This week I started to 3D print the dealer/shuffler enclosure, but ran into some issues. Our model worked fine, but it was much too large to print and would cost too much. Even after making adjustments to the dealer tray model’s design and material thickness, the cost was still very steep for a full model. We are most likely going to pivot to only printing three card trays rather than six, to still show the rotating functionality of our dealer but not have to pay for a full model. Unfortunately, since each tray would take approximately 23 hours to print, we will not have them ready for the demo on Monday, but we do have the models.

This affects our schedule a little bit because it pushes back testing of the dealer and shuffler, but since we need to 3D print less we are saving time on that. We won’t have to adjust much in the schedule, we will just have to 3D print the trays at the same time as assembling the shuffler and dealer motors this coming week.

This week I fabricated a $20 value poker chip as well as building the base contact for the chips. In addition I tested stacking multiple chips and measuring their resistance directly with a multimeter. The chips when stacked sometimes do not fully contact, but with design adjustments, that problem can be eliminated.

The shuffler and dealer complete module cannot all be 3D printed due to cost. The outer card holding base will be constructed from wood, since precision is not a major concern with that part. The dealer and shuffler modules will still be 3D printed, in order for the necessary precision to be achieved, as the motors and gears need to be able to fit in the right places and rotate as necessary.

The schedule is on track and we should have two functioning subsystems by the end of this coming week with adjustments to the chip subsystem that are necessary. We will also construct the exterior for the shuffler and dealer and begin the assembly of the motors, gears, and electronics if time remains.

One difficulty the team ran into this week is the prohibitively expensive cost of 3D printing all of the parts for the shuffler and dealer. We will pivot by 3D printing only the dealer and shuffler and constructing our final card holding base out of wood or acrylic, as the precision of that part is less important. This will not change the schedule simply because the 3D prints would have taken close to a day anyway.

For the demo we will have a functioning card detection subsystem and a functioning chip totaling subsystem for individual chips.

This week I fabricated 2 embedded resistor poker chips. The five and ten dollar valued chips both individually have the correct resistance value. The new purely plastic chips purchased to replace the chips with a metal center plane allowed the embedded resistor model to function properly. Pictures of the cut chips and fully functional chips are below.

This coming week I will fabricate the $20 chip as well as beginning to test stack values with identical chip values, as well as wiring it to the current shunt and raspberry pi and testing it in that manner. In addition I will fabricate the enclosure for the shuffler and dealer, both using 3D printing for the cylindrical portions and likely acrylic for the rectangular portions if 3D printing is expensive.

The schedule remains on track, as the MVP for chips is fabricated and needs only testing.

Early in the week I worked on our Design Review paper along with my teammates. I also completed my ethics assignment.

I worked on putting together our finalized Solidworks model of the Shuffler/Dealer that Mark and I designed. We are going to go into production of our prototype once break is over, now that we see how our parts all fit together. There is a picture below.

Since we needed to focus on the Design Review and other classes before break began, Eric and I did not get to encoding our cards yet. I did, however, apply all of the RFID stickers to one full deck of cards so that they will be ready to go once we have the code to write on the tags.

I had to modify my schedule a little bit since we could not encode our deck of cards this week. But this does not affect the schedule that much, because once we have the cards encoded that aspect of the project will be completed. Since next week is Spring Break, we built in some slack time into our schedule. Once we get back, we’ll be encoding the deck of cards and testing those, as well as starting to build our shuffler/dealer.

The most significant risk of the project is still the shuffler and dealer, for the aforementioned reasons. We have a good Solidworks model, but hooking it all up will be challenging. Another risk is trying to hook up all of the components together with our Raspberry Pi. Since our components are not finished yet, we have not been able to write or test the code that runs all of these things yet. We are still on schedule for that though, so we will just have to come to that hurdle when we are scheduled to.

There have been no changes to the design of the project or to the schedule.