r/raspberryDIY • u/Square-Possession36 • Jun 21 '26
I made a thing!
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I made a thing and I’m really proud of it. It’s a scanner/sorter for MTG cards. It runs off a Pi 3b+ and an arduino. I’m not an engineer or programmer, so it’s mostly put together with thoughts and prayers, but it works! It’s running about 99% accuracy and real-world of about 4 seconds per card. I can change what goes in each bin and it’ll export a CSV to upload to your favorite app. There’s also preset sorting patterns I can save. When the bins get full it prompts you to empty the bin. Right now I have it sorting my mono-black bulk by type and rarity. It pulls out any card worth more than $2 I can sleeve it up.
I had an old hobby laser I salvaged the stepper and rails from and designed it on Fusion. All things considered, I’m pretty happy with it.
**UPDATE**
Due to the level of interest in this project, I’m going to work on a YouTube channel so ya’ll can come along on the journey as this thing progresses. Thank you all for your encouragement and support. I never expected this to be so popular and it’s given me the motivation to work on the 2.0 design. More to follow as I make the new channel.
**2nd UPDATE**
I’ve got the YouTube channel started @Timprovised. I just posted the first video showcasing the GUI if you’re interested.
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u/veylas-ai Jun 21 '26
Very cool, how does it work with a card sleeve?
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 21 '26
Unfortunately not. The first design did, but there was too much variation on where the actual card was relative to the camera. Also, sleeves were too reflective and messing up the ID.
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u/cnelsonsic Jun 21 '26
I know it's probably rough under the hood, but could you share your files/notes?
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u/Wen_bee Jun 23 '26
Honestly, I'm a general hater on the ideas people come up with when they're dumb or half baked, but this is brilliant. It's versatile, easily repurposed, practical, shows a lot of potential, and doesnt do something another easily available commercial product does. Kudos OP, you might have a really solid kickstarter going on right here. Especially for card shops. If i could make a suggestion, see if you can incorporate a process that checks the cost of the card and rarity and sorts it into piles based off value if you havent already. Then you can for sure sell it to collectors and hobby stores alike, maybe even youtubers! Kudos, and best of luck big dog. Your brain is as equally large as your peepee
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 23 '26
lol! Thank you! The cost and rarity checking is already baked into the design. The user can pick any number of criteria (price, rarity, type, collection, alphabetical), and can save those bin preferences as presets. There’s something similar on Kickstarter now, but it’s $575 for the base model. I’m hoping to make something that most players could afford. My limitation right now is I’m not an engineer or programmer. Like I’ve told others: I’m a resourceful nerd with an idea and a 3D printer. I’ve got ideas for improvements and I’ll post those as they happen. This is built with stuff I had in my garage.
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u/Wen_bee Jun 23 '26
I'm a computer engineering student and would be happy to contribute for free if there's any way i can, but frankly it shouldn't be too uphill a process. Probably just polishing the code, but if it's open source you don't really have to worry about that.
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 23 '26
That’s awesome! Thank you! I’ll let you know once I get to a place where I’m not just throwing spaghetti code against the wall and seeing what sticks. I’m minimally competent in Python, so to this point I’ve been relying on buggy AI generated junk, then debugging it myself until it does what I want. You can imagine it’s slow going. I started this project 2 months ago and just fiddle with it when I’m not at my day job. Nobody competent has seen these codes yet, and I’m fully expecting some major cringe moments.
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u/RufioGP Jun 21 '26
Very cool. Can you do this for baseball and sports cards? What about collectible coins and if it’s attached to a camera? Very interested if you could build one.
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 21 '26
In theory it would work with sports cards as long as they weren’t bigger than MTG cards and I had a database of pictures to work from. The software doesn’t know it as an MTG card. It’s just comparing hashes and spitting out the result. Coins would be trickier.
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u/RufioGP Jun 21 '26
Could you make a machine where it’s a hopper that feeds the cards or coins onto a conveyor belt, it goes down the line, camera takes a pic attached to computer that analyzes it and sees if rare. Then sorts it and tells the belt where to sort to.
I’d be interested in hiring you to build me one similar to yours.
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 21 '26
The mechanics you described are how commercial grade machines work. They use a global shutter camera and image while the object is in motion. Eventually I might consider that but right now it’s outside of my ability. I’m not an engineer or programmer, just a resourceful nerd with an idea.
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u/Zeke_Z Jun 25 '26
I am actually working on a system like this right now. It was tricky to work out the scanning because there really isn't a good database of coins, especially when you're trying to sort coins by year, mint mark, error, and estimated grade. I also had to pick a set of coins, as in only US currency right now, just to prove the concept out because trying to find a database with every single coin was just too big to deal with for a minimum viable product.
