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S.A.R.C.A.S.M: Slightly Annoying Rubik's Cube Automatic Solving Machine

https://github.com/vindar/SARCASM
117•chris_overseas•7h ago

Comments

derac•6h ago
The aesthetics of this are great. Nice job.

Demo: https://youtube.com/shorts/Xer4mPZZH8E

boneitis•1h ago
This is absolutely the most charming thing I've seen in a hot minute.

For anyone also thoroughly enchanted like me, there is an additional, longer demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV52RtuWXk0

Living in software land, I do wonder how hard is the undertaking to build one of my own.

As a hobbyist cuber, this project reeks of icebreaking potential for the rest of the times I'm not actively solving -- leave it on my desk next to a cube... random coworker walks by, sees and grabs the cube, shuffles it, and chucks it into the SARCASM machine, enjoys a minute of novelty, ????, profit!

wilg•5h ago
It's a cool project, but also they're really underselling the amount of work put in to make it annoying.
chris_overseas•5h ago
There's a lot more detail describing the project in a couple of forum posts here: https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/sarcasm-an-over-eng...
shmeeed•5h ago
This is a hot contender for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On The Internet In 2025. Incredible work!
stavros•4h ago
This is fantastic, how did it not get confused by the blue logo on the cube in the video?
trenchpilgrim•4h ago
Western cubes always have white opposite yellow. Japanese cubes always have white opposite blue. (The center piece on each side can be considered "fixed" relative to all moves.)
stavros•3h ago
Ahh right, I forgot the center piece defines the face color, thanks.
nneonneo•4h ago
Related - there's a Guinness record for the fastest Rubik's cube solving robot; it stands at 103 milliseconds:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ue2gZ2vxs48

https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECE/News/2025/purdue-ece-stud...

hammock•4h ago
Robotic solver is more of a physical problem than a mental one. A photo of the cube from top and bottom corners and you can solve it in a nanosecond
xiaoyu2006•4h ago
I think you built a rubik cube solving machine just to show-case your acronym ;-) Super cool work.
teunlao•3h ago
SARCASM: the only acronym worth building hardware for
noman-land•2h ago
I want an automatic scrambling machine, not an automatic solving machine. Two cubes. While you're solving one, the other one is being scrambled. Cubers spend way more time scrambling than solving. Scrambling is the annoying part that needs automating.
dullcrisp•2h ago
Can’t you just run the solving machine in reverse?
noman-land•2h ago
You can but it doesn't need to be smart at all. It doesn't need cameras. It's a much simpler machine.
boneitis•1h ago
Funny enough, that (e: the shuffle function mentioned in original thread post, just realized my awkward comment placement) sounds like a very reasonable stretch goal/feature add-on, although I'm not sure this particular machine could shuffle quickly enough for speedcuber types.
schiffern•2h ago
Yeah, it's just a software change to the existing machine. If you generate a target scrambled state it's literally the solver algorithm in reverse too.

It would be neat if it offered to scramble when you insert an already solved cube (demoed in the video), and maybe have options for the amount of randomness.

Is there an unbiased scrambling (or random generation) algorithm, or is it enough to just generate N random moves?

LVB•2h ago
I’m completely not in this space but your comment had me wondering: are there digital cube faces? That is, a real physical cube but with faces that can instantly be set to a given color?
sunnybeetroot•1h ago
This is a great question! Doesn’t seem like it’d be hard to make if it doesn’t already exist
apple1417•24m ago
They exist, but one of the problems is they're not particularly good cubes. While it might help you learn the basics, not being able to handle it like a speedcube means they're probably not going to help you get faster.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l-TWH5W-1fw

https://exmarscube.com/product/ex-mars-ai-robot-cube/

That being said, while looking up those links, I found out that, since I got out of the hobby, smart cubes have become a thing, and are made by real speedcube manufacturers.

https://www.gancube.com/products/gan-356-i-carry-smart-magic...

This is an easier problem to solve. I'm not sure if you have to solve it first or if it can identify pieces on power up, but after that it's just tracking rotations, which can be done from the (fixed position) centres alone. But if an actual speedcube manufacturer can already fit those electronics in without comprising performance, I can't imagine it's that much harder to fit some addressable LEDs on some slip-ring-esque connections. Must just not be much of a market.

alejo•1h ago
This is in my mind the hardest part as well.

I can solve the cube with the regular “easy” 3-layer approach, but I’d like to solve it faster.

The issue is that the techniques for fast solving require to learn many different patterns to get to the right solution fast.

I don’t know really how ppl that solve it fast accomplish getting to that level, but to me it would be amazing if i could just set the cube in know scrambled states that let me practice and memorize specific algorithms repeatedly until I learn them.

The problem is that I don’t know enough yet to distinguish which are those initial states, let alone setting the cube in that state, so something that could set it up for me to practice would be amazing

optimiz3•2h ago
Impressive work. Curious to how many hours of labor what the development path was. Several man-years possibly?
dugidugout•59m ago
The screen ui aestetic and audio (specifically the dubbing) remind me of the silver case series, may be a total reach, nice touches none the less!

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

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