those moving parts made me nervous compared to the previous solid state design but seeing it operate that flawlessly has completely floored me. (lucky I'm not a marble)
All those little tricks he's picked up through working with everyone on the discord and all the trial and error he's done himself... It's so amazing to watch him go through such an amazing process.
But just before the queue reached the fish stairs in the back, Mr Marble saw the upcomming problem and helped speed up the marbles with a little push... Is that allowed, when stress testing? I felt kinda cheated.
That's why I'm confident it will end up in a museum. It's not only a feat of musicianship and engineering. It's a feat of the information era and crowdsourcing - the first of its kind.
@@coder0xff I find it to be the most fascinating aspect of this whole project. What was originally a singular effort by Martin has evolved into an entire online community pouring out their collective resources and expertise to help one man design one of the most intricate instruments ever made.
Engineered by nature. “Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity. ” - Leonardo da Vinci
@@mviz2299 yes the original design relied in oerfect6 balance, but it would always favour one direction, due to the corner and momentum.. or wavelength issues
Sometimes things need to be loose for reliability. It might look dodgy, but sometimes it makes that last bit of difference between a reliable machine and a paperweight
@@wombat4191 Bit of damping never hurt anyone, but this isn't an ideal solution - it'll wear and generate dust. Better off with a proper soft-ish damping material instead.
I think the old divider was quite sensitive to being level. If it isn't perfectly level from side to side, it will over time show a slight preference for the lower side.
Indeed. It was also very sensitive to its internal geometry so any machining errors will come out as a channel preference, likewise with erosion over its lifespan (which are both very real considerations in a passive sorting mechanism like this that relies on principles of balanced gravity and friction!)
I thought this too. The old divider would still work well but it would need to be perfectly horizontal in the 'exit plane' and only slope from the single entry point towards the 4 exits to ensure all forces on the marbles were more equal than previously. I still think that the V2 version of the divider is still the strongest and viable option as there are less pieces so less points of failure. An option to manually add marbles would fix any flaws if needed but I suspect a slope on a single angle would fix it's flaws and remove marble preference to the lower lanes.
I was thinking "he's building in a mole and it's going to pop up whenever the floor isn't perfectly level." Glad to see he decided to go to a mechanical splitter.
It would be also very interesting to talk about how the first design has no moving parts as opposed to the second and what their long cycle failure looks like: does the wood get eroded by the impacts? do flip flops grind themselves out making dust, or digging deeper into the wood? etc. Great video!
This is a significantly more elegant solution than the first one. Instead of relying on residual marbles to determine the next marble's position, a separate passive flipflop works much better. You basically made a very simple computer with just that single component!
Agreed, its essentially a system with binary memory instead of analog memory (the exact position of the marbles) which determines the output of the flow divider, and since each divider only has two states its easy to troubleshoot and implement now.
It also doesn't need to be as level either, since there isn't a way for marbles to favour a path on any incline; the gates guide things to exactly where they need to go.
If you look at each part he has made, he has tried to build everything as simple as possible. You never know if something might fail. Easier to fabricate a new part if the design isn't overly complicated.
You do understand that most instruments, even though they seem simple, are way more complicated and delicate than a machine he built out of plywood in his garage? Like, his example was perfect, using a midi keyboard, if you think about it, a keyboard is overcomplicated as f lol
The most beautiful thing in this video was: The secret to engineering is not to over-engineer. I love it. That will definitively go into our trainee handbook. (And why 99% is not enough, of course.)
Yes, but perfection can be the enemy of good enough. When is the last time you heard the marble machine make music? He's obsessing over 100%, but what was the objective? Sometimes you can get so lost in the minutae of perfection, you lose sight of the beauty you were trying to create in the first place.
@@pawpawstew i so want to see this beatifull machine play something, but 99% isnt enough for martin so he quits, but for probably most of us 99% is far better then expected, if he loses 0.5% marbles it doesnt really matter to the listener, he only has to have a hand full on him so every time they get low he can refill them. we all loved the first one, yet we can understand that its nowhere near good enough to go on tour, yet this one got in my opinion close enough since in normal music you also have a chance to brake a string, bow, or clog a pipe. so noone expected 100%.
@@firstnamelastname8790 i think it mightve actually been slightly off bit even if it were perfect, there was still the issue of clogging resulting in catastrophic failure in only 13 minutes, barely enough time for about 2 medium sized songs or 1 longer song. The new design not only matched the incoming flow but was able to process marbles fast enough that it'll likely never clog again there.
The marble divider is so simple, yet so brilliant! It reminds me of kids "board game" called "Gravitrax", where you build tracks for marbles. There is one part there serving as a divider (by 2), in a shape of a moving "arrow" (like a train track spike) that switches sides of a track after every marble, opening one route and closing another. So simple, yet so brilliant!!
Level 4 of that marble divider could be in the shape of the divider channels, so they won't hit the opposite wall while being divided, instead make a "V" shaped wall, so they travel smoother :)
It's like watching the musical equivalent of Elon Musk. Due to necessity, suddenly an engineer is born. This isn't the end, this isn't even the beginning of the end, this is the end of the beginning.
