.
Replace the spiral with some clear vinyl tubing in a holder to keep it in shape. The soft flexible tubing will dramatically reduce the noise from the marbles, and it'll look cool since you'll be able to see them!
Well that's simpler than my idea. Just like he 3D prints everything, I often think of casting and molding. So I was thinking of a softer polyurethane molded in the same shape as his 3D print. So it catches in spirals and moves the same, but silently.
This is one hell of a lesson in the concept of testing complex machines in small discrete sections individually instead of building the entire thing in one go and hoping to be able to iron out any bugs with minor patches and tweaks.
I hope this gets displayed somewhere super public like a train station or an international airport terminal. It reminds me of a kinetic musical sculpture I saw in a glass box at the LAX international terminal. Absolutely wonderful 😍
@@PerformingNerd as long as the machine was able to load up new marbles within the one minute timeframe, you could make it plenty accurate. It would just need to be triggered to change on the minute every minute via an accurate source.
Make it much faster by Using multiple input trays 1 black 2 White 3 output mix (sort these into the 2 trays ) First fill all holes in the belt by black balls then remove those which needs to be white and by the second tray they will be auto filled with white balls as they are empty. Just the output balls which are mixed white and black need to go through another belt which will sort it into the first 2 trays using same solenoid, sensor
@@ivanmirandawastaken Crazy idea, not every channel necessarily changes between two times, if you could selectively reset channels and leave some unchanged, that would require way fewer marbles between minutes. That might defeat the purpose, though.
Awesome work! Maybe you want to sort the marbles in black and white after ejecting them. So you could have 2 containers, one for black and one for white. (I would place them above each other) - With that you could first add the necessary black marbles into the lift and then fill the "missing" white marbles into the empty slots. This would speed up things a lot, because you don't rely on luck anymore that the correct marbles are in the lift.
Friendly tip - try to sort the marbles as they are returning, creating 2 piles of white and black marbles - 2 storage containers. Then, arrange them as they are getting to the elevator already, not pushing them out based on what color you have. This will remove the element of randomness. And you can still control if you have the marble or not and so on... And you won't need to "return" wrong color from the top, so it will be quieter. This looks cool, btw.
That's definitely THE SOLUTION Robert, but I want to try to keep the random selection for now. I can always go for the nuclear option and make it super efficient so it can tell seconds right?
@@ivanmirandawastakenif you want to keep the randomness, you need more than one loader. If you expel the GOOD marbles into the channel, and keep the bad ones on the belt, an additional loader above this one will be able to again check if any of the BAD marbles are now needed for the clock. This would help a lot. You just need to extend the elevator a bit and have channels flowing into one.
A ton of fun ! Now make it so the marbles compose the digits vertically, that way you only change the digit that need to be changed (most of the time it will only be the minute one)
and this is why prototyping designs on a small scale to identify these issues sooner can make a world of difference. even just going in he didnt realize how much range the marbles he was buying could have in shape and size. while if he started with colorless marbles that he could paint. then he could have simple filtered all the marbles down then colored them by size as a way to impliment a manual marble filter in the machine into two buckets. then instead of designing a machine that selects marble colors from 13 random queues. he instead would have to fill 13 queues from two buckets of marbles. another problem on its own to find a simple method to distribute marbles. can be done easily enough but again. requires strict requirements and a knowledge of what the failure points can be before and after some prototyping of the piece on a small scale and making things modular like he tried to to avoid these kinds of rebuilds that take a lot of time
DON'T DISCARD THE MARBLES! Use the elevators FULL CAPACITY to bring up as many marbles as possible, THEN at the top you sort out the black & white marbles into 2 reservoirs, then the clock picks the colors & amounts it needs from each reservoir, it can do this by enable one of several lines of each color, use a marble counter & have a "lane router" go guide the marbles into right place, in that way it can build the entire time within a minute.
Not 2 reservoirs, but 2 lanes for each output lane. Then, at the end of those buffer lanes, use a movable gate (the old "block with a hole that lines up with either input1, input2 or output") to feed the display buffer lane. That way, no marble path needs to be faster than "time resolution" divided by "display width".
You both have great suggestions. Either way, you have both identified an area that could be made more efficiently. I think he should focus on doing that next.
@@MiesvanderLippe, no, but a change by minute would be nice imo. And the delivery speed seems to be up to it, just the sorting isn't efficient if been waiting for one or 2 specific white in a transport lane while other arrived whites in other lane fall back down. All that is going down through that round tube is transported useless upstairs while that shouldn't be needed and if used improves speed overall in my logic.
Just keeping the lanes consistent rather than dumping them all in a single pool would help. The top and bottom rows never need white, so any white that ends up in there is wasted, the middle row needs between 0 and 16 white and that's the row with the most variance. Maybe have up to 94 marbles total per lane, should give you enough for any 2 configurations ((max black needed + max white needed)*2), excess can cycle around their lane's holding area and the elevator.
I love that you include the whole process, because seeing you make mistakes and then fix them is very motivational to me. I have a problem with giving up too soon on my projects, and a reminder that even people way better at engineering than me need to reiterate and go back to the drawing table sometimes is very good to see!
It probably wouldnt be too much extra work to get this machine to display ascii art (albeit low resolution). I would love to make a version of this that acts like an alarm clock in the morning. The noise of the marbles waking you up and a funky marble image to enjoy when you wake up.
@@christopherbedford9897 haha that would be awful but I was more thinking to not use it as a clock running the whole night but moreso for the alarm sound when you need to wake up, accompanied by some cute ASCII art. Or you could not use it as an alarm clock and just appreciate the ASCII art. There's honestly so much potential with this thing.
smaller marbles would fall out of rails, we had to enlarge the railing, and when the marble rests on the bottom, you might see 30% less marble. Maybe for the black ones we could find a compromise, cause they are just distant holders. Actually we could get ridd of all marbles on the left and use less marbles, if we only focus on the position of the white ones.
There is no difference from engeneers to children, by the way. It's more people doing things, as they have always done it, who don't see creative solutions.
