Card dealing... ideas?

[sficht]

Hey ya'll,

Ok. So I'm sitting around bored thinking about a new project to start on, and what I come up with is an autonomous card shuffling/dealing bot. Essentially what I have in mind is for the bot to do a spatial mapping of a table, grid out where to deal the cards based on a game selection (keypad, push button, wireless controller, etc.) and # of players. Then, I deffinately want to add all sorts of "extras" (e.g. hand held controllers for poker games; raise, call, fold, etc.) Being more on the electrical side of crime , one problem comes to mind for me.

If I want multiple games, I'll obviously have to be able to deal card either face up or face down based on the game.

I'd rather not get too tied up in mulitple motor driven arms. So I was wondering if anyone had any ingenious solutions for this little problem. Any input guys?

 

[sficht]

Also as a side note my original thought was to just modify an existing card shuffler into this to save a bit of time. If thats the case, whatcha think?

 

[dknguyen]

HOw does a card shuffler work? It'd probably be easier to make a tower crane type thing that lifts cards off the deck rather than something like a human arm where leverage is a problem and you need lots of motors for every joint.

Or you could just make something that shoots the card out like a baseball launcher or something with a spinning friction wheel. No arms at all.

How is the hacked shuffler going to hand out cards?

I would personally go with the gun method attached to a a shuffler.

 

[sficht]

Basically the card shuffler has two separated slots on the top(pic: card dealer). There is a spinning wheel on each side that spin on different cycles grabbing 'theoretically' one card off the bottom at a time. The wheels slide the cards into the middle slot while shuffling them at the same time.

I was thinking of a spinning friction wheel as well. Here's the idea i've been toying with:

Once the cards are in the middle, I would

1.) Drop any sort of weight on top of the cards so that only one card would be dealt at a time.

-I could do this by putting some sort of extendable piece that would pop out and push down on the cards when all have been shuffled, probabbly more towards the back end of the cards.

-The reason for this is b/c I would obviously have to get rid of the plastic piece in the middle and I want to make 100% sure that only one card is dealt at a time.

2.) Use a spinning wheel (on the top of the cards) to deal out the cards face down.

-Probably have some sort of 'gummy' type material so it will create more friction on the card than a plastic material would and actually grab the card well and shoot it out.

3.) When I want to deal a card face up, then I would extend some sort of slip in front of the cards so that as the wheel spun the card out, the card would hit this slip and basically bow up and flip over.

-obviously there would be a decent amount of angle and wheel speed corrections that would have to be involved in this to make it work correctly which is why I'm thinking there may be a better way.

I attached another pic(card dealer_idea) to sort of illustrate what i mean by this. Sorry for the crude paint drawing.

What do you think about this? Or now that you've seen what the card shuffler actually looks like maybe there are other ideas that come to mind. BTW I'd rather not build a card shuffler from scratch, but would be willing to if I end up realizing the hack is going to be more work than working from scratch.

Also, on the crane note, I'm trying to make the bot deal decently fast.

 

[Hank Fletcher]

My first impression when reading your original post was (and still is) that the wheel-grip-shooting mechanism was the best way to go. I'm still not 100% about how exactly the existing shuffler works - is there any way for you to post a Youtube (or something) video? I think that'd make it easier for me to comment on your modification options.

I think your idea for flipping the cards is a good one, too, provided they're shot out of the dealer fast enough. It'll take some experimenting, particularly given variations in the playing surface (or can you control that?) and the direction the card's shooting in.

You could probably rig up something simple in an afternoon, just to play around a bit. Your test-dealer could just be manually operated while you get a feel for the mechanics of dealing a single card. Try out the spinning wheel method, see if you can aim it with consistent results, and then see if you can interfere a bit with the card to make it flip consistently, too.

Seems to me that once you've a dealer that can even just do one card, then you've got the pre-fab shuffler. Mating the two should become more apparent after you've managed to realize the dealer, so I'd focus on the mechanical properties of the dealer first.

 

[sficht]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPUmGb2ABXY

Here is a video of how the card shuffler actually works.

 

[Hank Fletcher]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPUmGb2ABXY

Here is a video of how the card shuffler actually works.

The biggest issue of mating your dealer to the shuffler that I can see now is where you would position the two relative to each other. Presumably you want to deal from the top of the deck? If so, then your extra wheel for shooting out the cards would have to retract as to not interfere with the cards when they're shuffling.

Also, you'll want to think about some kind of loading mechanism for the card being shot out (so not more than one card is dealt at a time). You could experiment with the best amount of time to power the shooting wheel so only the desired amount of cards are dealt. At the bottom of the shuffler, you could have the deck rest on a springy surface, so that the top of the deck is always positioned to point out the rifle of the dealer.

 

[Norlin]

would think that to better ensure only one card shot at a time, have one wheel feed a single card to the shooting wheel rather than having a single wheel worrying about pulling a single card and shooting it.

 

[Speakerguy]

If you want to be really awesome, make a plink-o machine but with cards getting collected at the bottom in a stack.

 

[dknguyen]

And you always have the bonus that you can stick a handle onto it with a magazine. Load in a 52 card clip and go around shooting people with it- full automatic.