me and many more kept nagging on Martin to watch more "clock mechanics" videos.. show's that he rly get's more in to mechanical engineering now than music x'D
@@merlijnbakker8797 shutter speed of the camera is matching the movement speed of the machine. Look up "Helicopter rotor matches shutter speed" for a really good look at the effect
@@merlijnbakker8797 Manual fast forward (think old movie projectors) works by increasing the rate at which frames (still photos that comprise a movie picture) move through the observer’s view. In the digital world, data compression is only so good, so it starts to cut out frames to create the illusion of increased speed. If you cut out the right frames in the right order, you can create all sorts of wacky visuals. Think of the fish stair as a series of movements on camera. At the bottom of the cycle, the fish stair picks up a marble [an action we will represent with this circle icon ⏺]. Then it lifts up the marble to the next step [this one will be represented by an upward arrow 🔼]. After the fish stair reaches the top, it deposits the marble in the next step [to be represented by this square ⏹], and then goes back down [the obvious choice here is the down arrow 🔽] to begin all over again. In symbolic form the whole process looks like this: ⏺🔼⏹🔽 If we string multiple cycles together, we can get long repetitive chains: ⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽 (Five full cycles) ⏺🔼⏹🔽 ⏺🔼⏹🔽 ⏺🔼⏹🔽 ⏺🔼⏹🔽 ⏺🔼⏹🔽 Now, let’s say that we’re filming the fish stair with a camera that takes one frame every time that we would use a new symbol. If we were playing that video back at regular speed, we would just see the same thing we observed in real life: ⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽 (Still five full cycles) ⏺🔼⏹🔽 ⏺🔼⏹🔽 ⏺🔼⏹🔽 ⏺🔼⏹🔽 ⏺🔼⏹🔽 If we wanted to fast forward this video, we have to start cutting/compressing frames. Let’s say that we want to run this again at x2 speed. That means cutting out every other frame so that we can get the same length of video into half the time. With our pretend camera it would look like this: ⏺⏹⏺⏹⏺⏹⏺⏹⏺⏹ (Two frames from each cycle remain, two have been cut [✂️]) ⏺✂️⏹✂️ ⏺✂️⏹✂️ ⏺✂️⏹✂️ ⏺✂️⏹✂️ ⏺✂️⏹✂️ See how we lost all of the frames showing up and down motion of the fish stair? In your brain, that would make it look like the machine was running twice as fast (or like really bad stop-motion animation) because your brain fills in the gaps between the frames with what it imagines is happening, just like any video. But, things start to get trippy if we want to run our special video at x5 speed specifically. We would have to cut out four of every five frames, which leaves us with the following: ⏺🔼⏹🔽 (The reason it looks like this is because we are getting a different frame from each cycle and stitching them together in the right order) ⏺✂️✂️✂️ ✂️🔼✂️✂️ ✂️✂️⏹✂️ ✂️✂️✂️🔽 ✂️✂️✂️✂️ In this particular instance, even though the rest of the objects in the frame would appear to be moving five times faster than usual, the fish stair would appear to be operating at normal speed. This is what was happening with the real fish stair at x32 speed in Martin’s video. The playback was lining up just right so that the selected frames were showing the fish stair as though normal, while everything else was still being shown at great speed. Sorry for the long-winded explanation: I hope that it helps!
@@LOVEMUFFIN_official Wow, thats a clear explanation! I get it now, crazy that even the rolling marbles seem to go at their normal speed, as if they are actually unique marbles. I played it on 0.25 speed (the x32 speed part) and saw some marbles jumping back and forwards through the pmma pipe, which double proved me that Martin didnt edited the video to see if we would notice it which i thought was the case initially.
Never thought I would basically see an instrument being “debugged.” The overflowing marbles especially reminded me of memory overflow in computers. Love your work, Martin. The dragon is close to defeat. I can sense it.
I won't be surprised that when MMX sings, Martin's going to win some engineering or music award for the most intricate piece of musical instrument of the century.
The first part of the "stage 2" divider did a good job of alternating directions when the marbles were all queued up, but when that first part emptied of marbles, the next marble down preferentially landed on one side, even if the last marble through also went down that side. This caused the divider to bias toward channels 1 & 2.
The best divide by 4 is no divide by 4. There are simpler more reliable ways to recycle marbles but Martin keeps holding onto risky designs which he already saw fail in the original marble machine, like this...
@@brockstanford7608basically Martin wanted the cool visual effect of a fish stair pumping in sync with the music, and 4 at a time provided the ideal throughput. your idea (if I understand correctly) of just grabbing 4 at the bottom of the fishstair was actually suggested and prototyped, but it seemed pretty quickly dismissed for some reason.
This is, by far, one of the best engineering videos I've seen in a while. I'm a software engineer and see this contraption as "how to handle backpressure with a load balancer".
This similar "flip-flop" mechanism is used in raindrop counter of weather stations. If there is enough water on one side of the "scale" it losts it's balance and flips ower letting the rain pour out enabling at the same time the "dish" on the other side to collect water till it flips ower too. Very simple and robust mechanical solution.
Martin has yet to adhere to this standard though, the problem isn't the subassemblies but the design of the overall machine, Martin tries to apply engineering principles but he let's the musician in himself take over, both in subassemblies and in overall design, I'd argue more in overall design since it was made some time ago and he was less experienced engineering wise at that time, it still creeps up a lot though, a majority of which I would argue is because of that old overall design, as a programmer, if I get to a point in a project where I continously rewrite some part of the code because of underlying architecture I start wagering to rewrite that underlying architecture, it may be more work now, but it will save much more work in the future, and these rewrites tend to happen multiple times before an efficient and user friendly architecture is found, in the end, everything is a prototype
@@msx80 I mean no actually. Why I used the word reliable is because I want to encapsulate the idea of a very low failure rate as a whole. While making a thing resilient is important part of that, you also have to make it consistent, durable and easily repaired
It’s moments of ingenuity, designing and musical talent that remind me why Wintergatan is always worth catching! With this, it’s never “when is the next video or song”, but rather “what new creativity has he cooked up today?” Someday, I’ll be able to help support, but until then, I’ll wait on the sidelines ready for the next. :D
Well here I am in the first ones! I just need to take the opportunity to tell you how inspired I am am by this amazing madness going on and how fortunate we are to live in the same period.
Those are a lot of marbles. They probably weight a lot. I would imagine they weight enough to bend the supports for the 4 marble tubes towards the outside, towards pipes 1 and 2. Maybe that contributes to the bias you saw. Either way, the new marble divider looks to be more robust.
Martin: I’m not using flip flops for divide by four, I’ve used them before on the original marble machine, they don’t work Also Martin: I IMPROVED THE DIVIDE BY FOUR WITH FLIP FLOPS!
