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Experimenting with a DIY RFID Table and Broadcast Overlay (5 Viewers)

LaBestiole said:
You got up to 6 cards with one of your antennas or the antenna from the pn5180 package sold on amazon?
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's the max I've been able to achieve but the stacking/positioning is very sensitive beyond like 4 cards with the module's antenna. Curious to see how it improves with a custom antenna.

I remember reading somewhere something about driving two side-by-side antenna fields from the same reader but I don't remember the details. IIRC it sounded ideal for the poker use case, though. I'm going to try and find that again.

https://streamable.com/ud8ut4
 
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threw this together to clarify planned functionality at a high level:

OpenPokerRfid.drawio.png
 
Great news, boards came in today:

T2in826.jpg

(comparison of some of the colors the fab shop provides)

ILFpHQC.jpg


rasZFgt.jpg




So far I've only had time to test the 0.2a version of the board (ADG1607 muxing) but it's working perfectly! I have it reading cards off two different antennas plugged into the same board and it's working!!

Of course, I'm set to leave for the lake in a few hours (horrible timing) so I won't be able to do any more testing until Sunday/Monday.

So excitied!
 
eightyWon said:

View attachment 900727
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for your sharing. I have also purchased the equipment and am ready to start trying it out myself. Please allow me to ask you a few questions. 1. What software can output images similar to the playing cards in your video? 2. How can we better ensure the accuracy of data reading? I am looking forward to receiving your reply. Thank you.
 
eightyWon said:
Great news, boards came in today:

T2in826.jpg

(comparison of some of the colors the fab shop provides)

ILFpHQC.jpg


rasZFgt.jpg




So far I've only had time to test the 0.2a version of the board (ADG1607 muxing) but it's working perfectly! I have it reading cards off two different antennas plugged into the same board and it's working!!

Of course, I'm set to leave for the lake in a few hours (horrible timing) so I won't be able to do any more testing until Sunday/Monday.

So excitied!
Click to expand...
Looks great i really like the grey style. Where do you produce them? Jlcpcb? Pcbway?

Did you see the flex pcb? I’m thinking about incorporating rfid feature directly into a poker mat
 
LaBestiole said:
Looks great i really like the grey style. Where do you produce them? Jlcpcb? Pcbway?

Did you see the flex pcb? I’m thinking about incorporating rfid feature directly into a poker mat
Click to expand...
JLC, yeah. I did see the flex PCB, poker mat using that would be cool. I think I remember a post here linking to a Kickstarter of a guy doing mats for reading chips?
 
johnthedope666 said:
Thank you very much for your sharing. I have also purchased the equipment and am ready to start trying it out myself. Please allow me to ask you a few questions. 1. What software can output images similar to the playing cards in your video? 2. How can we better ensure the accuracy of data reading? I am looking forward to receiving your reply. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Welcome to PCF!

I used OBS to record the video. The software that created the overlay shown in the video is something I wrote.

I talk about some of the short comings of the Pepper C1 for this use case throught this thread and it's what led me to create my own hardware. That's still in progress.
 
eightyWon said:
Welcome to PCF!

I used OBS to record the video. The software that created the overlay shown in the video is something I wrote.

I talk about some of the short comings of the Pepper C1 for this use case throught this thread and it's what led me to create my own hardware. That's still in progress.
Click to expand...
Is the board currently in production? I would like to purchase it together with the antenna. Please let me know when and where it will be available. Thank you
 
What about an ETA on public web code? I've been a web dev for many years and would love to start experimenting with that part of the project. I could use any old cheap/ugly RFID readers from Amazon while your hardware is in the works.

Would gladly start adding onto it in spare time too, if interested.
 
TheLemursReturn said:
What about an ETA on public web code? I've been a web dev for many years and would love to start experimenting with that part of the project. I could use any old cheap/ugly RFID readers from Amazon while your hardware is in the works.

Would gladly start adding onto it in spare time too, if interested.
Click to expand...
There's nothing super interesting going on on the server side yet.

I've got a go application that serves HTTPS, secure websockets, and a very basic REST API.

Right now, the WSS listener (Gorilla websockets) takes JSON objects with the antenna+read UUID from the reader and blows them into a struct. I'm not even really doing anything with that yet (logging) because switching the server side to go was pretty recent.

The API literally just exposes last WSS pong time from the reader (for connection state) right now.

It also serves a few pages that are just proof of concept stuff where I'm using Poker.js to paint the cards and poker-odds-calc for the equity calculation.

I'm not ready to release anything yet but I promise you're not missing anything exciting or interesting.
 
Antenna multiplexing seems to be working really well on both boards which is very exciting because the NX3L4051 switches were a bit of a wildcard and they're about half the cost of the ADG1607 muxs which will bring the overall cost down, plus it makes it easier to find replacement switches if sourcing becomes a problem at production time.

I'm taking a deep dive into antenna tuning, having purchased a nanoVNA and started learning theory, because overall performance with many of the antennas I'm testing with isn't where I want it. I've defined my reading requirements as up to 4 loosely stacked cards at 3.5", and 6 loosely spread cards at 2.5".

