You probably wouldn't want them in sync because then there can be no possibility of any randomness when the two cards are smashed together. I imagine that when they smash togethers, sometimes you'll get the left side one going under the right side one and vice-versa, at least adding some limited randomness at that point.
Totally agree! Also, notice how the two "cams" are proud of the surface, not to push the cards, but to shake them up and down. This causes the angle at which the cards enter the shuffle zone to change, helping them not hit each other as they stack and possibly adding to the randomness of the order.
I'd try a diode in series with one of the motors to deliberately "randomise" the speed differential. Then do the shuffle test again and compare results.
Professional magician here with a few things to note: In theory, this works about the same as a riffle shuffle. In order to achieve a random result with a riffle shuffle, you need to shuffle about seven times. Given that the cards tend to kind of "clump" in this machine, probably about 10 times might do. In casinos I think the method varies, I think some tables use machines, where as poker tables the deck is shuffled with a wash ( where essentially the deck is dumped out on the table and the cards are swished around by hand. They also decks are replaced with new decks of cards periodically with the old decks being punched, marked, and resold or donated). As others have mentioned, it is pronounced suit as in suitcase or pantsuit, as opposed to suite as in penthouse suite, but that is really neither here nor there. Depending on how steady your hands are, a Faro shuffle is essentially the same as a riffle and is easy to do with a new deck and a little practice. I do have a friend and fellow magician who has essential tremor, for whatever that is worth. My guess is that perhaps there was a previous model with a switch, and open vs close is open circuit vs closed circuit. A piece of felt will make card handling on the table easier. Magic shops sell close-up mats, game shops sell play mats, PC stores sell oversized mouse pads, but if you really want to get cheep you can go to a craft store and get a piece of felt and a piece of foam and hot glue the two together. I actually have written a computer program to simulate shuffling, I'll bet I could narrow down how many shuffles it would take by counting how many cards are clumped together on average in the first shuffle.
Going by the experience of having read various Chinese products' manuals poorly translated to English, Chinese often say "open / close" when they really mean "turn on / off".
@Nevir202 A closed circuit is one that allows electrons to pass through (on position) . An open circuit is one that does not (off position). In Chinese, an electronic device is "open" when the circuit is closed and vice versa. Counter intuitive.
Don’t sweat the essential tremor Frannie - I was diagnosed with one as well about a decade ago. I work in IT and deal with minuscule screws on motherboards and whatnot - it is what it is. I did notice as I began drinking less over the years that the essential tremor has all but dissipated [knock wood]. A few minutes of quiet mediation was really helpful to me before I would dig into tearing into a jukebox or turntable or rack cassette deck, etc. and I had good success with that minimizing or even eliminating my essential tremor while I was working on stuff. And of course limiting or cutting out caffeine did wonders for me back then too. Just some adjustments and tweaks I had to make on myself to get me fine-tuned and back to good. But yeah don’t sweat your essential tremor - most of us understand it’s just a thing that happens to many folks as we age. You’re awesome! 😄👍🏻
Honestly I agree, I had noticed it and only really hoped she was OK. I hadn't commented as I imagine you would already know so I'd just be pointing out the obvious!
I'm a double transplant recipient. Some of my permanent medication are steroids which gives me mild shakes in the hands. (Actually, the first week after surgery the high doses of steroids made me thing the floor was shaking). I repair laptops and PC's, but can't do tablets or phones. Recently got into making my own guitar pedals. I need to space things out a little more to compensate. At least for me I don't have a "career" as such fixing small electronics.
I have an old late 60s version of this shuffler. It has 2 buttons. One opens the motorized tray after the shuffle. The other one closes the tray and starts the shuffle if it senses cards in the upper area. It takes 4 D size batteries. There is an additional switch on the bottom of the unit that turns the power on and off. My grandparents bought it at Korvettes in the King of Prussia mall. I still have the original box, and it has a price sticker on it for $9.99. Also, different from yours, are rollers that are one directional mounted on C shaped arms that pivot from the center of the machine at the top. These rest on top of the cards and trigger microswitches to run the motor on whichever side still has cards to push into the center tray area. Pretty fancy. Also the sides are wood like yours, but the rest of the unit is sheet metal, except for the battery holder. Which is riveted to the bottom and has a hinged sheet metal door with a screw to cover the compartment.
My guess is that the "open ... close" text is just the manufacturer's abbreviated (and inept) way of saying "This is a drawer. Open it to take out your cards and then close it." I'd also guess that they use two motors in attempt to make the shuffling more random. If the shuffling wheels were synchronized and the mechanism perfectly interleaved the cards (not likely, but ...), then you would get a "faro shuffle," which isn't randomized. (See the Wikipedia article; 52 faro shuffles would return the deck to its original order.)
I thought it might be a residual artifact from a design that had a latch on the tray? Then it was later determined to be unecessary and the labels were printed so they used them.