It would be interesting seeing this with four different coloured marbles. Test of accuracy, seeing if all the same colour ends up in the same tunnel or not (i know it's not an important feature, but it'd be neat)
I don't belive they would. If you start it with all the rockers the same way (toward the camera). Starting from the camera back would be slots 1,2,3,4. The marbles go up. The 1st marble would go into slot 1, 2nd to slot 3, 3rd into slot 2 and 4th into slot 4, repeat. Since the 4th slot marble loads 1st each time it would go to slot 1 changing the color. If I figured it out right, slot 1 and 4 would alternate between each other while slot 2 and 3 would stay the same.
@@JasonDeath It would still be neat to see... probably a great visual effect in the long term, but given the weight (and random size in glass) difference between glass and steel marbles, it would be hard to do. You couldn't just paint the marbles either... they would have to be different colors of steel, which would probably have to be specially manufactured.
I love the idea of the colored marble experiment. However, I think that depending on what music was being played, the marbles would go to different paths to hit different notes, etc, and would then have to travel back to the supply tube via different routes, and therefore would mess up the placement of each marble. Cool thought though and I'd try it anyway. 🙂
Watching the clock sped up to 32x made me think about life... So often we have moments where we can’t wait for something and wish time would run faster. But seeing hours pass like seconds made me feel uneasy. We have to enjoy the moments more
Sometimes i stare at myself on the mirror and think about my existence and why did this world and everything on and around it appear and who made everything?
This episode has the essence of the whole endeavor. It’s amazing to begin with. Then we add magic and make it incredibly fantastic. And then it’s only 99% precise. So we add galactic awesomeness. And then it’s perfect.
This dude is almost a cautionary tale. He's obviously a genius. But can't settle for anything less than perfect. Made an amazing video with original marble machine but has been slaving for years for perfection that is impossible to reach. A Tesla like character.
You are the absolute best version of a perfectionist. You demand it, but you also have the drive and skills to make it happen, while recognizing when you're getting diminishing returns. Man, you could get a job as an engineer ANYWHERE, but I can definitely also see you as a college professor. You know, once the Marble Machine World Tour wraps up :)
This video was recommended to me about a week ago and I have now gone back and watched every episode of the marble machine x playlist. Consider me a new but dedicated fan. I've loved the entire journey.
That means the elevation movement itself synchronized with the 32x video framerate, creating a movement illusion. I'm pretty sure there's a technical term for that, but i have no idea.
It’s probably intentional. With it loose it absorbs a bit of energy from the marbles, if it was tight they’d bounce back harder as the energy would reflect.
I learned about this guy a few years ago and loved his machine. The fact that he can do this shows that he is the best musician/engineer ever. If we had more machines like this the world of music would be way better, I am glad he made the machine and made me realize what music really meant
Your knowledge of physics, engineering, wood-working, and music is not only impressive, it is absolutely astonishing. If you ever find yourself in Texas I would be honored to buy you a beer
There should be a wireless emergency stop button so you can press it so the motor slows down and stops right away, so you don't need to run around and stop the machine manually
Yeah he could do that. He could also add sensors to every lane and count marbles, or analyze the vibrations, the data is fed to a little computer and an AI detects if something went wrong. A little garage on the back of the machine opens up automatically and a small quadcopter comes out to press the emergency stop button. All that for a machine he works really hard to be almost 100% reliable.
the marbles lining up perfectly when he puts in the new divide by 4 is so satisfying to watch. This machine is absolutely brilliant. I give great kudos to you, Wintergatan! this is an incredible feat of engineering to do something like this. Absolutely mesmerizing, and again, extremely satisfying to watch it in action!
This video brought me back to the Marble Machine and got me hooked on the entire channel. Just visiting this video back after seeing the previous video's of the devide by 4. Really awesome project
I love that so many people (UA-cam engineers, mostly) would have resorted to using some sort of computer and sensors to achieve this, yet this beautifully simple and elegant design shows that it’s not necessary and fantastic results can be achieved by a little bit of extra thinking. Amazing work
I don't know what this is. I don't know why UA-cam recommended this. I was fascinated the whole time with the creativity and engineering of a problem I have no context to. Keep up the good work!
@@thomasbecker9676 Should be manageable, so long as he can access everything with a good hand-vac or something here and there. And wash the marbles in mineral oil?
@@jtcbrown It means either the surfaces the marbles are on are filthy and/or one or more of those surfaces is already wearing. Imagine buying a brand new car and the oil is filthy after driving it a few miles.
@@thomasbecker9676 I suspect it is mostly from all the welding / cutting done "in production" :D But, again, this is not a car, he isn't selling it to anyone, and it should be able to be cleaned and be fine.
It’s always like 12 months of radio silence, then I get recommended another one of this guys’ videos. Not complaining, this is sick
UA-cam and Google are watching you.
I recommend the subs robe button and click the notifications to all😅
I have been waiting for a bit so I could have something to binge watch bh
LMFAO FR
WOW, look how efficiently it produces nothing of value - something I have dedicated my life to.
those moving parts made me nervous compared to the previous solid state design but seeing it operate that flawlessly has completely floored me. (lucky I'm not a marble)
Yeah, only thing I’m worried about is if the rockers could be made quieter, and how much they’ll wear.
Your stream last night was great btw.
Hi desinc I’m glad you liked my gamer village monument thing lol
DeSinc, you're everywhere
Oh hey it's Asmongloid again. You have great taste
Solid state? The original was transistor-based?
I was at first :
"Wait Martin the start of the new design seems too slow"
Then Martin was:
'it's not a bug it's a feature "
A surprise tool that will help us later
All those little tricks he's picked up through working with everyone on the discord and all the trial and error he's done himself... It's so amazing to watch him go through such an amazing process.
Every time
@@harborwolf22 the process of reiterating content at a minimum of 10k dollars a month you mean :-)
@@harborwolf22 Well said.
Recommended by UA-cam, without a reason.
Watched the entire 11:07 minutes, without a reason.
It made me happy, without a reason.
Watching that "Stress Test" was extremely satisfying.
Hahahahaha, yeah can I have more "stress" please? It's very relaxing.