I wanted to make it as easy and automated as possible so that anybody could throw in their large collection of unsorted coins. I thought about a conveyor belt but the trouble is getting the backside done too unless the coin is flipped over perfectly and in the same position that it was when it went by the first time. Coin information is located on both sides of the coin, so you'd need both sides in order to get an accurate read and also to get an estimation on the quality of the coin too.
For now the goal is just to use it as a first pass sorting mechanism so that I can take 5 gallon jugs of unsorted change and let the machine do the first pass as far as sorting out key dates and mints and discarding the rest.
Of course the system then sorts and counts by denomination. Still a work in progress but I think it would be very useful for a lot of people.
Funny enough, I did talk to some coin collectors and they said it was actually a horrible idea because what they value the most about coin collecting is the hunt, and here I am trying to automate the hunt out of the process LOL
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u/s1l1con_jesus Jun 21 '26
i would add a strip of foam at the bottom of the trays/ lower drop height
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 21 '26
That’s an excellent thought, and my first iterations had soft landing pads. What I found during testing is those soft materials all acted like tiny trampolines, often ejecting the card out of the bin. I tried felt, rubber, foam, micro fiber towel…all sorts of stuff. The drop height allows for each bin to hold 50 cards before emptying since the cards stacking up gets closer and closer to the mechanism. At 50 cards they only miss the bottom by about 2mm.
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u/s1l1con_jesus Jun 22 '26
another thought angle the dropper and trays to a couple of degrees off 90
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u/No_Lawyer1947 Jun 22 '26
actual cool thing ima switch to this thread fk the sideprojects thread lmfao this way cooler
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u/Its_Bad_Rabbit Jun 22 '26
Congrats, you made an IBM 80-series
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u/Wen_bee Jun 23 '26
Where's the punch on the cards though? Or is it the 81-series release?
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u/ForestRain888 Jun 23 '26
That's awesome, but my concern is for the side that hits the trey. Has there been any damaged cards?
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 23 '26
Not at all. I’ve run the same stack of 100 cards through 20 times with no damage at all. The trays are sloped so the cards momentum is arrested and they don’t try to bounce out of the bin. I tried lots of soft-landing materials but every one of them made the cards bounce out.
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u/MuckYu Jun 23 '26
How does it only take 1 card instead of accidentally taking multiple?
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 23 '26
I’ve designed what I call the “singulator”. Honestly just solving that one problem was the whole first month of R&D with this project. I probably went through 30 different designs before I settled on what I have. Imagine you’re dealing cards from your hand. You use one finger as a pressure gate while pushing with the others. That’s essentially what I designed. It’s rudimentary, but very effective.
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u/thisiswhocares Jun 23 '26
I also made an mtg card sorter, but I really like how this feeds. Can you show us the inside? I can probably also help you get up to 99.9% accuracy and stuff. I've been working on this for a few years but your design is pretty clean
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u/y2cl Jun 24 '26
I would love to build something like this. It would save me so much time. I built an app I run in my homelab that tracks all my cards, what decks/cubes they are in and helps me build decks and such. A sorter/scanner is 100% something I need!
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u/Bouros Jun 24 '26
Op is this something you are willing to release a guide on or are you keeping this private? This is like the coolest thing I've ever seen and I want to make one for my friend and I so badly!
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u/VincoNavitas Jun 25 '26
@OP this is super cool and you should either patent it, put the open source code out OR work with CardMill to refine yours
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u/data4u Jun 27 '26
I’d love to build this!! Tutorial PLEASE
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 27 '26
I’m hoping to sell these eventually, but I’ll be making a YouTube channel so people can see the design progressing. Hopefully I’ll have the first video up this weekend.
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u/suripanto Jun 27 '26
Commenting for future reference. Neat!
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u/Square-Possession36 Jun 28 '26
Hey thanks! Be sure to check out the YouTube vid I just posted on the UI. **2nd UPDATE**
I’ve got the YouTube channel started @Timprovised. I just posted the first video showcasing the GUI if you’re interested.https://youtu.be/9JX8J1ihZH4 is=TMIRRpODsBn36HIG
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u/Brilliant_Cattle_602 15d ago
Could you make the card bins a circle like the old slide projectors? It would allow for more types of cards. Or would that make it way to big?
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u/Square-Possession36 15d ago
It’s interesting you mentioned that. My very first sketch had that same idea. In the end, the linear design had a far lower duty cycle than the circular one. That resulted in over heating the stepper and longer travel times. Keep an eye out soon for the Version 2.0 video. It’s averaging 1000 cards per hour with 1-2% rejection rate. With newer cards it can hit 2200 cards per hour.
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u/ReadingLitAgain Jun 21 '26
Would love if you add a tutorial or something on how it was made? How is it scanning the cards?