It's not 52, in fact you can faro (shuffle every other card alternately) 8 times and return the deck to original order if the top card's position is preserved in each shuffle. If you do it the other way and always shuffle under the top card, it takes 26 times to return to the original arrangement.
I've said it before, but that intro you've put together with the BINA-VIEW is so, so, so awesome! Also, since I was a kid, I've always been fascinated with card shuffling machines. I could play with one for hours and a little kid.
He's also BLIND, which makes the fact that he's perhaps the greatest living card manipulator all the more impressive and wonderful. He does a turn on Penn and Teller's "FOOL US!"
Yeah Richard Turner is unbelievable with cards. Its hard to believe hes doing what he is doing even when you KNOW what he is doing and watch his hands closely. What a mindblowing ability
@dothemathright 1111 What could possibly go wrong? I recommend sealing those inside a mountain behind a vast abyss of lethal radiation so no one can fuck with them for thousands of years. All you really need to communicate with them is a teletype, a speech synthesizer, and, ultimately, a whole shit-ton of surveillance cameras.
"So this is a game I just finished" Okay Fran, flex on us like that!
4 года назад+2
The two motors not being tied together just adds to the randomness. The two sides angled down helps to guide the cards to the middle, even if two cards try to enter at the same time.
Some Brits (including me) pronounce it as 'syoot', though it's not as common. This tyoon/toon, nyooz/nooz thing is called 'yod dropping' if you want to look it up. As to where "soddering" came from... we Brits still can't work that one out.
I took one of those guys apart when I was kid; we had one, and it quit working, so I thought I'd try to see if I could fix it. Don't thing I ever figured out what was wrong with it, but it was fun to see how it did what it did. The only difference between the one you have and the one I took apart was that ours was powered by 2 PP3 9v batteries. Thing was a beast. This was back when I was like 12 or 13, so...almost 23 years ago now. Crazy that they really haven't changed all that much in that length of time. Seems like it's just that the motors have gotten more efficient over that span of time.
On professional Poker tournaments, the dealer often shuffles by hand..just spreading the whole stack on the table and mixing with both hands, just like the young children do.. that's my favorite also.. that's most effective and will save your wrists and the precious cards also
@@CrowManyClouds I did not know that term, thanks! That amateurish looking method is always used by the dealer, when a new deck, or a recently checked (sorted) deck has to be quickly randomized. Therefore that's perfect for Frans use case.
I have that exact card shuffle machine. I had to fix it twice...But it still works great. Your the only other person I have ever seen, who actually owns one.
Very entertaining. I never ever envisaged you as a card shark. I believe you could extract even more "fun value" from that little beauty by shuffling the cards face up & watching the shuffling magic through that clear plastic window.
Thanks Fran. I remember seeing these things as a kid and thinking "How Fancy" I always wished I had one, either that or wished I was a "big shot" who could shuffle like the dudes on TV. LOL
The one without the faux wood sides are much cheaper here in Singapore. Barely US$10. Thank you for showing this. I have only one functioning hand and was considering one of these. Now I'm not so sure.
I know this is an older video, but question? Did that shuffler work correctly when you put it back together? From what I saw the two motors were spinning the same direction, so one side would be correct and push the cards to the center, but the other side would be throwing the cards away from the unit!!! Maybe it needed to be turned 180 degrees so it fed the cards to the center? Maybe the spinning at the end was a "trick of the video" that made it appear to be spinning incorrectly (I guess like bicycle wheels appear to be going the opposite way!!!). Great video Fran.
If the motors were perfectly in sync, they would give exactly the same result every time you shuffled the cards I think. It wold always perfectly alternate LRLRLR etc. By adding some uncertainty to the mechanism, it seems to make a more random shuffle by adding the possibility of LLRLRLRRL etc. But then again, it’s a $25 card shuffler.....
If I remember correctly, if it did a "perfect" riffle shuffle (LRLRLR...), then after 7 shuffles the deck would be returned to its original position. Card sharps and magicians both use this fact to good effect.
@@tammymakesthings Almost. After 7 shuffles it is about as "random" as you can get with a riffle shuffle. However, any further shuffles after that tend to bring the cards back toward order. So when doing a riffle you want to do 7 shuffles, but not 10 or whatever.
Wow, what a piece of 80's gadget catalog tat! You have to do half the work yourself! Very interesting though. See if you can get hold of a Shuffle King shuffler, that would be something.
Here in the UK we call 'Solitaire' 'Patience'. We have an alternative game call 'Clock Patience' where the cards are dealt out face down in a circle of 12 and one position offset in the centre ('13th stack - of 4 cards deep-1). That last card is used to start the clock 'ticking'. If it's a 9, it goes outside the circle, face up at the 9 O'clock position then you take a face down card off the top of the original circle also at the 9 O'clock position. This card then is placed around the clock face according to its value similarly - and kings being placed inside the circle - until the last card is overturned or the 'clock stops'. The two games result in the cards being sorted in different orders so by alternating between the 2 versions of game, less shuffling is required :)
One way to increase the randomness is to cut the deck unevenly and reverse one of the stacks. I usually do that a couple of times while hand shuffling.