Great fun project and looks like everyone leaving comments has suggestions on how to improve It :) I bet many of you have suggested something similar but here are my 2 cents. To make it smaller in size, quieter and more practical the marbles should arrive from the top down and each column should be released separately. Only those columns that actually change should be updated. Black and white marbles should be kept in separate pools, mixed when building digits and then separated again when they are released. Knowing the order marbles were placed to present each digit it will be very easy to sort them back into separate pools with just a single servo per column.
He doesn't want to have the marbled come from the top down in columns. So many people have suggested it in the comments but that's not what he wants the design to be!
One of the best projects I've seen in a while! I can't imagine the amount of frustration that you had when the marbles kept getting stuck. I always wanted to see how everything would come out together! Finally, order among chaos! Loved it! 😄😄
If you add some felt or soft materials on the spiral and some weights on the bottom of the device you can reduce the rolling and vibrating noises by a lot! This is looking really cool! Congrats!
Even if it’s not every minute, you should consider doing a live stream of just the machine doing its thing. The white noise of the marbles is relaxing, and it’s a clock. win win for keeping people focused
Wouldn't it make more sense to separate the black from the white marbles, so you can better control where a white and where a black marble should be. After the marbles fall down after telling the time, you separate them again and have separate feeds for the black and the white marbles. But I really love how you just go with your ideas and solve the problems you face. Great stuff!
Well you don't want a perfectly sort them. Part of the charm of the design is how It pushes out and uses the marbles that it needs as they go by, without having to sort them apart first. That said, if he is not getting enough white ones mixed in to certain rows he could make a sort of churn pit to randomize them a bit more. Much simpler and you don't have to sort them twice.
Yes, looked at in a commercial sort of way it would make sense, but this is a WORK OF ART! The man's had a brilliant idea and seen it through to completion, I love it.
More than that, in theory he already knows where each marble is. He can utilize the back space to extract the white marbles, then let the blacks all fall into the general pool. No sensors needed for that.
@@travisfabel8040 two trays at the top below the return. one distributes black marbles to each channel, one does white marbles. same idea to sort, just punt the marbles into the trays in two places instead of one. have the thing track how many marbles are in each tray (as you'll know the number going in and out) and reject marbles to the spiral return path before the trays overfill.
Knock both colors out into individual tracks that feed to the top reservoir. Then once it's got all it needs, it could have an ejector into a secondary reservoir for the extras to fill it up faster the next round. So basically- The top has a black and white reservoir, and only fills one at a time with a selective feed from the top. These feed into a sorter that releases them one at a time into the slots but quickly. As a safety to prevent overflow leakage into the wrong group, a dump track to the bottom could be used as well in between mode switches. A little below this is the backup white reservoir(since they are the hardest to reliably get). With a sensor, it will trigger an "All white" mode to refill the top as needed. At the bottom are the rest. The regular sorter that ejects black if white needs to be filled, and the original input feed. Essentially, this takes it from "fill for the next minute," and into, "Prefill the tanks and the next minute dispenses when needed." Is it complicated? Yes, but it would fix a lot of issues since it would be able to fill quickly. Of course, the fastest way would be to combine this with a "next minute" row that prebuilds the time for after the release. And even faster would be a vertical fill, but that's not as fun to watch.
I love the process you got through to process these. I wonder if separating the colors earlier wouldn't be easier? You have more control that way, it seems. You are a master fabricator!
This! Sort them by colour immediately after they've been used to show time and then feed them into the conveyor separately, or then use a screw feed conveyor for the lift and input marbles into it serially, converting back to parallel at the top... oh god the madness is catching
@@williamstrachan That would only add an extra level of complexity. Sorting them at the top means he can take advantage of gravity as part of the sorting process.
@@MrRobarinoyeah imo he should use the current pusher mechanism to sort into a black and white stream for each line, then use gates or another pusher to select the colours needed individually.
@techheck3358 I was thinking on that. Perhaps just sort them so the rows alternate between white/black (all white one row, then all black on 1 or 2 rows)? Sorting this way follows the clock format (one row all black, then it becomes mixed white/black for last 2 digits, then there's a black space before and after the first 2 digits). I think if he could extend the new spiral to deposit earlier (maybe run it over the current marble storage like a double-back staircase?). That would provide enough space for a color splitter (not sure if there would be enough space to arrange a new time).
It's nice to see the comments... there are so many ways to solve this problem... but the dedication and work that Ivan Miranda is doing is absolutely amazing.
Been checking your channel fairly frequently to make sure I haven't missed anything. With all the revisions, I'm honestly shocked this vid came out this quickly.
I love this so much. It serves zero purpose other than the fact that you can say you’ve built a marble clock and that is amazing. I really hope you can get it minute by minute just for the hell of it! Good work man!!
It's always so good to see the "Mark II" of any device like this. Seeing all the things you learned and watching them get rolled forward is....ugh, it's mana for the soul
I think an idea would be to have the marbles go in vertical channels insted, that way you only need to change one number at a time insted of changing everything. That way it would be faster and be able to tell every minute insted, anyways, love how it looks, keep up the good work!
Got a goal ? Go for it, whatever the trouble !!!! Try and error ... There is no fail, it´s just a learning curve. You are an incredible example, hands down
make one half size by condensing the segments dow to 2 marbles per segment instead of 4, also get rid of the solid black top and bottom rows, dropping the amount of rows from 13 to 8 and the amount of collums from 31 to 21, you could make the whole thing about 60% smaller, also for the rejects I would say make the chute more vertical to minimize the amount of time the marbles are moving and making noise, also putting a lid on the middle on the reject ramp may help minimize noise
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this video and noticed the delay. I can’t imagine how much of your time and effort when into this project but, congratulations on this incredible creation! ❤
Once it's perfect, would you consider putting a live video feed of the real time clock on UA-cam streaming? Actually if you could just get a perfect 24 hour cycle uploaded that would be incredible.
