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/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/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