New day, new antenna design:

38x41.png


This one is being produced by OSH Park to save on shipping cost and hopefully time as compared to China. it's just the boards, no assembly, and I've used them in the past for a project and they're great, though more expensive.

Getting tuning right seems like the last major technical hurdle in that the rest of the work as I see it now is stuff I know pretty well.
 
I am always monitoring and supporting posts.
I hope everything is done and I can purchase the product.
When do you think the product will be available for sale?
 
twocannons said:
I joined because of this thread. Interested in the price this might be when you are done.
Click to expand...
The project will be open source and available on github once we reach a release version. In that, you'll have all the info you need to have the hardware produced by the PCB manufacturer of your choice and the corresponding software will be available on github as well (along with source code).

There are still enough variables at this point that I'm not comfortable throwing specific cost numbers around so I'll just say that an entire setup should be pretty affordable, especially as compared to existing solutions. I'd further generalize by saying that the cost of building this RFID setup into a table should be a fraction of the cost of your typical table build.

--

Work being done of the rfidReader firmware, focusing lately on the captive portal that'll be used for initial reader configuration (connecting to wifi and pointing the reader's websocket connection to the rfidServer software):

1694291497842.png


...and a little work being done on the rfidServer portal:

1694291643476.png


Like I mentioned before, I have about zero UI creativity so we're just customizing a w3css template for now.

Hardware wise, still waiting on the new antennas from OshPark. Might start working on v0.3 of the rfidReader hardware which will focus on a better layout and implementing fixes/lessons learned from the previous two versions.
 
Never before have I been so interested in a thread/topic about which I understand not a single word that is being spoken. :ROFL: :ROFLMAO:

this may as well have been written in ancient Sumerian for all I know. Yet fascinating beyond words.

can’t wait to see the finished product!!
 
It's coming along, and it's going to be HUGE!
Redoing the software on the basis of the kivy library was an excellent decision, and one that will pay off even further if I decide to create an android app for the dealer.
At this stage, I have a satisfactory handling of the players database, I can connect to the IP address of the RFID system, and i have the start of a multi video sources handler. I'm in the process of implementing the game's logic, and it's all looking very promising !!

 
So... what do your players say about you collecting their stats? :cool
 
LaBestiole said:
It's coming along, and it's going to be HUGE!
Redoing the software on the basis of the kivy library was an excellent decision, and one that will pay off even further if I decide to create an android app for the dealer.
At this stage, I have a satisfactory handling of the players database, I can connect to the IP address of the RFID system, and i have the start of a multi video sources handler. I'm in the process of implementing the game's logic, and it's all looking very promising !!

Click to expand...
Looking fantastic!
 
What a beatiuful thread! I have tried this myself with arduino and various antennas. Took me too much time, and I gave up. Is there a single place where one could buy the hardware to get started building a table?
 
LaBestiole said:
It's coming along, and it's going to be HUGE!
Redoing the software on the basis of the kivy library was an excellent decision, and one that will pay off even further if I decide to create an android app for the dealer.
At this stage, I have a satisfactory handling of the players database, I can connect to the IP address of the RFID system, and i have the start of a multi video sources handler. I'm in the process of implementing the game's logic, and it's all looking very promising !!

Click to expand...
Congrats ! That's a major improvement :tup:
 
eightyWon said:
Oh also, if any designers are interested in volunteering a little bit of time for a logo design, PM me please?

It should be pretty straightforward, taking the classic RFID logo (square with a dot radiating waves) and tweaking it a bit with a poker flavor. The idea isn't 100% in my head so hoping a creative type can take it over the top.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Did you find help with this? If not fire me a PM and I can help you out.
 
Been taking a mental break from the hardware side for the last week or two.

Spent some time this week working on the rfidServer UI, mostly on infrastructure (websocket stuff) and deck management.

Short demo. UI is very austere and many features are still in undone, but I'm happy with the progress (best in full screen):

 
eightyWon said:
Been taking a mental break from the hardware side for the last week or two.

Spent some time this week working on the rfidServer UI, mostly on infrastructure (websocket stuff) and deck management.

Short demo. UI is very austere and many features are still in undone, but I'm happy with the progress (best in full screen):

Click to expand...
Well done ! The add-deck feature looks very intuitive.
 
Fiddling around the broadcast page UI now. Nothing major but it's an update!

I wanted to make all the major elements draggable so the screen could be rearranged to fit the needs of the broadcast. Maybe eventually resizable, too. I think it'll be possible to save the layout so that it can be loaded/reused for subsequent broadcasts.

This isn't the final design by any means and the colors are just placeholders to provide high contrast while adjusting the layout (though I don't think they actually look too bad!)

You'll be able to control what shows in each section - for instance, if you don't want to use player images and/or flags, you'll be able to turn that off. Skinning is a feature I'd like to offer in version revision 2 so you can customize the look and feel easily.

Clicking to fold specific seats is just for the demo (though that will be a feature on the dealer page). In reality, that'll be handled automatically by the software when a player's cards are mucked.

Odds for the player cards and board aren't wired together in this demo so you may notice those are off.

 

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