And a little stressful. As soon as the large queue was through I did a big exhale lol
But just before the queue reached the fish stairs in the back, Mr Marble saw the upcomming problem and helped speed up the marbles with a little push... Is that allowed, when stress testing? I felt kinda cheated.
Weird to think that this is probably the most well-documented invention of a musical instrument in history (and probably will be for quite a while).
Imagine if the creation process of the 3 violin machine or one of the others was documented.
That's why I'm confident it will end up in a museum. It's not only a feat of musicianship and engineering. It's a feat of the information era and crowdsourcing - the first of its kind.
@@coder0xff I find it to be the most fascinating aspect of this whole project. What was originally a singular effort by Martin has evolved into an entire online community pouring out their collective resources and expertise to help one man design one of the most intricate instruments ever made.
This machine is museum worthy
Weird that 5 years of this, and still people think the original machine was a working thing and not just a prop for a music video.
I like how his log he's using to represent level 4 is actually the least engineered piece of wood on that table.
Best process, is no process ;)
"nature provide the best solution"
that's where biomimic plays role in innovation
Engineered by nature. “Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity. ”
- Leonardo da Vinci
You can NEVER beat nature... Nature is the Daddy of All
@@damiengates7581 - I don't do sky fairies... so sorry!
9:00 Got to thread lock those screws, maybe all the screws, or it falls apart from bumps and vibrations those marble causes. Pretty cool!
Makes me want to play with some shiny beautiful metallic marbles
It looks like a way to absorb energy from the marbles. It's probably done on purpose
it's been like 6 years since this guy became famous and I still can't figure out whether he's an engineer or a musician
Y not both?
He Seems To Be Both
A Musical Engineer
Yes
Yes?
False dichotomy! :)
He said..."Good engineering is also not about over engineering." What a great point there.
the most german statement ever
Why is the divider tilted? Isn't gravity causing this problem?
@@mviz2299 yes the original design relied in oerfect6 balance, but it would always favour one direction, due to the corner and momentum.. or wavelength issues
How to overengineer it ? Maybe a gate with computer control ??
As Elon Musk says it's less impressive of what an engineer can make and more impressive of what an engineer can delete.
"it's hurting not only my pride and my heart, it's also hurting my head" 🤣
I got a stupid smile on my face to see the new 4-lane splitter working perfectly!
This mans need for perfection and engineering excellence literally brings a smile to my face every time I watch his videos.
A wild matsimus appeared. Love your channel man
I'm gonna go back and watch the series again when it's done.
Or at least the more relevant update videos. It's a lot.
@@noahproulx2050 I was honestly surprised when I saw his comment
True
@@bluesap7318 I've seen him comment around a few times it's like there's a famous person who likes the same things i do,kinda crazy
9:00 Loose bolts! It even works when it's loose. Great new design! It's very similar to the classic Wintergatan Marble Machine's marble gates.
Those loose bolts are like sliding marks made by SN15 landing legs; all most inconsequential but will be fixed for next time.
Sometimes things need to be loose for reliability. It might look dodgy, but sometimes it makes that last bit of difference between a reliable machine and a paperweight
@@233kosta Yeah I think they are loose on purpose, because the marbles might bounce off the stopper in undesirable ways if it was stiff.
@@wombat4191 Bit of damping never hurt anyone, but this isn't an ideal solution - it'll wear and generate dust. Better off with a proper soft-ish damping material instead.
@@wombat4191 with the washers and difference in height between the two bolts, I think it was just an assembly oversight.
I think the old divider was quite sensitive to being level. If it isn't perfectly level from side to side, it will over time show a slight preference for the lower side.
Indeed. It was also very sensitive to its internal geometry so any machining errors will come out as a channel preference, likewise with erosion over its lifespan (which are both very real considerations in a passive sorting mechanism like this that relies on principles of balanced gravity and friction!)
it also be sensitive de vibrations
I concur with all of the above
I thought this too. The old divider would still work well but it would need to be perfectly horizontal in the 'exit plane' and only slope from the single entry point towards the 4 exits to ensure all forces on the marbles were more equal than previously. I still think that the V2 version of the divider is still the strongest and viable option as there are less pieces so less points of failure. An option to manually add marbles would fix any flaws if needed but I suspect a slope on a single angle would fix it's flaws and remove marble preference to the lower lanes.
I was thinking "he's building in a mole and it's going to pop up whenever the floor isn't perfectly level." Glad to see he decided to go to a mechanical splitter.
It would be also very interesting to talk about how the first design has no moving parts as opposed to the second and what their long cycle failure looks like: does the wood get eroded by the impacts? do flip flops grind themselves out making dust, or digging deeper into the wood? etc. Great video!
I think he would get far more part longevity if the dividers and races were made of hardened steel.
@@flyman451 But this is a VERY good way to prototype, cheaply, before the increased cost of CNC'ing metal works.
That was so incredibly satisfying! Well done!!!
I always love it when my favorite channels watch each others videos :D
Indeed it was! I love these analog gates.
This is a significantly more elegant solution than the first one. Instead of relying on residual marbles to determine the next marble's position, a separate passive flipflop works much better. You basically made a very simple computer with just that single component!
Agreed, its essentially a system with binary memory instead of analog memory (the exact position of the marbles) which determines the output of the flow divider, and since each divider only has two states its easy to troubleshoot and implement now.
Thats what i thought. A manual logic gate haha
It also doesn't need to be as level either, since there isn't a way for marbles to favour a path on any incline; the gates guide things to exactly where they need to go.
Now I'm just waiting to see a turing complete marble machine
@@pow3rstrik3 We will be doomed! Doomed I tell you!
6:11 "It is good not to have overengineering" *literally builds a marble machine to play music*
For real
Good practices are recommendations, you don't have to follow them, even if you yourself said it xd
If you look at each part he has made, he has tried to build everything as simple as possible. You never know if something might fail. Easier to fabricate a new part if the design isn't overly complicated.
