Arduino/Raspberry Pi Punchcard reader

Here are the code files for the Minecraft Punchcard Reader.

This is a small box that you feed hand-punched pieces of card into with patterns punched on them, and the program will build those patterns inside Minecraft for you!

The Python code runs on Raspberry Pi, PC or Mac.

For a good write-up of what this project does and some really nice photos of it in use, please see Gemma Latham's blog post here:

[Gemma's blog] (http://www.gemmamaylatham.co.uk/portfolio-item/patterncraft/)

For those of you following along with this project live, you can build your own PunchCard reader from the materials on this website and by looking at the photos that Gemma has posted on her blog. We hope to write the build instructions up in detail over summer.

Inside this github repo, you will find the arduino source code for an Arduino Pro Micro. I buy these from here:

[Sparkfun ProMicro] (http://skpang.co.uk/catalog/pro-micro-33v8mhz-with-headers-and-anyio-firmware-p-1327.html)

Inside the box I used two pieces of veroboard cut and bolted back to back with the copper facing outwards, drilled 9 holes to line up with the holes in the punchcard, and soldered IR transmitter LEDs on one side of the board, and IR filtered photo transistors on the other. The LED's and photo transistors point through the holes in the board. The Arduino Pro-Micro then uses it's 9 analog inputs to read the voltage from each of the Photo Transistors, and work out where the holes are in the card.

I bought these parts, 9 of each, and used 1K resistors in line with each of them to limit the current that flows through them to an acceptable value.

IR Transmitter LED:

[OSRAM SFH484-2] (http://uk.farnell.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=15001&langId=44&urlRequestType=Base&partNumber=1212737&storeId=10151)

(Note, this is now being obsoleted, use this replacement part)

[OSRAM-SFG4550] (http://uk.farnell.com/osram/sfh4550/led-ir-5mm-850nm/dp/1573495)

This replacement part is 850nm compared to the phototransistor which is 880nm, but the spectrum overlaps enough and the two devices are only a couple of milimeters apart, so it still works fine.

IR receiver Phototransistor:

[Fairchild QSD123] (http://uk.farnell.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=15001&langId=44&urlRequestType=Base&partNumber=2453252&storeId=10151)

When the card is fed in and removed, a small string of hex numbers is sent via a serial port using PySerial at the Python end to read these numbers. They are then decoded into CSV data and written to a text file.

Gemma then modified Adventure 6 from the book Adventures in Minecraft to read that file and build shapes facing upwards inside Minecraft.

I based most of the python code on the anyio library that I wrote for the electronics chapter in the book: Adventures in Minecraft. The firmware in the ProMicro is loaded with the firmware of this project, but it basically works using the same techniques.

Flashing the code

Note that this code is only tested using Arduino IDE 1.0.5 with the SparkFun ProMicro from here:

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12587

Work In Progress

The new all-digital code is now finished and working on the ProMicro, and this gives us a path forward to any arduino, regardless of whether it has any analog ports or not (we don't use them any more), and any bit width from 1 to 8 bits (plus the necessary registration channel that is used to sense card insertion and removal, and blank lines with no holes punched).

The TODO list consists of:

1. Getting code running on an ATTiny85 for the one bit reader

2. Getting code running on an ATMega328P (the DIL chip as taken off of an Arduino Uno or a Gertboard)

3. Getting the serial interface on both of the above wired up to the 3.3V UART on the Raspberry Pi. (It should then just work out of the box with the existing code, providing portscan.cache has the value /dev/ttyAMA0, the config.txt has the console disabled on this port, and the initab has the getty disabled on that port.

Note that for correctly configuring the GPIO serial port on the Raspberry Pi, I have a ttyedit.pyc file inside this other project that I plan to import here in source format when I have tested everything. The script automatically checks and removes the console from config.txt and checks and removes the getty on the console from initab then reboots for you:

http://blog.whaleygeek.co.uk/raspberry-pi-neopixels-colour-mixer/

The compatibility with Raspberry Pi 3 GPIO serial is yet to be characterised, I know that they moved the uart for addition of bluetooth, and the uart mapped to the GPIO pins used to suffer from unexplained speed changes. This might have been fixed in newer kernel releases, but I haven't tried it yet.

David Whale @whaleygeek June 2015

Updated May 2016