Team C8: Domo Arigato Poker Roboto
Carnegie Mellon ECE Capstone, Spring 2019: Mark McKinzie, Chris Reed and Eric Sun
Last week I worked on creating elements for the web frontend. I also finalized the websocket communication between the frontend and the server that pushes out game updates. Finally, I worked on finishing the communication between the play areas and the central computer using gRPC.
I believe I’m still on track for my tasks. Next week I will work to finish everything and prepare for our demo.
There have been no design changes and schedule changes this week. Our biggest risk is getting every part of the project working together as one unit. We know all of our individual parts work well, but putting it together cleanly in a nice looking way may be a bit difficult with budget restraints.
This week will be focused on finishing up our presentation and poster, and then putting the finishing touches on our project before our final demo.
This week I constructed the last set of poker chips with the embedded resistors and copper tape contacts. Additionally I worked with Chris to construct the dealer module to show during the demo. The shuffler module currently works with quarter decks on each side, however we ordered high torque motors so we can shuffle with a half deck on each side.
This coming week I will work on building enclosures for each of the player areas as well as one for the community area. In addition I will construct the shuffler module completely and attach it to the dealer, as well as perfecting the design for the custom designed chips.
I spent the first half of this week preparing our card dealer for our in-lab demo. After a lot of prototyping and testing of different orientations of the wheel and dealing tray, I found a reliable positioning to deal out one card at a time. I worked on hot gluing all of the separate 3D printed parts I made together and coordinating with Eric to get the timing on how long to run the server motor to deal out one card and reset the positioning of the deck.
The second half of the week was spent focusing on getting our final presentation slides and poster done with the rest of the team.
Our schedule is on track, and Mark and I be making the permanent fixture for the card shuffler and play areas this week to bring the project all together.
Last week I worked with Chris and Mark to build the dealer component. I also started building various parts of the web frontend, and the socket server that will send game updates to the players and audience.
I believe I’m still on track for my tasks. Next week I will continue work on the communication layer between the play areas and the central computer, as well as the motor driver.
This week, Mark and I focused a lot on getting the card shuffler and dealer set up. Now that the final components were printed, we had to work and file down a couple sections that did not work as planned to make more room for our motors to fit in and our cards to go through. We have been setting up and running test circuits with our motors to test the cards shuffling and dealing. We have successfully dealt a card out of our holder with our wheel, but need to work on the positioning of the actual card deck so that the wheel has good access to the deck. We have also successfully gotten the cards to be spit out of the shuffler when we use the motor, but we are ordering one with more torque so it doesn’t get stuck from the weight of the cards on top of it.
Our schedule hasn’t changed much. Mark and I will continue to improve our prototype card dealer and shuffler to have it ready for our demo this Wednesday. Once this is completed, we will start to clean up the wiring and set up of our player area and make an enclosure to more neatly contain it.
This week I made some minor fixes to the chips and chip contacts, adding extra copper tape to the center contact to bring it level with the outer ring contact so the stacked chips will register the correct resistance value.
The bulk of my work was spent on assembling the shuffler and dealer module. We printed the last of the parts and have begun to test the optimal setup for the motors in the shuffler trays and the dealer tray. We needed to file away some of the plastic on the shuffler trays to allow cards to more easily slide into the dealer tray.
Currently the shuffler works with a quarter deck in each tray, so it needs to be run twice for each round, however we purchased high torque motors which will increase the stack of cards up to a half deck on each shuffler tray. The dealer can pull cards from the bottom of a full deck easily, we simply need to optimize the angle which allows a single card to be dealt, rather than for the whole deck to slip out at once.
This week we will finalize the shuffler and dealer construction and begin constructing the play area which will hold the chip contacts, RFID readers, and E-ink displays. Once the demo is over, we will start work on the final presentation.
There have been no design changes and schedule changes this week. Our biggest risk is still the shuffler and dealer, as the chip totaling and card reading subsystems have been completed. However since all parts of the structure have been printed and the motor drivers function we are confident that this risk has been minimized.
For this week’s demo we will show our functioning chip totaling, card detection, and the shuffling and dealing, as well as an audience display.
This week I worked on fabricating more poker chips using the copper tape rather than aluminum foil. When stacked the chips add up to their parallel resistance value accurately, which allows accurate monetary value totaling. In addition I worked with Chris on testing the dealing and shuffling capabilities of the DC and servo motors. The dealer works very well, but some adjustment is necessary for the shuffler because of the low torque of the high speed motors. Possible improvements could be adjusting the angle of the shuffler trays, widening the card gap which prevents the motor from throwing cards outside of the dealer tray, or adding another motor to help start the card movement.
This coming week I will fabricate contacts for the chips which will allow their resistance to be communicated to the central computer and embedded devices. I will also work on putting together the shuffler and dealer and making any design tweaks that are necessary.
This past week I focused on 3D printing the rest of our components we needed for our shuffler/dealer mechanism. I now have the two shuffling trays, one player tray, the dealer tray and cylinder. Attached below is a picture.
This week I need to work with Mark on attaching all of our motors to our shuffler and dealer and putting it all together into one unit. Once we have it all set up, Eric can use his driver code he will write so we can test the shuffling and dealing of cards all put together.
