Raspberry Pi Table Project Idea (2 Viewers)

wetfoot

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My idea on this project would be to build in a small LCD screen (3.5" or 7") at each player location powered by a Raspberry Pi device. The screen at each seat could display seat number, a digital dealer button, blinds, clock, timer, messages, etc...

Getting blinds, round, timer info should be straight forwarder. I use Tournament Director software which provides a status update feature that will send tournament info to a web server. Each Pi device would be setup to launch a browser in full screen(kiosk mode) and refresh every n seconds to display the tournament info sent from the TD software. The dealer button would take a little more effort and I'm still thinking about potential designs mainly around controlling position of the button.

I already have a couple Raspberry Pi devices, so yesterday I ordered both size screens and a breakout kit to play with LEDs and switches. This should give me enough hardware to get started testing different ideas.

At this point it's still in proof of concept phase and not sure if I will build the table, but would love any feedback\ideas you all might have on a table like this.
 
My idea on this project would be to build in a small LCD screen (3.5" or 7") at each player location powered by a Raspberry Pi device. The screen at each seat could display seat number, a digital dealer button, blinds, clock, timer, messages, etc...

Getting blinds, round, timer info should be straight forwarder. I use Tournament Director software which provides a status update feature that will send tournament info to a web server. Each Pi device would be setup to launch a browser in full screen(kiosk mode) and refresh every n seconds to display the tournament info sent from the TD software. The dealer button would take a little more effort and I'm still thinking about potential designs mainly around controlling position of the button.

I already have a couple Raspberry Pi devices, so yesterday I ordered both size screens and a breakout kit to play with LEDs and switches. This should give me enough hardware to get started testing different ideas.

At this point it's still in proof of concept phase and not sure if I will build the table, but would love any feedback\ideas you all might have on a table like this.

Personally, I like the huge OLED screen that everyone can view and the table left for chips and cards. Plus wouldn't it be difficult for people to grasp position, unless my screen told me I was UTG+2, for example?
 
I've just been trying to get a blinds timer that will run on the raspberry pi and show up on my TV. Building a single display into the table would be a cool upgrade as well. All the web apps require shockwave or silverlight or some other plugin that I can't get on raspbian. blindvalet.fr used to work on the ps3, but they changed the site up and it doesn't load any more.
 
Sounds like a fun project... but why?

Mainly because I like to tinker.

I had a project at work to setup a bank of 20 TVs on a few different floors in the building to display operational dashboards and other IT related information. We used Raspberry PI devices to run the TVs and really got a chance to see what the Pi devices can do. Since then I used a Pi device to make a garage door opener I can trigger from my phone and currently working on a table top arcade simply because I need some Donkey Kong in my life.

Again, not sure If I will build the table but will be an interesting POC and opens up some ideas. The Pi can support RFID to. Would love to get my hands on some RFID chips to see if i could get the Pi to calculate the pot or player stacks on the fly.
 
Now that latter idea would be cool. For it to calculate your stack in front of you and that which is in the pot.
 
I've just been trying to get a blinds timer that will run on the raspberry pi and show up on my TV. Building a single display into the table would be a cool upgrade as well. All the web apps require shockwave or silverlight or some other plugin that I can't get on raspbian. blindvalet.fr used to work on the ps3, but they changed the site up and it doesn't load any more.

Here is a screen built into a table
http://www.instructables.com/id/Put-an-LCD-in-your-Poker-Table/

Here is a table using a Pi device to control panel colors for each seat
https://jrtrzeciak.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/poker-table/
 
Here is a screen built into a table
http://www.instructables.com/id/Put-an-LCD-in-your-Poker-Table/

Here is a table using a Pi device to control panel colors for each seat
https://jrtrzeciak.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/poker-table/

I've seen both those articles before. The screen into the table is great, but it really glosses over the software aspect of it. Tournament Director and the whole web interface seems way heavier than what I really want, but my programming skills aren't up to the task of writing it on my own.

This android app really fits my needs well. I've considered buying a chromecast just to put in on a bigger screen. The blinds settings won't save on my current phone though. I'd love a straight port to raspberry pi.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.upt.timer.core&hl=en
 
Developing a web app for the Pi to manage a timer and blind schedule should be straight forward. There are a number of open source project to look at
https://github.com/search?utf8=✓&q=poker+tournament&type=Repositories&ref=searchresults

Yeah.... I'm at the level where I can copy/paste long strings that start with "sudo" into the terminal in raspbian, but that's about it. I don't think I'm going to get undocumented code off github running before I through the raspberry pi out the window in frustration.
 
I don't like the idea of sliding cards & chips onto and off of displays - bad for the card, the chips, and the panels!

I've thought about using projectors, but that limits your felts.

Haven't seen the "perfect" answer, yet.
 
I came in here expecting a poker table build with pictures of a piece of Raspberry Pie on the felt... :whistle: :whistling:
 
Would love to get my hands on some RFID chips to see if i could get the Pi to calculate the pot or player stacks on the fly.

I've looked into this pretty heavily. It's basically impossible at useful scales. RFID tends to struggle with large numbers of items, especially when they are close together. If you manage to find a way to overcome that problem, then you have to deal with how slow it will be to scan that many items. If it takes 10 seconds to do a scan..well. Useless data at that point.

Even if you solve all those issues..getting ahold of useful quantities of RFID-embedded chips will involve a custom order from china, probably with a minimum of around 10,000 units per denomination.
 
I don't like the idea of sliding cards & chips onto and off of displays - bad for the card, the chips, and the panels!

I've thought about using projectors, but that limits your felts.

Haven't seen the "perfect" answer, yet.

If the screen is bright enough it could possibly show through the felt. It would be fuzzy and the furthest thing from HD, but if you're only displaying player position and blinds then it's doable.

I've tossed around this idea as well, along with racer96.
 
I tried to somthing similar years ago. But I wNted to have people be able to watch tv in between hands.... it drove me insane and I ended up stop building tables for a long time. I hope it works for you and you get it mastered.
 
I received the small 3.5" screen in the mail today and made some progress tonight.

Here are a few pics.

Screen slides on to the pins
IMG_20160420_224527541.jpg


Lighter for scale
IMG_20160420_224640420.jpg


The screen comes with a case
IMG_20160420_225431942.jpg


And Tournament info displayed
IMG_20160420_224604672_HDR.jpg


I like the small screen. It would take up very little player space.
There are a ton of status attributes sent from the Tournament Director software that can be included on the web page. Still need to code up the page to look better, take advantage of the entire screen and add some features.
 
I think this would be cool if you could put it into the rail, but on the side, so you pull it out to view it.
 
I received the small 3.5" screen in the mail today.......I like the small screen. It would take up very little player space.
There are a ton of status attributes sent from the Tournament Director software that can be included on the web page. Still need to code up the page to look better, take advantage of the entire screen and add some features.

I think this has a lot of promise as a table display, especially for tables with a dedicated dealer spot (central location for info display). Adjacent to dealer seat (in the rail wall or angled in the table surface), it would be out of harm's way of chips/cards.

Other pertinent info that could be displayed:in addition to timer/blinds data:
# of remaining players
# of re-buys/add-ons (if used)
average stack size
prize $$ distribution

Fewer items (and larger font sizes) would be easier to read from all player positions.
 

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