You do understand that most instruments, even though they seem simple, are way more complicated and delicate than a machine he built out of plywood in his garage? Like, his example was perfect, using a midi keyboard, if you think about it, a keyboard is overcomplicated as f lol
2:22 Nope, it still was dividing equally lol it just appeared so as 1 and 2 *STAYED* full
The most beautiful thing in this video was: The secret to engineering is not to over-engineer. I love it. That will definitively go into our trainee handbook. (And why 99% is not enough, of course.)
Yes, but perfection can be the enemy of good enough. When is the last time you heard the marble machine make music? He's obsessing over 100%, but what was the objective? Sometimes you can get so lost in the minutae of perfection, you lose sight of the beauty you were trying to create in the first place.
anyone can make a bridge that stands up
an engineer can make a bridge that barely stands up
@@pawpawstew i so want to see this beatifull machine play something, but 99% isnt enough for martin so he quits, but for probably most of us 99% is far better then expected, if he loses 0.5% marbles it doesnt really matter to the listener, he only has to have a hand full on him so every time they get low he can refill them. we all loved the first one, yet we can understand that its nowhere near good enough to go on tour, yet this one got in my opinion close enough since in normal music you also have a chance to brake a string, bow, or clog a pipe. so noone expected 100%.
@@patdbus really sad we are never going to see or hear this in action 😢
I have no idea what is going on here or why it was recommended to me, but this was super calming.
If you haven't already you gotta watch one of his videos where he is actually using it to make music.
May e 1yrs ago u watched his music video. 😂🤔
This is basically a newer version of the marble machine
He's building a new, better marble-actuated "music box." Here's his first one in full operation:
ua-cam.com/video/IvUU8joBb1Q/v-deo.html
@@joesterling4299 you mean marble machine X?
"Dis is perfect"
several weeks later:
"it's not perfect ENOUGH!"
Unmistakeably German :D
@@slingshot99 he ain't German though
@Homunculus Yes he is
2:22 Nope, it still was dividing equally lol it just appeared so as 1 and 2 *STAYED* full
@@firstnamelastname8790 i think it mightve actually been slightly off bit even if it were perfect, there was still the issue of clogging resulting in catastrophic failure in only 13 minutes, barely enough time for about 2 medium sized songs or 1 longer song. The new design not only matched the incoming flow but was able to process marbles fast enough that it'll likely never clog again there.
This guys whole life is dedicated to this strange musical machine. Incredible.
This is musical machine ?
I call da Boliz!
@@hassanmohammed6755 yes
@@hassanmohammed6755 haven't you seen his original wintergatten marble machine video?
@@hassanmohammed6755 Yes. It drops those metal bearings to make sound.
The marble divider is so simple, yet so brilliant! It reminds me of kids "board game" called "Gravitrax", where you build tracks for marbles. There is one part there serving as a divider (by 2), in a shape of a moving "arrow" (like a train track spike) that switches sides of a track after every marble, opening one route and closing another. So simple, yet so brilliant!!
Level 4 of that marble divider could be in the shape of the divider channels, so they won't hit the opposite wall while being divided, instead make a "V" shaped wall, so they travel smoother :)
Martin is becoming a teacher instead of being a student! Progress had been achieved 👍
Edit: Thanks for over 1k likes, I 💕 this community!
It's like watching the musical equivalent of Elon Musk. Due to necessity, suddenly an engineer is born.
This isn't the end, this isn't even the beginning of the end, this is the end of the beginning.
me and many more kept nagging on Martin to watch more "clock mechanics" videos.. show's that he rly get's more in to mechanical engineering now than music x'D
@@jtjames79 Well, minus the sociopathy, thankfully
Well to be fair, Martin is the only real MMX teacher out there🤷🏼♂️
When will he learn to finish what he started?
The moment that you realize that the MMX is harmonic at x32 playback and the fish stair appears to be functioning at normal speed.
Thats creepy!
How does that happen?
@@merlijnbakker8797 shutter speed of the camera is matching the movement speed of the machine.
Look up "Helicopter rotor matches shutter speed" for a really good look at the effect
@@merlijnbakker8797 Manual fast forward (think old movie projectors) works by increasing the rate at which frames (still photos that comprise a movie picture) move through the observer’s view. In the digital world, data compression is only so good, so it starts to cut out frames to create the illusion of increased speed. If you cut out the right frames in the right order, you can create all sorts of wacky visuals.
Think of the fish stair as a series of movements on camera. At the bottom of the cycle, the fish stair picks up a marble [an action we will represent with this circle icon ⏺]. Then it lifts up the marble to the next step [this one will be represented by an upward arrow 🔼]. After the fish stair reaches the top, it deposits the marble in the next step [to be represented by this square ⏹], and then goes back down [the obvious choice here is the down arrow 🔽] to begin all over again. In symbolic form the whole process looks like this:
⏺🔼⏹🔽
If we string multiple cycles together, we can get long repetitive chains:
⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽
(Five full cycles)
⏺🔼⏹🔽
⏺🔼⏹🔽
⏺🔼⏹🔽
⏺🔼⏹🔽
⏺🔼⏹🔽
Now, let’s say that we’re filming the fish stair with a camera that takes one frame every time that we would use a new symbol. If we were playing that video back at regular speed, we would just see the same thing we observed in real life:
⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽⏺🔼⏹🔽
(Still five full cycles)
⏺🔼⏹🔽
⏺🔼⏹🔽
⏺🔼⏹🔽
⏺🔼⏹🔽
⏺🔼⏹🔽
If we wanted to fast forward this video, we have to start cutting/compressing frames. Let’s say that we want to run this again at x2 speed. That means cutting out every other frame so that we can get the same length of video into half the time. With our pretend camera it would look like this:
⏺⏹⏺⏹⏺⏹⏺⏹⏺⏹
(Two frames from each cycle remain, two have been cut [✂️])
⏺✂️⏹✂️
⏺✂️⏹✂️
⏺✂️⏹✂️
⏺✂️⏹✂️
⏺✂️⏹✂️
See how we lost all of the frames showing up and down motion of the fish stair? In your brain, that would make it look like the machine was running twice as fast (or like really bad stop-motion animation) because your brain fills in the gaps between the frames with what it imagines is happening, just like any video. But, things start to get trippy if we want to run our special video at x5 speed specifically. We would have to cut out four of every five frames, which leaves us with the following:
⏺🔼⏹🔽
(The reason it looks like this is because we are getting a different frame from each cycle and stitching them together in the right order)
⏺✂️✂️✂️
✂️🔼✂️✂️
✂️✂️⏹✂️
✂️✂️✂️🔽
✂️✂️✂️✂️
In this particular instance, even though the rest of the objects in the frame would appear to be moving five times faster than usual, the fish stair would appear to be operating at normal speed. This is what was happening with the real fish stair at x32 speed in Martin’s video. The playback was lining up just right so that the selected frames were showing the fish stair as though normal, while everything else was still being shown at great speed.
