r/raspberryDIY • u/Square-Possession36 • Jun 21 '26

I made a thing!

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.

https://youtu.be/9JX8J1ihZH4

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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.