How difficult would it be to build a device that would sort a deck of standard poker/bridge playing cards (52 cards, 13 suits, AKQJT98765432) into 4 13-card bridge hands using data obtained from a PC specifying whoch cards go to each of the 4 hands?
The computer would have a table with 52 rows and 2 columns. The first column would be the 52 cards (1=2C, 2=3C, 3=4C, ... 52=AS or something like that) and the second column would be 1/2/3/4.
The device would need:
a. Some kind of paper-handling mechanism that could move the card from the deck into one of the four bins,
b. A scanner / OCR devide to "read" the corner of the card,
c. Some logic to look the card up in the table and figure out which bins to send it to,
d. Some sort of mechanism for shunting the cards into the proper bins, and
e. A way to send/receive data to/from the PC.
Assuming this is not a million-dollar project, where would I go to get it made or who would I talk to? I live in SiIicon Valley so there ought to be the right sort of engineers handy.
Is anyone interested in working on such a project?
PS: There are some devices already in existence and I am trying to get more information about them. A couple of them are at:
but it looks like they only work with proprietary software and you may have to buy each bridge hand. I am checking into that.