Sorry for the long-winded explanation: I hope that it helps!
@@LOVEMUFFIN_official Wow, thats a clear explanation! I get it now, crazy that even the rolling marbles seem to go at their normal speed, as if they are actually unique marbles. I played it on 0.25 speed (the x32 speed part) and saw some marbles jumping back and forwards through the pmma pipe, which double proved me that Martin didnt edited the video to see if we would notice it which i thought was the case initially.
*Someone: Playing with marbles is no rocket science*
*This Guy:*
Yeah. It's Physics and logic/statistics.
Those are ball bearings
@@mchinZR lol
Too bad he's seek for perfection lead to the project's death.
@@Speed001 I think he's taken the statistics out of it.
No one:
UA-cam: Remember how good Marble Machine was? Here's a LOT of details.
Next episode: "It made too much noise, so I had to scrap it."
and its ugly
I thought its ugly too, but then I named it as a frog-desing. Then became nice Wilsons friend.
"Pain is temporary..."
😂
I could be imagining things, but to me it sounded more quiet than the marbles moving along the top and possibly even in the pipes.
Never thought I would basically see an instrument being “debugged.” The overflowing marbles especially reminded me of memory overflow in computers.
Love your work, Martin.
The dragon is close to defeat. I can sense it.
I won't be surprised that when MMX sings, Martin's going to win some engineering or music award for the most intricate piece of musical instrument of the century.
@@firstnamelastname8790 did you reply to the wrong comment?
What the hell happened here? I saw it still in feed.
The first part of the "stage 2" divider did a good job of alternating directions when the marbles were all queued up, but when that first part emptied of marbles, the next marble down preferentially landed on one side, even if the last marble through also went down that side. This caused the divider to bias toward channels 1 & 2.
Dude, i have been following this creation for 6 years. You're one hell of a musician and engineer. I absolutely love all that you're doing with this!
You've saved me the time of making the very same comment.
@@onetdev Thank you and you're welcome! I wanted to say so much more. But, less is more.
Rockers have always worked well for me. I’ll always use that method when I need equal division. Glad it’s working out for you!
just subscribed to you, your channel looks interesting :)
But it does introduce some noise, but you could change where it flows into the flop, maybe another bit of pipe or slight angle change.
The best divide by 4 is no divide by 4. There are simpler more reliable ways to recycle marbles but Martin keeps holding onto risky designs which he already saw fail in the original marble machine, like this...
@@tommj4365 I don't understand the need for a divide by 4, one at a time. Why not divide by 4, always grabbing four at a time?
@@brockstanford7608basically Martin wanted the cool visual effect of a fish stair pumping in sync with the music, and 4 at a time provided the ideal throughput. your idea (if I understand correctly) of just grabbing 4 at the bottom of the fishstair was actually suggested and prototyped, but it seemed pretty quickly dismissed for some reason.
This is, by far, one of the best engineering videos I've seen in a while. I'm a software engineer and see this contraption as "how to handle backpressure with a load balancer".
In that context this would just be a round-robin LB, right?
The engineering is as beautiful as the music from these machines. Astounding. The woodworking is much more refined in this model too.
"What instruments do you play?"
"Oh you know, piano, bass, marbles, guita-"
"Marbles?"
piano, bass, marbles, guitarr, drums, modulin, typewriter, theremin, xylophone, muscial saw. what doesn't this man play?
"what instrument do you play?"
*SHOWS THE WINTERGATAN INSTRUMENT WALL*
Don't forget the frisbee ;-)
Ball bearings
I feel like Martin also plays the washers... Definitely in the uttermost beautiful way he pronounces it.
This similar "flip-flop" mechanism is used in raindrop counter of weather stations. If there is enough water on one side of the "scale" it losts it's balance and flips ower letting the rain pour out enabling at the same time the "dish" on the other side to collect water till it flips ower too. Very simple and robust mechanical solution.
Cool. I used this to make a rain counter once. Instead of measuring the amount of rain, I needed only to count the number of flips and flops
What this series has taught me:
"Make it simple and reliable."
You mean Resilient
make it idiot proof. problem is ...theres always a better idiot
The KISS principle.
Martin has yet to adhere to this standard though, the problem isn't the subassemblies but the design of the overall machine,
Martin tries to apply engineering principles but he let's the musician in himself take over, both in subassemblies and in overall design, I'd argue more in overall design since it was made some time ago and he was less experienced engineering wise at that time, it still creeps up a lot though, a majority of which I would argue is because of that old overall design,
as a programmer, if I get to a point in a project where I continously rewrite some part of the code because of underlying architecture I start wagering to rewrite that underlying architecture, it may be more work now, but it will save much more work in the future, and these rewrites tend to happen multiple times before an efficient and user friendly architecture is found, in the end, everything is a prototype
@@msx80 I mean no actually. Why I used the word reliable is because I want to encapsulate the idea of a very low failure rate as a whole. While making a thing resilient is important part of that, you also have to make it consistent, durable and easily repaired
It’s moments of ingenuity, designing and musical talent that remind me why Wintergatan is always worth catching!
With this, it’s never “when is the next video or song”, but rather “what new creativity has he cooked up today?”