That's a really cool project and I love how it looks when the prepared time rolls into place! :) I also have an idea to make the clock more complex, but maybe faster. Coarse idea: add a sorting mechanism to put the correct combination of marbles already in the elevator. More detailed: At the lower part of the elevator, you could detect the color and eject them (at 2 height levels) into 2 containers. From these containers the color could be injected into the elevator with the correct position. Problem: the sorted marbles are lower than the elevator with unsorted marbles. Maybe the 2 containers could be at the top and the selection is directed directly into the marble tracks to prepare the time? Bonus: This would also remove the loud overflow helix, although I really like it (would be great to watch if transparent :D ) !
i immediatly noticed the reliance on randomness and was wondering as well why he isn't using black&white reservoirs. I think the best place to put them is not at the top, but at the bottom before the entry to the elevator. The alternative would be to split black and white at the bottom and then have 2 elevators (or reuse the current one with a left/right split), have and feed from the elevator into those. Then feed from those into the lines through a demultiplexer.
Super cool, can't wait to see the next version that works be the minute. Hopefully a helpful suggestion, you could make the rejection at the bottom with the solenoids just above where the marbles enter the elevator, then use the "flexible pushers" at the top to have the apceted/nonrejected marbles enter the channels. This means no loud spiral down.
This is the most interesting clock, and also the noisiest clock. It doesn't need an alarm function because it makes alarm-like sounds every minute. However, it can also have unpredictable variations every minute. This is truly the most interesting clock I have ever seen.
I think a good option to decrease response time is to separate white and lack Marvells. With that u can choose what is more convenient each time and send a row of marvells of the color you most need. With that you can even have a constant response time. Awesome project by the way
In theory since we know which marbles are being kicked out because of the sensor you could have two slide and two places to kick the marbles out, This will probably reduce the complexity in that you won't need such a tall elevator for sorting the time marbles, reduce the noise since the slides should be smaller, but increase moving parts due to more kickers. You would still need a way of bringing sorted marbles up though a smaller 1 marble elevator or larger if more bandwidth is needed.
Yeah, instead of creating a rejection system at the very last moment (which is also apparently super loud), create a filtering system that guarantees the correct colors in each spot. Way more efficient, and probably would get times down to 1-minute updates.
Great one!! A vertical setup could help with lesser changes to marble columns than the changes in rows, it can also remove the need for smooth marbles only. Also the longer panels cause more speed for smoother marbles which when hit with other marbles could damage the smoothness
How about adjusting the ratio of black to white marbles in order to speed up the process? You need a lot more black marbles to display the time, yet the amount of black and white marbles in the storage seems equally distributed right now.
This turned out really cool! Returning commenter from previous concepts where I mentioned the longer than a minute problem (apparently one of many). Really interested to see how you tackle that issue. My thought was to make a bank system, where the marbles are sorted then dispensed at the top to reduce the randomness of the right color marble appearing in the right channel.
I admire the dedication and patience, that you had to rebuild the entire clock practically from scratch, to get the marbles to stop sticking after they are cleared out.
Para las canicas que se quedan atascadas podrías añadir a los railes, por la parte trasera, un motor con un contrapeso para que genere vibraciones justo cuando hace el cambio de hora. Un saludo desde Galicia!!
THIS IS ART!!! This machine you built belongs in a modern art museum. I could listen and watch the balls fall for minutes to pass by. This is so soothing, and absolutely remarkable work of engineering, designing, and artistry combined. I hope you'll be able to display this for anyone to see. Tate Modern where are you at? This belongs in one of your exhibitions...
We all appreciate the suffering you put yourself through to create amazing content for us. In order to make it faster, I suggest adding a second buffer.
Buffers aren't really a fix to the problem, they're just a bandade to cover up the underlying issue, he shouldn't do the "sort and releae" in one step at the top like he currently does, it would be much more efficient to only sort between white and black at the top, this way you can use 100% of the marbles transported (instead of the probably less than 20% that it's currenlty) and then release the marbles with marble gates into the clock, this system would be limited by the amout of marbles that the elevator can transport up, in this case it would be around 10 marbles/second the machine could release into the clock without running out of marbles, this would improve the display speed to a guaranteed 40 seconds, the only limiting factor is the speed of the conveyor belt (the transporting up thing) speed this up and you can improve the display speed
this is SOO dang cool!! I've loved this story. It'd be cool if there was a montage video of you actually building the parts and testing (or coding!). Can't wait to see your "by the minute" clock.
Love seeing the evolution of this, and the metal rods are great for the aesthetics as well as function. Merry xmas and all the best for you and the channel in 2024!
funnily enough Dr.D-Flo had a similar problem with his pellet extruder, after he updated the motors drivers to be silent, he fixed it by adding a vibrator to the feeder to loosen the pellets. while would of been noisier, might of worked in your case edit: i see you've done something similar, and clearly noise isn't a factor XD
Congrats on getting in the top 10 in trending man! Also cant wait until the next part is out so we can watch you solve all these problems (and probably make more that needs solving too lol 😂😅)
This is some amazing just-cause-I-can engineering! The only major thing that comes to mind that would make this machine even more satisfying is having a transparent spinning slide. You can't tell me that being able to watch all those discarded balls race their way down wouldn't be super cool!
Good idea, but probably not feasible with brittle glass marbles since they’d fall straight down from ≥1m height and smash into other marbles. Would probably work with ping-pong balls or tennis balls though.
really cool clock! for the noise issue introduced by the spiral, one option that you could think about is padding the spiral's floor with some kind of soft material, such as rubber. However, it needs to apply as less friction as possible to the marbles so they don't slow down.
form and function (for telling time not for convenience) of all of it together is fantastic man really satisfying to see it form the numbers out of marbles kinda like a more complicated waterfall clock
The number change made me audibly gasp in awe, something that I do not often do despite being bombarded with awesome creations each day by multiple algorithms vying for my attention and interaction. This is absolutely marbellous! Thanks and sorry.
Imagine a public lounge somewhere, where the display part of this is in the wall, and the marbles are routed there from a soundproofed chamber. It would seem magical, and mesmerizing. What if it wasn't a clock, but displayed messages or images?
