BASIC turned Card Dealer?

Midnighter

I've posted here regarding my ongoing first major fine arts/engineering build, a fortune-telling machine that will spit out business-card-sized fortunes with the backs all being my own professional business card information, for great promotional purposes.

To this end, I have considered that the most crucial element of the machine's behaviors, the dealing out of a single card each time, might be out-sourced, so to speak, using the Stamp 2 controller.

There are of course ways I could jerry-rig up a stamped-metal 'holding box' with a spring-loaded plate at the bottom sufficient to keep 'reloading' as each card gets ejected. Basically I figured I'd take the spring-loaded holder, place a rubber-wheeled, fast litlte servo motor mechanism, and this would simply 'catch' each card on the top of the deck, spitting it down onto the slide I'm building, where gravity will do the rest.

But there are serious issues in custom-cobbling a "card spitter," if you will. Problems that years now as a hobbyist sleight-of-hand magician become immediately apparent for me whenever anybody mentions the word "cards" in their idea.

For one, if the pressure is too light, the cards won't reliably spit out time and time again--conversely too much pressure might not spit the card out at all, or spit the top three or four out as a lump. Or if there are humidity issues. more than one card might stick together coming out. Finally, even if the spring-load plate at the bottom is really strong, and the rubber wheel on the servo really good at snagging the cards, the fact remains that the last couple of cards might simply be too light to get the plate to give them the last 'oomph' to reach the servo's feed-wheel.

So I've been looking instead to pre-built electronic card shufflers/dealers. Machines that are specifically designed to best accommodate dealing out cards, in a methodical manner, one at a time, with few if any slip-ups of missing a card or two or getting them stuck together.

Now a standard business card is not the same as a standard playing card, however I think that I'm more willing to design my business cards/fortunes on those sizes to suit the machine, instead of trying to jerry-rig the machine to spit out the business-card side (this might be moot anyway, if the dealing machine is flexible enough to spit out business card sizes out of the box).

So here's my thinking...the card dealer machine must have some simple switch system, for on/off and activation purposes if nothing else.

Does anyone think that an electronic card dealer could be feasibly attached to a BASIC 2 controller, and sent a signal upon a specific trigger request, to spit out only one, perfectly-ejected card at a time?

I've already found plenty of affordable card-dealer models that run on batteries therefore they shouldn't compromise the "cordless" design of my final creation. So at least power shouldn't be an issue.

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

LSB

Some thoughts...

1) ATMs do this flawlessly time and time again--where do dead ones go?

2) When I think of flawless one at a time delivery I think of a stapler, not a card dealing machine. A stapler measures and delivers 1 (and only 1) staple under pretty harsh conditions. Of course so do copy machines, coin counters, and egg sorters. Maybe a rubber wheel isn't the best approach...

3) How about pinching the left edge of the cards in an arc to fan the right edges and leave some space between? A comb like device might slide between and form the basis of a device like an old juke box. This might be done when the machine is serviced.

4) I imagine a solenoid, a rather large gauge syringe, a short length of rubber hose, and the suction cup dart from a child's toy making a pretty serviceable vacuum device.

Midnighter

Thanks for that suggestion...I guess to be utterly and brutally honest to all including myself, one of the reasons I like the idea of a card dealing machine is because it's almost completely and perfectly built and suited for just this one function. I'm sincerely worried that any idea, no matter how practical, simple, or even ultimately successful, will fall to pieces and take up a lot of time and money in 'false starts' given my utter lack of serious electronics or engineering or basic fabrication expertise.

I realize that for someone trying to learn this from the ground up, it seems counter-intuitive to then try and jerry-rig pre-fabricated parts of the machinery as I'm suggesting. I guess I'd like to currently keep the experimenting down to the basic motors and lighting functions, and leave the more complex stuff like selective, consistent electronic sorting/conveying as this to something already built to handle it.

I like your idea, though, and I think I know how that would work in another future similar 'fortune-teller' I want to do more in the style of the fifties kitsch stuff (I'd even leave the 'shuffler' visible so people could see a kid's toy arrow-head with the sucker, etc.).

You raised a good point, though, which I also am grateful for...I've not specifically researched the machines yet to see if they even CAN be calibrated, any of them, to a single card action as opposed to "x number of players for poker' meaning it's pre-programmed to already spit out a number of cards to fit a game and number of players. I imagine it IS out there, but at least now I know that that's a serious deal-breaking point to look for, instead of just buying one cheap and finding out later it would take more modification and defeat the whole point of buying it to begin with.

Unsoundcode

Hi Midnighter, I see machines on a daily basis that deal with delivering one sheet of card or paper at a time at high speed. The machines I see invariably use suction as the prefered method of picking and placing. The card magazine is usually vertical with either weight or pneumatics lightly compressing the pack. The front card has its four corners slightly covered so that when the suction is applied the cards flex in the center and pop out of the magazine one at a time.·Some suction cups travel through 360 degrees, picking one card at 240 moving clockwise and placing at 90 where it is fed forward. Others use a backward forward motion but the principal is the same.

Some of the dispensers have positive pressure to gently blow the card away from the suction cups when placing. The engineering looks difficult to me but if you have the equipment and are a reasonable fabricator it's something to consider.

Jeff T.

Franklin

http://lims.mech.northwestern.edu/~design/mechatronics/2004/Team14/mech.htm·shows a dealer mechanism that's not too difficult to build.

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- Stephen

Midnighter

Thanks for the suggestions. I've seen that page regarding the automatic card dealer project, definitely has been illuminating on several aspects of my design.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Individual sheet and card handling is hard no matter how you do it and never 100% reliable. Why not have your cards printed on a continuous, perforated roll like a roll of tickets? The dispensing would be a lot easier and more reliable. Here is a company that does that kind of printing.

-Phil

Midnighter

Interesting approach. My only concern would be how to best accomodate a large roll, and what that might do to the individual cards once they're torn off. Bending and distorting seems too much a possibility. I think with the suggestions I've gotten and some ideas of my own, I can put this part of it to bed.