Project Name

Poker Hand Identifier (Balatro in real life)

info

Author: Andrei Profir
GitHub Project Link: https://github.com/UPB-PMRust-Students/project-Razapriest

Description

This device uses a camera to look at a Poker Hand and determine what type of hand it is (Flush, Two Pair, etc.). It also computes a score for the user, based on my criteria. How it works is that a camera will be mounted somehow in a higher position, so it sees a 5-card poker hand, and it uses a pattern-matching algorithm to determine the rank and suit of cards, then sends that information to be computed by the hand detecting logic and for the score to be calculated. Additionally, cards that are considered scoring (so for example, in a Flush, all of them, but in a Pair, only 2 of them) will have a small Blue LED light up above them and a ding sound be made when their rank is added to the score.

Motivation

Over the past few weeks, I have been playing a lot of Balatro. It's a video game where you make poker hands and get a score (I know it sounds lame but trust me it won game of the year for a reason). As I was playing it to procrastinate for this project, a brilliant idea came to mind, why don't I build this game in real life? This will be just a prototype, but it will work for a regular deck of cards and will be able to compute a score. To be completely honest, this project isn't really something "useful" in day-to-day life, but it is a very fun concept for me and I'm looking forward to building it, I'm sure people will find it cool.

Architecture

Log

Week 5 - 11 May

This week I did research on my idea and made preparations for starting the project. The first thing I did, since components didn't arrive yet, was to try and do the hand and score computation logic. I wrote the code initially in C++, because I am more familiar with that language and I can work on it comfortably, so later on I can translate it to rust and fix any problems that may arise. In the meantime, the components arrived. I made sure I had everything and I looked into how they must be connected and what they can and can't exactly do.

Week 12 - 18 May

Week 19 - 25 May

Hardware

For the hardware, I use a Raspberry Pi Pico WH for convenience-sake, a breadboard, a power source, a couple of wires and adaptors, a buzzer, 5 LEDs with their according resistors, and of course, a camera with a module that gives it the needed compatibility. I will expand on this part of the documentation as I start working on the project and I get more familiar with the hardware.

Schematics

TBA

Bill of Materials

Device	Usage	Price
[Raspberry Pi Pico WH]	The microcontroller	[56.23 RON]
[ESP32 Module with camera]	The camera	[65.93 RON]
[Breadboard + Wires + Power Source kit]	The base of the project	[42.23 RON]
[USB-TTL UART converter]	Needed for sending data	[6.64 RON]
[2x OLED Displays]	The displays	[41.98 RON]
[5x LEDs + 5x Resistors]	The LEDs	[2.85 RON]
[Piezo Active Buzzer]	Hopefully for a "ding" sound	[4.02 RON]
[Extra stuff like wires, adaptors, buttons]	The extras	[18.71 RON]

All products ordered from ArduShop: https://ardushop.ro/ro/

Software

Library	Description	Usage
st7789	Display driver for ST7789	Used for the display for the Pico Explorer Base
embedded-graphics	2D graphics library	Used for drawing to the display

Leaving this as default for now, will add when I start working.

Links

1. link
2. link ...