Possible optimization: invert your marble sorting algorithm, use the solenoids to reject closer to the bottom what you don't need instead of dragging them all the way up. Reduces noise, power consumption, etc. Could also check 2 or 3 slots below the actual ejector, allowing the elevator to run faster, as you'll have some buffer time.
I mentioned this idea in the previous video: If you make the marble channels vertical instead of horizontal, it would allow you to clear out a single digit at a time. So if the time was 14:12, you can specifically just clear out the 2. This would speed it up significantly.
It wouldn't be as dramatic as clearing all of the digits, but it would be faster. If clearing all the digits is necessary, then you could possibly save clearing all the digits specifically for an hour change.
Yeah but it doesn't look nearly as interesting that way. I think he can manage to get this up to speed with some software thinkering and an additional Marble loader at the top
With this setup I'm guessing you could "preload" the next number so that changing the minute is as fast as clearing the current one and allowing the new frame to roll in. Not sure if I'm explaining myself lol
I had the same thought sine the first vid!
@@leolego2 How does it not look interesting? It's literally what most digital clocks do and even analogue ones like the foldover numberplate thingies...
It's like Wintergatan all over again. Martin has rebuilt everything on that machine at least 2 times now.
That guy is so painful to watch
@@TheLsgaming Still love watching it, especially on his most recent try. He is working from the principles backwards to make the machine work before building a single part!
Built two whole different machines that had to be scrapped! Aside from the main ideas, they are all each unique machines!
Also, minor misconception, Wintergatan is the name of the band he is the lead for, and Martin Molin is his name
I only tune in occasionally because, yeah, progress is pretty slow.
The clock is out and work at least.
He's not chasing impossible impossible timing while simping for Musk.
This is exactly the kind of thing that would captivate me for hours on display at a museum, watching all the little pieces work, fantastic build. I'd love to see a 24 hour video of this going through a whole day of time, split up by hour so one could "set it" as a clock throughout the day
Thats genius. I’d play that playlist
So you watch the clock because time is indifferent to you?
This definitely belongs in a science museum
I have a feeling you'd like the rolling ball clock in my city. Search "rolling ball clock whangarei" and it should be the first link for the Whangarei District Council. I can't link the page unfortunately.
Yea, except he admitted that it’s not accurate and fails at its only purpose 100% of the time
This takes the term 'losing your marbles' to a totally new level
literally
This guy has all his marbles together tho. Even sorted out the ones that are not perfectly round
totally should be the name of his channel
Irrr knowwrrr rrrrrRrrightrr eets so crrrooool
For the price of 3D print that on Argentina you could probably made it up of titanium in other countries.
I had another Idea for this. Instead of using the Tower for unused marbles to come down, add an extra lane in the left (below the marble display) without stops. So you had 14 lanes, 13 for the Time and one below where you would see the owerflow marbles running down. I think, this would look nice
That’s awesome. Then there’s basically a constant stream of visual action happening!! I hope this gets seen by the big guy!!
I’d worry about that having enough bandwidth. Multiple such channels would be necessary, most likely.
Our maybe just use some acrylic tubing or something for the spiral
was thinking this the whole time, would give it that marquee feeling
There are two unused channels already, strangely. The most top and bottom ones …
You might be able to make it run more effectively by doing some sort of "delta" processing where it only empties and loads the rows that have changed (for instance when going from 14:15 to 14:16, you only need to unload a few rows at the bottom).
Yeah. I noticed that too. With the length of the upper marble tunnels he could have also created some sort of multiple marble buffer that too delta the one after it. Making it so it each consecutive marble buffer would require less and less marble. It would make the whole marble machine way faster.
Or even better, he could have used the marble elevator as the clock. Just make it wider to accommodate the 4 numbers and the divider and he would have been set.
First of all, we need add 14:15 between 14:14 and 14:16, see on 9:40.
I don't think it is a good idea? By the way the marbles are discarded, I mean. They don't come back up the same way they fell (mix at the bottom) For doing that he would have to close the mechanism, and it wouldn't allow marbles to be discarded and swapped every now and then. He could (kind of close it) to make it go back up again the way it did with a little path in the bottom for the discarded ones. But still, the algorithm wouldn't have to be changed, it would leave the first ones the way they came (saving a bit more time) and changing the last ones completely (having to wait every time for then to go down and up again bc no extra marbles can go down the closed path)
Was thinking the same thing. Why change everything when in a minute is changing. During the hour it can load the upcoming hour and drop when it's time
In my opinion, the machine would not be the same that way, but more importantly, i think that in the the way it works would take the same time to change one or few row as all of them.
Replace the spiral with some clear vinyl tubing in a holder to keep it in shape. The soft flexible tubing will dramatically reduce the noise from the marbles, and it'll look cool since you'll be able to see them!
I was about to say that I would love to see the marbles! This is a great idea
Well that's simpler than my idea. Just like he 3D prints everything, I often think of casting and molding. So I was thinking of a softer polyurethane molded in the same shape as his 3D print. So it catches in spirals and moves the same, but silently.
why not place the sorter lower? the marbles would just fall a few inches and the whole spiral thing wouldn't be needed
I was thinking you should put some insulation (like PUR) in the hollow part of the cylinder
This clock definitely deserves to be a museum piece! Fantastic work, love the design.
The whole time i was "Pretty sure this will end up in a museum"
I thought the exact same thing! Way to go Ivan!
It is art
There are some modern art museums that would grab it. MONA comes to mind. They have a installation that makes words from water drips.
Museum sounds great, or if he can get it to go every minute with high reliability it would be really cool to see at an airport or a train station.
Very impressive! Nice work!!
Jerry, don't rig this 😅
oh hello there
This should be in your bunker 😊
@@PihubeatsI agree that would be really cool.
LOL
I really hope this thing ends up in an exhibit somewhere for everyone to enjoy. This is some really unique kinetic art.
There is a fine line between insanity and genius, and this man is doing handstands on the edge. A fantastic idea.
@Repent-and-believe-in-Jesus1who did he tell that to ?
