An Arduino-Controlled Starburst Candy Dispenser

Candy dispensers are hardly a groundbreaking concept, and most of us have fond memories of PEZ dispensers in particular. But even that iconic brand required that you manually dispense the candy. Redditor Bicapitate improved on that concept and built an Arduino-controlled automatic Starburst candy dispenser.

The design that Bicapitate came up with is pretty straightforward: the Starburst candies are loaded into a chute, and when the button is pressed a motorized arm pushes out a single candy from the bottom of the stack. The arm then retracts, and gravity takes care of dropping the next candy into place. Push the button again, and the next candy is dispensed.

The frame of the candy dispenser, including the chute, is made completely from acrylic parts that were fabricated in a Glowforge laser cutter. The motor, which appears to be a small hobby servo, is controlled by an Arduino Uno. As Bicapitate points out, that’s probably a little bit of overkill for such a simple device, but it works great and now they don’t have pull Starburst out of the package themselves. Although they will still have to unwrap each individual candy, which is, of course, the most difficult part of eating Starburst.