(^34) July 2018 raspberrypi.org/magpi
hen Michael Portera
came across a few boxes
packed with trading
cards – “everything from football,
baseball, and basketball to Magic:
The Gathering (MTG)” – one of
his first thoughts was how much
the collection might be worth. As
someone who had dabbled with
MTG by buying booster packs and
playing the occasional game with
friends, he knew there was a large
Projects SHOWCASE
For his next trick, Michael Portera created a system out of
LEGO to recognise, organise, and value his vast collection of
Magic: The Gathering trading cards. David Crookes investigates
The build
and code
took Michael
ten hours
It uses LEGO
bricks – and
plastic tyres
The various
components,
Pi included,
cost $115
20–25 cards
can be
recorded
per minute
There are
20 000 official
MTG cards
Quick
Facts TRADING CARD^
SCANNER/ORGANISER
W
The project is designed to work
with Magic: The Gathering trading
cards. The fantasy game has
echoes of Dungeons & Dragons
MICHAEL PORTERA
Michael is a cybersecurity manager
who loves to create innovative projects
with Raspberry Pi boards and build
skills for Amazon Alexa.
magpi.cc/fAlqgq
secondary market and that he had
cards worth investigating.
“But looking up the cards
manually would have taken a
while, even using online scanners
or apps,” he muses. “So I wanted
to develop an automated process
using a card feeder and a scanner for
image processing.”
Motivated by the potential time
saved, he quickly got to work. The
spell-binding result was a scanner
made of LEGO, servo motors, a
camera, and a Raspberry Pi 3.
Shuffling cards
Right from the start, Michael
envisaged a simple system that
would spin and push preloaded
cards forward to be photographed
and uploaded for digital storage and
processing. The idea was to make
light work of organising and valuing
even the largest of collections.
(^34) July 2018 raspberrypi.org/magpi
The LEGO platform took a couple
of hours to build. It stores the
cards and readies them for
individual scanning
This unit contains the Camera
Module and Pi 3. The short length
of the camera’s ribbon cable
caused problems