Someday, I’ll be able to help support, but until then, I’ll wait on the sidelines ready for the next. :D
Well here I am in the first ones! I just need to take the opportunity to tell you how inspired I am am by this amazing madness going on and how fortunate we are to live in the same period.
Indeed
I feel the same! This is awesome. we're blessed
It's like one of those satisfying repeating 3d renders but it's real. I love it so much. So satisfying.
This machine is like a fully self sustained functional factory in Satisfactory.
Completely relatable
or factorio!
This man has sunk an amazing number of hours into optimizing a machine to efficiently do absolutely nothing at all.
I am amazed.
It really reminds me of the time spent on factorio, but way more satisfying to watch.
Nothing? Keep watching more of his vids and you'll realise that it's far from it!
@@themastermoo dont tell me
That's kind of like saying fitness is useless because your just lifting weights to put them back in the same place again.
I think he has lost his marbles
Those are a lot of marbles. They probably weight a lot. I would imagine they weight enough to bend the supports for the 4 marble tubes towards the outside, towards pipes 1 and 2. Maybe that contributes to the bias you saw. Either way, the new marble divider looks to be more robust.
I estimate there is (front to back) 61, 60, 59, and 59 marbles in the tubes to the pinch. So yeah that is a decent amount of weight.
Martin: I’m not using flip flops for divide by four, I’ve used them before on the original marble machine, they don’t work
Also Martin: I IMPROVED THE DIVIDE BY FOUR WITH FLIP FLOPS!
It would be interesting seeing this with four different coloured marbles. Test of accuracy, seeing if all the same colour ends up in the same tunnel or not (i know it's not an important feature, but it'd be neat)
I don't belive they would. If you start it with all the rockers the same way (toward the camera). Starting from the camera back would be slots 1,2,3,4. The marbles go up. The 1st marble would go into slot 1, 2nd to slot 3, 3rd into slot 2 and 4th into slot 4, repeat. Since the 4th slot marble loads 1st each time it would go to slot 1 changing the color. If I figured it out right, slot 1 and 4 would alternate between each other while slot 2 and 3 would stay the same.
@@JasonDeath It would still be neat to see... probably a great visual effect in the long term, but given the weight (and random size in glass) difference between glass and steel marbles, it would be hard to do. You couldn't just paint the marbles either... they would have to be different colors of steel, which would probably have to be specially manufactured.
I love the idea of the colored marble experiment. However, I think that depending on what music was being played, the marbles would go to different paths to hit different notes, etc, and would then have to travel back to the supply tube via different routes, and therefore would mess up the placement of each marble. Cool thought though and I'd try it anyway. 🙂
accuracy when not playing, but if they jump "out" back to the system in different speed, then all stuff will change
It's so calming watching/listening to those marbles. Your revision of the flip-flop thing was great!
Watching the clock sped up to 32x made me think about life...
So often we have moments where we can’t wait for something and wish time would run faster. But seeing hours pass like seconds made me feel uneasy. We have to enjoy the moments more
..passing so fast you can't see it move.
Dust in the wind....all we are is dust in the wind
I get u, but even at 32x speed, it takes 2 seconds for a minute to pass.
~2 minutes for 1 hour to pass.
So time really wasn't moving that fast.
Sometimes i stare at myself on the mirror and think about my existence and why did this world and everything on and around it appear and who made everything?
@@dirtblock1383 mind-numbing questions that can either break you or deliver you to freedom.
The thing we need to learn from this man is we can always improve to be better, even than 99%. Damn.
This episode has the essence of the whole endeavor. It’s amazing to begin with. Then we add magic and make it incredibly fantastic. And then it’s only 99% precise. So we add galactic awesomeness. And then it’s perfect.
This dude is almost a cautionary tale. He's obviously a genius. But can't settle for anything less than perfect. Made an amazing video with original marble machine but has been slaving for years for perfection that is impossible to reach. A Tesla like character.
Seeing the marble queue stay at nearly the exact same spot at 32x speed is dreamy
10:50 He's going to need to add another digit to that counter soon!
First I thought you are talking about the overflow at 3:10.
I thought the old divide by 4 looked sleek but this one is BEAUTIFUL. The old one almost looks dinky in comparison! Well done, Martin!
You are the absolute best version of a perfectionist. You demand it, but you also have the drive and skills to make it happen, while recognizing when you're getting diminishing returns.
Man, you could get a job as an engineer ANYWHERE, but I can definitely also see you as a college professor. You know, once the Marble Machine World Tour wraps up :)
Would be neat if you could add a mechanical marble counter that displays how many marbles rolled through the machine per song/concert/tour/total.
This this! I think having a count that's from the bottom, as that will show how many marbles that are used to make the music.
definitely!!
@@raphaelho3551 failing marbles (not that we want to see some) will get their own counter, labeled "body count"?
Great idea. I've watched musicians play and wondered just how many notes they just played. Now we'd know!
Where would the counter go?
Martin looks quite short compared to the monstrous MMX
It's even taller when it unfolds to its humanoid form.
@@hamletksquid2702 I always knew the marble machine was a transformer
@@hamletksquid2702 😂
@@hamletksquid2702 Why can i hear... scribbling.... what’s that number...? 3.....4...?
He is not only a good musician but also a good engineer who happen to be a good carpenter as well..cuz that carving was smooth af😺
I see that, amazing woodworking and design.
It's all CNC
8:16 You can see one of the small screws is getting lose from the impact.
they were already doing that
He probably kept them loose to reduce the kinetic energy from the marbles
Parents: So what do you want to do when you grow up?
Kid: I’m going to make money playing with marbles!
Parents: 😑…
My 4 year old says this (he even made up a new term for it: 'marbleologist') and I'm all for it!
Well I can just imagine his parents' reaction if he said "I'm going to make money playing with mah balls!".
@admrlty
Haha, awe that’s cute!
@G H
Haha , omg. 😂
Very satisfying to see those marbles line up at 32x speed.
as a Factorio player i have to say your splitters are getting so much better. hope your sushi belt will saturate as even as possible. :)
God, his setup makes me want to go BACK to Factorio.