If you remember, he's making money with it, through these videos, it's not as insane anymore.
This is one hell of a lesson in the concept of testing complex machines in small discrete sections individually instead of building the entire thing in one go and hoping to be able to iron out any bugs with minor patches and tweaks.
7:10 use soft rubber clear pool tubing.. plus you can watch them fall quietly
might make a cool noise aswell
I think there would still be a lot of noise from collisions between marbles, but it probably would be better than the large spiral.
Definitely better than having the marbles run down all those layer lines.
@@codmod7456 falling marbles pushing air through a tube sounds like a compressor. Clock powered wind organ.
After you get it faster, we need an hour long video of it just running 😁
Make it 24 hours, so we dont need to build one ourselves and can just play the video!😅
make it a livestream for like a week, just to be sure.
After 24 hrs you can just loop the video
i want a year
i want it until the marbles get destroyed because of all the collisions
this needs to be in a museum, its so freaking cool
I heard this comment in the voice of Indiana Jones
I hope this gets displayed somewhere super public like a train station or an international airport terminal.
It reminds me of a kinetic musical sculpture I saw in a glass box at the LAX international terminal.
Absolutely wonderful 😍
theyd have to put it inside of a soundproof enclosure first
I'm not sure having a clock that isn't super accurate in a train station/airport is a great idea 😅
Came to say the same thing. I can totally imagine this at an airport and me sitting there having a great time waiting just watching this thing.
@@PerformingNerdJust needs a sign. "DO NOT trust the accuracy of the beautifully overcomplicated mechanical monstrosity."
@@PerformingNerd as long as the machine was able to load up new marbles within the one minute timeframe, you could make it plenty accurate. It would just need to be triggered to change on the minute every minute via an accurate source.
Awesome! Been looking forward to this, what an insane amount of work!
Thanks guys!!
Make it much faster by Using multiple input trays
1 black
2 White
3 output mix (sort these into the 2 trays )
First fill all holes in the belt by black balls then remove those which needs to be white and by the second tray they will be auto filled with white balls as they are empty.
Just the output balls which are mixed white and black need to go through another belt which will sort it into the first 2 trays using same solenoid, sensor
@@ivanmirandawastaken Crazy idea, not every channel necessarily changes between two times, if you could selectively reset channels and leave some unchanged, that would require way fewer marbles between minutes. That might defeat the purpose, though.
@@romitchandverma7663 He could also encapsulate the slide with some sort of sound deadening enclosure to cut down on the noise
Guys we need a Collab, please 😢
Awesome work! Maybe you want to sort the marbles in black and white after ejecting them. So you could have 2 containers, one for black and one for white. (I would place them above each other) - With that you could first add the necessary black marbles into the lift and then fill the "missing" white marbles into the empty slots. This would speed up things a lot, because you don't rely on luck anymore that the correct marbles are in the lift.
Additionally it would eliminate the noisiest part of the clock
it could pre arrange the elevator in the correct sequence and you could see upcoming times move up.
Friendly tip - try to sort the marbles as they are returning, creating 2 piles of white and black marbles - 2 storage containers. Then, arrange them as they are getting to the elevator already, not pushing them out based on what color you have. This will remove the element of randomness. And you can still control if you have the marble or not and so on... And you won't need to "return" wrong color from the top, so it will be quieter. This looks cool, btw.
That's definitely THE SOLUTION Robert, but I want to try to keep the random selection for now. I can always go for the nuclear option and make it super efficient so it can tell seconds right?
@@ivanmirandawastakenif you want to keep the randomness, you need more than one loader. If you expel the GOOD marbles into the channel, and keep the bad ones on the belt, an additional loader above this one will be able to again check if any of the BAD marbles are now needed for the clock. This would help a lot. You just need to extend the elevator a bit and have channels flowing into one.
A ton of fun ! Now make it so the marbles compose the digits vertically, that way you only change the digit that need to be changed (most of the time it will only be the minute one)
This man solves a problem no one has. And we all love it.
I'm really amazed at how fast you iterate your work! It's amazing how many surprising challenges a "simple" project can have sometimes!
and this is why prototyping designs on a small scale to identify these issues sooner can make a world of difference. even just going in he didnt realize how much range the marbles he was buying could have in shape and size. while if he started with colorless marbles that he could paint. then he could have simple filtered all the marbles down then colored them by size as a way to impliment a manual marble filter in the machine into two buckets. then instead of designing a machine that selects marble colors from 13 random queues. he instead would have to fill 13 queues from two buckets of marbles. another problem on its own to find a simple method to distribute marbles. can be done easily enough but again. requires strict requirements and a knowledge of what the failure points can be before and after some prototyping of the piece on a small scale and making things modular like he tried to to avoid these kinds of rebuilds that take a lot of time
DON'T DISCARD THE MARBLES!
Use the elevators FULL CAPACITY to bring up as many marbles as possible, THEN at the top you sort out the black & white marbles into 2 reservoirs, then the clock picks the colors & amounts it needs from each reservoir, it can do this by enable one of several lines of each color, use a marble counter & have a "lane router" go guide the marbles into right place, in that way it can build the entire time within a minute.
Not 2 reservoirs, but 2 lanes for each output lane. Then, at the end of those buffer lanes, use a movable gate (the old "block with a hole that lines up with either input1, input2 or output") to feed the display buffer lane. That way, no marble path needs to be faster than "time resolution" divided by "display width".
You both have great suggestions. Either way, you have both identified an area that could be made more efficiently. I think he should focus on doing that next.
The goal is not an efficient clock.
@@MiesvanderLippe, no, but a change by minute would be nice imo. And the delivery speed seems to be up to it, just the sorting isn't efficient if been waiting for one or 2 specific white in a transport lane while other arrived whites in other lane fall back down. All that is going down through that round tube is transported useless upstairs while that shouldn't be needed and if used improves speed overall in my logic.
