Automatic Card Dealer

May 7, 2008

card_dealer When playing a good game of cards, you want all the distractions to be gone. This might include dropping the dealer too so you do not take your mind off the important game. With out a dealer, what would you do though? You would choose an Automatic Poker Dealer to deal your cards. The idea sounds great to have a machine quickly whip around the table throwing cards out when needed so you can quickly move on to the next game. There is a snag though… this card dealer sounds very mechanical or like an “un-oiled ED-209″ as 888 put it. The other problem is that it takes forever for the thing to get the cards to you. Surely the frustration of a noisy and slow machine would make you beg for the real dealer to come back.

Technical Specs of the Card Dealer

Before we close out, let me just quickly cover details of the automatic poker dealer…
- PIC microprocessor coded in C
- preprogrammable games such as texas holdem (shown in video), bridge, gin, omaha, etc
- IR player position sensing using bicycle reflectors as indicators
- ultrasonic player distance sensing which determines how far to shoot the cards

The iDeal was created as part of a school project. Enjoy the “painfully slow dealing video” below, although I do wish the student the best of luck with this project. No doubt V2 will be much quicker and smoother.