If you’re looking for a way to make your life easier, especially in casino situations, a playing cards scanner could be a useful tool. It can scan playing cards and identify their face, number, and suit. Then it relays the information to blind people through headphones.
InventHelp inventor, David Novak, has created an IR card reader that allows blind people to identify playing cards. The device scans the cards and relays information through a speaker. The Novak Card Reader compact device can be used in casinos and anywhere else.
The card scanner is designed to allow the blind and visually impaired to play poker, blackjack, stud, horse racing and any other type of card game without having to rely on braille cards. It also comes with a built-in speaker and headphones to make it more user-friendly for the blind and visually impaired.
IR radiation from emitters 516 is emitted below the image face of the playing card and transmitted through the image of the playing card to a camera element 536. Camera element interprets the reflected IR image data from the playing card suit or rank and sends it to the camera element.
A cutoff filter 334 is positioned between the playing card and the camera to reduce the amount of visible radiation passing through the camera at a rate that is greater than a rate of reduction of IR radiation to which the camera element 536 is sensitive (for example, a vidicon camera with a sensitivity range of 2200nm). This is necessary to ensure that the reflected IR image data used for playing card rank and suit information is large.
The camera filters out radiation emitted above the playing cards to ensure that a substantial portion of the reflected IR data can be used for identification of the suit and rank. It is important to have a high percentage of the reflected IR data for the purpose of reading the suit or rank of the playing card. This is because visible light will likely be more helpful than the radiation received by camera.
A prism-mirror is another method to transmit IR through playing cards. It reflects the emitted IR below the playing cards and then directs the reflected IR data to the camera on the other side of the playing cards. Then a second lens, similar to that used by the first camera but in reverse position to the second lens, captures the reflected IR image data on the surface of the playing card.
The filtered IR image data for the playing card suit, rank, and content can then sent to a computer capable of reading that data and processing it for display, hand reading, strategy analysis and/or player comping.