Just keeping the lanes consistent rather than dumping them all in a single pool would help. The top and bottom rows never need white, so any white that ends up in there is wasted, the middle row needs between 0 and 16 white and that's the row with the most variance. Maybe have up to 94 marbles total per lane, should give you enough for any 2 configurations ((max black needed + max white needed)*2), excess can cycle around their lane's holding area and the elevator.
I love that you include the whole process, because seeing you make mistakes and then fix them is very motivational to me. I have a problem with giving up too soon on my projects, and a reminder that even people way better at engineering than me need to reiterate and go back to the drawing table sometimes is very good to see!
It probably wouldnt be too much extra work to get this machine to display ascii art (albeit low resolution). I would love to make a version of this that acts like an alarm clock in the morning. The noise of the marbles waking you up and a funky marble image to enjoy when you wake up.
"The noise of the marbles waking you up" - by which I think you mean keeping you awake all night? 🥴
@@christopherbedford9897 haha that would be awful but I was more thinking to not use it as a clock running the whole night but moreso for the alarm sound when you need to wake up, accompanied by some cute ASCII art. Or you could not use it as an alarm clock and just appreciate the ASCII art. There's honestly so much potential with this thing.
Bad apple when?
@@hahahasan Yah I was being (mostly) facetious 😁
@@SwordFreakPowerblack and white marbles and ascii art screams this
I’ve been waiting a month for this video after I saw the other 2 about this marble clock. Of course I immediately had to follow your channel!
Yeah!!
An engineer sees the problem and says "we need to remake everything." A child sees the problem and says "how about using smaller marbles?"
what do you do with the hundreds of white and black colored marbles?
@@hamburger-yh3lj put them in a garage sale? give them to charity? marbles cost less than the reprinting of all that equipment.
im not gonna lose my marbles
smaller marbles would fall out of rails, we had to enlarge the railing, and when the marble rests on the bottom, you might see 30% less marble. Maybe for the black ones we could find a compromise, cause they are just distant holders. Actually we could get ridd of all marbles on the left and use less marbles, if we only focus on the position of the white ones.
There is no difference from engeneers to children, by the way. It's more people doing things, as they have always done it, who don't see creative solutions.
Great fun project and looks like everyone leaving comments has suggestions on how to improve It :) I bet many of you have suggested something similar but here are my 2 cents. To make it smaller in size, quieter and more practical the marbles should arrive from the top down and each column should be released separately. Only those columns that actually change should be updated. Black and white marbles should be kept in separate pools, mixed when building digits and then separated again when they are released. Knowing the order marbles were placed to present each digit it will be very easy to sort them back into separate pools with just a single servo per column.
They could be mechanically sorted by having one color slightly larger than the other, so a gate could separate them.
He doesn't want to have the marbled come from the top down in columns. So many people have suggested it in the comments but that's not what he wants the design to be!
Litteraly got to comments to suggest exactly the same thing 😅
One of the best projects I've seen in a while! I can't imagine the amount of frustration that you had when the marbles kept getting stuck. I always wanted to see how everything would come out together! Finally, order among chaos! Loved it! 😄😄
If you add some felt or soft materials on the spiral and some weights on the bottom of the device you can reduce the rolling and vibrating noises by a lot! This is looking really cool! Congrats!
Your dedication to this is crazy, well done on not giving up I think I would have.
yes we were all wondering why lol
I love you doing that crazy work, because so i dont have to do it.
It's definitely a marble of engineering...
No one understands the value of this joke. 🤧🔥🔥
Even if it’s not every minute, you should consider doing a live stream of just the machine doing its thing. The white noise of the marbles is relaxing, and it’s a clock. win win for keeping people focused
Wouldn't it make more sense to separate the black from the white marbles, so you can better control where a white and where a black marble should be. After the marbles fall down after telling the time, you separate them again and have separate feeds for the black and the white marbles. But I really love how you just go with your ideas and solve the problems you face. Great stuff!
Well you don't want a perfectly sort them. Part of the charm of the design is how It pushes out and uses the marbles that it needs as they go by, without having to sort them apart first.
That said, if he is not getting enough white ones mixed in to certain rows he could make a sort of churn pit to randomize them a bit more. Much simpler and you don't have to sort them twice.
Yes, looked at in a commercial sort of way it would make sense, but this is a WORK OF ART!
The man's had a brilliant idea and seen it through to completion, I love it.
More than that, in theory he already knows where each marble is. He can utilize the back space to extract the white marbles, then let the blacks all fall into the general pool. No sensors needed for that.
@@travisfabel8040 two trays at the top below the return. one distributes black marbles to each channel, one does white marbles. same idea to sort, just punt the marbles into the trays in two places instead of one. have the thing track how many marbles are in each tray (as you'll know the number going in and out) and reject marbles to the spiral return path before the trays overfill.
Knock both colors out into individual tracks that feed to the top reservoir. Then once it's got all it needs, it could have an ejector into a secondary reservoir for the extras to fill it up faster the next round.
So basically-
The top has a black and white reservoir, and only fills one at a time with a selective feed from the top. These feed into a sorter that releases them one at a time into the slots but quickly. As a safety to prevent overflow leakage into the wrong group, a dump track to the bottom could be used as well in between mode switches.
A little below this is the backup white reservoir(since they are the hardest to reliably get). With a sensor, it will trigger an "All white" mode to refill the top as needed.
At the bottom are the rest. The regular sorter that ejects black if white needs to be filled, and the original input feed.
Essentially, this takes it from "fill for the next minute," and into, "Prefill the tanks and the next minute dispenses when needed."
Is it complicated? Yes, but it would fix a lot of issues since it would be able to fill quickly. Of course, the fastest way would be to combine this with a "next minute" row that prebuilds the time for after the release. And even faster would be a vertical fill, but that's not as fun to watch.
I love the process you got through to process these. I wonder if separating the colors earlier wouldn't be easier? You have more control that way, it seems. You are a master fabricator!
This! Sort them by colour immediately after they've been used to show time and then feed them into the conveyor separately, or then use a screw feed conveyor for the lift and input marbles into it serially, converting back to parallel at the top... oh god the madness is catching
@@williamstrachan That would only add an extra level of complexity. Sorting them at the top means he can take advantage of gravity as part of the sorting process.
