Comments on: Future-tech

By: Matt Gretton

Matt Gretton — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:49:36 +0000

Would there be a way to scan just a piece of text off the card, like with an OCR pen or reconfigured barcode reader? You could grab the card name or collectors number and run it against the Gatherer or Magic Workstation databases. Even just doing that to put it into a digital inventory would be a huge help to business.

By: @starwarer

@starwarer — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:46:49 +0000

When you mentioned the idea of dividers every twenty cards, in the article, if you re-number what's in the box, you also need to shift the dividers every single time. By using @adamzak's idea, you avoid this pitfall.

By the way, I love the idea of this product.

By: @adamzak

@adamzak — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:24:21 +0000

What a great project! Once you have your library catalogued the potential is endless. I'd like to see:
1- Value by box: Compare your inventory to some online price list to give you an idea of what you have
2- Value consolidation: Got a box full of jank with a few nice pieces? Run a query that will tell you which boxes have low value, or low turnover and identify which pieces you can pull out and move to a more active box. This lets you keep all those beast hunts, but tucked away in a box that will rarely ever need to be opened. You could also have it tell you which cards are the most popular and recommend moving them to trade binders.
3- There's no need to renumber the cards when you remove one. If you have dividers every 20 cards initially, they may start to pare down over time. For the computer, the numbers don't need to be contiguous, just ordered. For the human, it just means you're looking through a stack of 19 cards instead of 20. Win-win. Once a box has shrunk to the point where you can start loading more, just check out the whole box, re-sort, and number it as the next in the series.

Really excited to see how this develops!

By: lint1234

lint1234 — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 02:31:35 +0000

Love this essay! A true joy to jump in and hold on for. I haven't done programing in awhile, but after reading this I want to get my software fired up again and write a program or two. Hope to see more of future-tec and keep up the good work.

By: FateCreatr

FateCreatr — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:34:44 +0000

In reply to @torerotutor. from what i understand there has been internal talk in the past about embedding the cards with RFID chips. I can see why it's always been shot down (expense, non-uniformity of tech, no practical uses within the grasp of most gamers) but it seems like those are issues that are quickly resolving themselves. i would hope that some time soon this is done. i'd even pay more for that kind of tech if they were in all cards.

By: @torerotutor

@torerotutor — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:19:12 +0000

I want this product! I'm a drafter, i have piles of old draft decks in random places. They don't always end up being sorted or put away in a location where they wont be damaged. If i could drop my whole draft deck in the sorter, have it pull out the basics, and index the remaining cards, I'd pay good money for that. I'm guessing this could probably also be indexed in such a way where I could actually database my draft decks that run through the scanner as well.

By: kelly

kelly — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 03:30:08 +0000

Thanks for the feedback. I"m never sure how much to share of the behind-the-scenes stuff 🙂 I'll certainly try the google visual search thing. there might be an implementation there somewhere.

i know this is feasible, but it's a huge uphill battle.

By: @valorale

@valorale — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 04:38:02 +0000

Something I think is worth looking at if you havnt seen this already http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsmA-ckwe3s The Lego Mindstorm block can be programmed off a variety of languages. The default software that comes with the box is powered by Labview. My thoughts are while Legos are not the ideal hardware for durability, the actual components such as the camera and sensors might be be of use for a cheap prototype.

By: mike

mike — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 11:19:41 +0000

if you have an iphone/ipod touch4th gen, you should open up the google visual search, snap a picture and it recognizes it as a magic card and 9 out of 10 times gets the card name right. I have no idea how to implement this for cataloging etc but the recognition is there

By: chosler

chosler — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 05:28:21 +0000

This was a very deep and complex exercise that was also utterly remarkable and innovative. Loving this series already, and I have a feeling it's going to make a impact on the Magic community. What you are working on seems like a boon to store owners everywhere. Very interesting and enjoyable information and essay.

By: @JoshJMTG

@JoshJMTG — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 05:25:15 +0000

Ambitious but feasible- if your camera is good enough and you can figure out how to feed cards through the camera in a sane way that won't clog up the machinery with dust from ancient collections.