@@MrFullCrumb01 ua-cam.com/video/FbFJZUwmUZE/v-deo.html
This video was recommended to me about a week ago and I have now gone back and watched every episode of the marble machine x playlist.
Consider me a new but dedicated fan. I've loved the entire journey.
7:50 it's funny the framerate makes the elevator look like it's in slow motion. Perfectly. 😂
That means the elevation movement itself synchronized with the 32x video framerate, creating a movement illusion. I'm pretty sure there's a technical term for that, but i have no idea.
6:45 satisfaction starts here
Ty
That loose screw at the flip flop is freakin me out
ikr
It’s probably intentional. With it loose it absorbs a bit of energy from the marbles, if it was tight they’d bounce back harder as the energy would reflect.
This guy has a screw loose.
@@DanStaal it was thight in the beginning, got loose, probably would fail over time, and it also bothered me
I learned about this guy a few years ago and loved his machine. The fact that he can do this shows that he is the best musician/engineer ever. If we had more machines like this the world of music would be way better, I am glad he made the machine and made me realize what music really meant
Your knowledge of physics, engineering, wood-working, and music is not only impressive, it is absolutely astonishing. If you ever find yourself in Texas I would be honored to buy you a beer
Seeing how this has evolved from the first MM version is absolutely fascinating .
There should be a wireless emergency stop button so you can press it so the motor slows down and stops right away, so you don't need to run around and stop the machine manually
Not necessarily wireless, even having a wired button that's a few feet away from the machine would work great too
Why not a remote control? 😎
That would be one of the failure modes he could implement, but hey... getting it to 99,999999%, it doesn't need any! :)
Yeah he could do that. He could also add sensors to every lane and count marbles, or analyze the vibrations, the data is fed to a little computer and an AI detects if something went wrong. A little garage on the back of the machine opens up automatically and a small quadcopter comes out to press the emergency stop button.
All that for a machine he works really hard to be almost 100% reliable.
This is so inspiring for me, combination of wood and metal, sound and technology. I love it!
That small ramp to the first flip flop was genius
This reminds me of a guided tour through a ships engine, where the guide tries to speak louder that the running engine.
"Min stim stow wow" - Po-Han, The Sand Pebbles
Hey
this guy is a musiciangineer.
thats far beyond our imaginations
the marbles lining up perfectly when he puts in the new divide by 4 is so satisfying to watch. This machine is absolutely brilliant. I give great kudos to you, Wintergatan! this is an incredible feat of engineering to do something like this. Absolutely mesmerizing, and again, extremely satisfying to watch it in action!
This man waited for it to be 12 o'clock every time to record the timelapse so that it looks tidy. Now THATS dedication
Do you think maybe he just reset the clock every time lmao
@@SubterraStars that’s my joke damn, I knew people would take me seriously 😥
@@SubterraStars r/whoosh
Randomly got this genius on my recommended, and I am pleased
Welcome on this wild ride lol, hope you enjoy it
@@bhaskararaka thanks lol
Another video, another good day. Thanks for all your work!!
This video brought me back to the Marble Machine and got me hooked on the entire channel. Just visiting this video back after seeing the previous video's of the devide by 4. Really awesome project
Im glad this ended up on my recommendation page its really cool and satisfying to watch also im learning too
Look at the 32x timelaps at 7:50 it looks absolutely beautiful
Harmonic slow motion thingies! Awesome!
When he started pulling and pushing the table for the 3rd stick I lost it 😂
“Amazing” and “genius” get used for so many good things. This is an amazing machine made by a genius.
At this rate you'll soon be mining Bitcoin on the thing!
You can almost hear the coins dropping now! Except you won't because he designed for silence.
Next Video: "Installing a nuclear reactor on the MMX"
The early signs of obsessive perfectionism were right in front of us all along, we just didn’t realize it until the the MMX got cannibalized
Every time I see a thumpnail I think: "Dear God a new part, wonder whether it's angle grinding time"
I don’t even know what this is, I just enjoying ball rolling around perfectly and balanced, great job man!
It's like everyone is watching a guy tuning its instrument and enjoying it.
That new divide by four is absolutely beautiful.
I love that so many people (UA-cam engineers, mostly) would have resorted to using some sort of computer and sensors to achieve this, yet this beautifully simple and elegant design shows that it’s not necessary and fantastic results can be achieved by a little bit of extra thinking. Amazing work
I don't know what this is. I don't know why UA-cam recommended this. I was fascinated the whole time with the creativity and engineering of a problem I have no context to.
Keep up the good work!
"What is my purpose?"
"You divide marbles into 4 tracks."
"Oh my God."
I love how all these years, he still looks like a mad scientist
- Сынок, ты хочешь стать инженером или музыкантом?
- Да.
Translation:
- Son, do you want to become an Engineer or Musician?
- Yes.
@@guiorgy thx
Great, now you need TWO degrees to not make any money.
😂😂
@@guiorgy I pronounced that second line as “da” do I win any points?
I am working as a software tester and you talking about the different types of resliency and types of testing made me smile.
It's interesting watching your new part get dirty from the marbles.
That's not a good thing though.
@@thomasbecker9676 looks like it's from the black plastic flops?
@@thomasbecker9676 Should be manageable, so long as he can access everything with a good hand-vac or something here and there.
And wash the marbles in mineral oil?
@@jtcbrown It means either the surfaces the marbles are on are filthy and/or one or more of those surfaces is already wearing. Imagine buying a brand new car and the oil is filthy after driving it a few miles.
@@thomasbecker9676 I suspect it is mostly from all the welding / cutting done "in production" :D
But, again, this is not a car, he isn't selling it to anyone, and it should be able to be cleaned and be fine.
I was a big fan of the old, non-mechanical divide by four. And I’m a big fan of the new one! It works great and has a lot of visual personality.
i dont know where u pop up, but the recommendation knows my taste right
Analog genius, and hard work. Super fun to watch the synchronicity and flow. Great design