@@MrRobarinoyeah imo he should use the current pusher mechanism to sort into a black and white stream for each line, then use gates or another pusher to select the colours needed individually.
@techheck3358 I was thinking on that. Perhaps just sort them so the rows alternate between white/black (all white one row, then all black on 1 or 2 rows)? Sorting this way follows the clock format (one row all black, then it becomes mixed white/black for last 2 digits, then there's a black space before and after the first 2 digits).
I think if he could extend the new spiral to deposit earlier (maybe run it over the current marble storage like a double-back staircase?). That would provide enough space for a color splitter (not sure if there would be enough space to arrange a new time).
It's nice to see the comments... there are so many ways to solve this problem... but the dedication and work that Ivan Miranda is doing is absolutely amazing.
Been checking your channel fairly frequently to make sure I haven't missed anything. With all the revisions, I'm honestly shocked this vid came out this quickly.
I love this so much. It serves zero purpose other than the fact that you can say you’ve built a marble clock and that is amazing. I really hope you can get it minute by minute just for the hell of it! Good work man!!
Clocks are actually quite useful
It's always so good to see the "Mark II" of any device like this. Seeing all the things you learned and watching them get rolled forward is....ugh, it's mana for the soul
I think an idea would be to have the marbles go in vertical channels insted, that way you only need to change one number at a time insted of changing everything. That way it would be faster and be able to tell every minute insted, anyways, love how it looks, keep up the good work!
But that's not nearly as interesting to look at.
@@ZzZ-qd1zo The rule of cool is definitely a huge factor in this magnificent thing.
It's MARBELous! Seriously, one of the coolest DIY projects I could think of!
6:15 Genius idea !💡7:15 Smart thinking, we can’t assume the marbles are all perfect size to begin with.
I’m so invested in this series. And i genuinely hope he succeeds in improving this project
The way the time flows in and out is very aesthetic. Congratulations!
Got a goal ?
Go for it, whatever the trouble !!!!
Try and error ...
There is no fail, it´s just a learning curve.
You are an incredible example, hands down
You can't imagine how long I've been waiting for this video
Me too!
It’s here?!? Holy crap let’s go!!!
make one half size by condensing the segments dow to 2 marbles per segment instead of 4, also get rid of the solid black top and bottom rows, dropping the amount of rows from 13 to 8 and the amount of collums from 31 to 21, you could make the whole thing about 60% smaller, also for the rejects I would say make the chute more vertical to minimize the amount of time the marbles are moving and making noise, also putting a lid on the middle on the reject ramp may help minimize noise
Impressive. Your tenacity paid off by inspiring many people. Well done!
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this video and noticed the delay. I can’t imagine how much of your time and effort when into this project but, congratulations on this incredible creation! ❤
Respect to you, your craftsmanship, your dedication and patience.
I have been so excited to finally see this clock working. Can't wait for the next one.
I think this is my favourite video of yours
You’re a genius ❤
you sir, are an artist. i want nothing more than to reach this level of dedication to my craft.
Probably the most interesting build project I have seen on YT ❤
Thanks!
Once it's perfect, would you consider putting a live video feed of the real time clock on UA-cam streaming? Actually if you could just get a perfect 24 hour cycle uploaded that would be incredible.
очень рад, что есть такие крутые мужики, как ты. спасибо тебе.
That's a really cool project and I love how it looks when the prepared time rolls into place! :)
I also have an idea to make the clock more complex, but maybe faster.
Coarse idea: add a sorting mechanism to put the correct combination of marbles already in the elevator.
More detailed:
At the lower part of the elevator, you could detect the color and eject them (at 2 height levels) into 2 containers.
From these containers the color could be injected into the elevator with the correct position.
Problem: the sorted marbles are lower than the elevator with unsorted marbles.
Maybe the 2 containers could be at the top and the selection is directed directly into the marble tracks to prepare the time?
Bonus: This would also remove the loud overflow helix, although I really like it (would be great to watch if transparent :D ) !
i immediatly noticed the reliance on randomness and was wondering as well why he isn't using black&white reservoirs.
I think the best place to put them is not at the top, but at the bottom before the entry to the elevator.
The alternative would be to split black and white at the bottom and then have 2 elevators (or reuse the current one with a left/right split), have and feed from the elevator into those. Then feed from those into the lines through a demultiplexer.
Two elevators is great idea! With one elevator some cells may be missed so pre setup may fail@@mognakornachname7275
I think you've just invented a marble-jet print head!
Super cool, can't wait to see the next version that works be the minute. Hopefully a helpful suggestion, you could make the rejection at the bottom with the solenoids just above where the marbles enter the elevator, then use the "flexible pushers" at the top to have the apceted/nonrejected marbles enter the channels. This means no loud spiral down.
This is the most interesting clock, and also the noisiest clock. It doesn't need an alarm function because it makes alarm-like sounds every minute. However, it can also have unpredictable variations every minute. This is truly the most interesting clock I have ever seen.
I think a good option to decrease response time is to separate white and lack Marvells. With that u can choose what is more convenient each time and send a row of marvells of the color you most need. With that you can even have a constant response time. Awesome project by the way
In theory since we know which marbles are being kicked out because of the sensor you could have two slide and two places to kick the marbles out, This will probably reduce the complexity in that you won't need such a tall elevator for sorting the time marbles, reduce the noise since the slides should be smaller, but increase moving parts due to more kickers. You would still need a way of bringing sorted marbles up though a smaller 1 marble elevator or larger if more bandwidth is needed.
Yeah, instead of creating a rejection system at the very last moment (which is also apparently super loud), create a filtering system that guarantees the correct colors in each spot. Way more efficient, and probably would get times down to 1-minute updates.
Great one!! A vertical setup could help with lesser changes to marble columns than the changes in rows, it can also remove the need for smooth marbles only. Also the longer panels cause more speed for smoother marbles which when hit with other marbles could damage the smoothness
How about adjusting the ratio of black to white marbles in order to speed up the process? You need a lot more black marbles to display the time, yet the amount of black and white marbles in the storage seems equally distributed right now.
Eres una bestia Ivan!
Entre la bella y la bestia, no hay superioridad. Solo le tray a la ciencia
This turned out really cool! Returning commenter from previous concepts where I mentioned the longer than a minute problem (apparently one of many). Really interested to see how you tackle that issue. My thought was to make a bank system, where the marbles are sorted then dispensed at the top to reduce the randomness of the right color marble appearing in the right channel.
I think the easiest solution is just to sort the marbles by color and dispense from there
I admire the dedication and patience, that you had to rebuild the entire clock practically from scratch, to get the marbles to stop sticking after they are cleared out.
This needs to be the official timing parter for Jelle’s Marble Runs
Blue Sparkly wins with a time of Fenfitty Minutes and Sentty Seconds
Very impressive, you are a crazy scientist but in a good way!
10:21 "It works!"
I really felt that. 😀
This has been such an awesome series. I would love it if you set the clock up on a live stream when you finished. It's real art! ❤
Para las canicas que se quedan atascadas podrías añadir a los railes, por la parte trasera, un motor con un contrapeso para que genere vibraciones justo cuando hace el cambio de hora. Un saludo desde Galicia!!
THIS IS ART!!! This machine you built belongs in a modern art museum. I could listen and watch the balls fall for minutes to pass by. This is so soothing, and absolutely remarkable work of engineering, designing, and artistry combined. I hope you'll be able to display this for anyone to see. Tate Modern where are you at? This belongs in one of your exhibitions...
Amazing! This should be an art installation at MONA ... the Museum of Modern Art in Hobart, Tasmania.
Tassie! 👍😀
We can argue over which museum but this very much should be a functional art piece in a museum.
We all appreciate the suffering you put yourself through to create amazing content for us.
In order to make it faster, I suggest adding a second buffer.
Buffers aren't really a fix to the problem, they're just a bandade to cover up the underlying issue, he shouldn't do the "sort and releae" in one step at the top like he currently does, it would be much more efficient to only sort between white and black at the top, this way you can use 100% of the marbles transported (instead of the probably less than 20% that it's currenlty) and then release the marbles with marble gates into the clock, this system would be limited by the amout of marbles that the elevator can transport up, in this case it would be around 10 marbles/second the machine could release into the clock without running out of marbles, this would improve the display speed to a guaranteed 40 seconds, the only limiting factor is the speed of the conveyor belt (the transporting up thing) speed this up and you can improve the display speed
Oh my god, it is so satisfying to see how it showed the next time after flushing the previous. When the project actually worked. Congratulations!
this is SOO dang cool!! I've loved this story. It'd be cool if there was a montage video of you actually building the parts and testing (or coding!). Can't wait to see your "by the minute" clock.
Love seeing the evolution of this, and the metal rods are great for the aesthetics as well as function. Merry xmas and all the best for you and the channel in 2024!
this marvellous piece of engineering should be put on display somewhere… appreciate the amazing work man ❤
funnily enough Dr.D-Flo had a similar problem with his pellet extruder, after he updated the motors drivers to be silent, he fixed it by adding a vibrator to the feeder to loosen the pellets. while would of been noisier, might of worked in your case edit: i see you've done something similar, and clearly noise isn't a factor XD
Congrats on getting in the top 10 in trending man! Also cant wait until the next part is out so we can watch you solve all these problems (and probably make more that needs solving too lol 😂😅)
This is some amazing just-cause-I-can engineering!
The only major thing that comes to mind that would make this machine even more satisfying is having a transparent spinning slide. You can't tell me that being able to watch all those discarded balls race their way down wouldn't be super cool!
Seems like it would work better vertically rather than horizontally. Would also fill faster and be able to cycle more often.
Good idea, but probably not feasible with brittle glass marbles since they’d fall straight down from ≥1m height and smash into other marbles. Would probably work with ping-pong balls or tennis balls though.
Would it look as good though? Nah
Now imagine in 100 years someone finds this
really cool clock! for the noise issue introduced by the spiral, one option that you could think about is padding the spiral's floor with some kind of soft material, such as rubber. However, it needs to apply as less friction as possible to the marbles so they don't slow down.
Beautiful, Ivan!
Idea: PTFE spray coating?
wow COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ideas come to me out of the blue, but compared to me who only imagined them, you actually create them. amazing.
I thought this said glock
muito bom 👏👏👏
Marble madness! I love it. Reminds me of the old-timey airport flight update screens. I love the sounds!
form and function (for telling time not for convenience) of all of it together is fantastic man
really satisfying to see it form the numbers out of marbles
kinda like a more complicated waterfall clock
I dont know who this guy is... but I just became a fan! I love everything about this! Marbles were my childhood. Thank you sir!
Як це можна було уявити ? Це просто мега круто! Механічні компʼютеризовані часи))
Never underestimate the Italian's ability to make complicated and beautiful machines
The number change made me audibly gasp in awe, something that I do not often do despite being bombarded with awesome creations each day by multiple algorithms vying for my attention and interaction. This is absolutely marbellous! Thanks and sorry.
Imagine a public lounge somewhere, where the display part of this is in the wall, and the marbles are routed there from a soundproofed chamber. It would seem magical, and mesmerizing. What if it wasn't a clock, but displayed messages or images?
That's some Blade Runner, Harry Potter, Black Mirror level set design and I'm so here for it! @@Vinemaple
Possible optimization: invert your marble sorting algorithm, use the solenoids to reject closer to the bottom what you don't need instead of dragging them all the way up. Reduces noise, power consumption, etc. Could also check 2 or 3 slots below the actual ejector, allowing the elevator to run faster, as you'll have some buffer time.
I have no idea how you are able to make it all work, but you do. It's AMAZING!!!
Радуюсь как ребёнок вашей победе! Вы большой молодец
I don't know why you do this to yourself, but I love you for being you and doing this :) You're amazing Ivan, keep it up!
The quintessential example of do what you love.😊