There is no randomness. There is just some pattern that it is more difficult to recognize. Since the total number of possible combinations is 52! any shuffle will do.
Alex Ferr That misses the point I’m trying to make. The shuffler will produce shuffles where all cards within one color are still largely increasing. Several shuffles might cut those chains. Cutting the deck and reversing some cards speeds up that process.
Bengt Johansson what do you mean by “reversing some cards”? Face down results in a deck in which half the cards are face down, which is utterly useless no matter how random it is or isn’t, and flipping it 180 degrees top to bottom makes no difference whatsoever given that cards are rotationally symmetrical on their face.
If you do two perfect riffle shuffles, one after the other, then you get the cards back in the same order they started. That's why the motors aren't synchronised, to add more randomness. In a casino, the cards actually get mixed before getting put in this machine, because the cards are mixed flat down on the table before they're put in this type machine. It's actually just an anti-stack machine, so it's impossible to 100% guarantee the order of the last and first few cards on the top and bottom. I think the open/close might refer to a stainless steel drawer with tabs on that can be slid to one side to lock it in place. On this model, they just substituted cheap plastic on the drawer and lid on the top. You will probably find also that more expensive versions also have a circuit board inside (hence the two layers, to seperate the motor magnets from the randomiser circuit) that alternates the motors randomly and has a light sensor on each side to sense when all the cards have been shuffled, so the dealer only has to press that start button once, or just put the cards in, to start the sequence. Also, more professional grade machines would have sides on so that the cards don't fly out the side and to make it extremely awkward for the dealer to sneak cards out once they are in the machine.
I think the word for the quarter-deck of cards sharing a symbol is a "suit", pronounced like the article of clothing, not a "suite", a homonym of sweet. This confusion isn't at all unusual, as the word "suit" in this context is both a noun and a verb (much like "color"), such as in "a four-suited deck", where the e "wants" to make the i long (but doesn't). Then again, it could be a Philly Thing. There are lots of Philly Things, most of which I've long forgotten. There are just under a bazillion ways to shuffle cards, including my big brother's favorite: "52 pick-up". Here's a summary of some of the more popular ones: shuffletech.com/card-shuffling-methods-types-techniques/ Long ago, while recovering from a badly sprained wrist, I had to learn to shuffle and deal one-handed. I tried several of the magician-like "trick" shuffling methods, which annoyingly often turned into "52 pick-up". What I settled on was "the big smear" AKA "washing the cards". The key is using a large enough area: Too small, and little shuffling occurs. But there's no need to go much beyond an 18" diameter circle.
I really actually think this is a good design. You want there to be a little bit of slop in this machine. If the two sides would be feeding exactly one card and then the other, it would have a very specific and predictable effect on the deck, rather than a random one. You want one side to feed two cards occasionally before the other side feeds one. I would have used a slip belt on both sides.
Fran, on the mathematics of shuffling a 52 card deck, I think I remember from Martin Gardner (Scientific American's Mathematical Games column) that a "faro" shuffle is a perfect shuffle where the deck is cut exactly in half, and cards fall by strict alternation from each hand. The "faro shuffle" is divided into two variants, the "in shuffle" (where the card in position 26, bottom card from the top half of the cut, takes position 52, the bottom of the shuffled deck), and the "out shuffle", where the card at the bottom of the deck falls first and remains there in position 52. My recollection is that 52 perfect "in shuffles" or 8 perfect "out shuffles" will restore a deck to its initial configuration. I don't know where the 8 comes from, but I reflect that 2^8 is 64, which is a little larger than 52. Incredibly, there are said to be card mechanics who can reliably perform 8 perfect in shuffles in a row. Others have mentioned the blind card mechanic Richard Turner, here he is, amazing Penn and Teller. ruclips.net/video/TwFIJyWKs1k/видео.html
Cool vid, and your memory on the perfect shuffle is quite good too, even if it isn't quite as simple as 2^8 which equals 256. ;-) www.mathaware.org/mam/2014/calendar/perfectshuffle.html
My grandma had two of those because we played Canasta with Pennies from Heaven (5-7 decks). We did them with 2 people doing 1 pass through a machine then 1 pass by hand each...then trade half with the person doing the other half...and repeat for total of ten passes. It worked very well for randomizing all the decks.
Hi Fran, nice video. I was not aware of a shortage on playing cards, here in Australia we have the run on toilet paper, sanitiser, Glen 20 / Eucalyptus spray ( smells much nicer than Glen 20 ) , rice, pasta, tomato sauce and pet food ( yes people staying home are overfeeding dogs and cats ) I have spend about 20 mins trying to figure is one motor should be faster than the other, but that would just place more from say left deck in tackle with right deck. If the motors are equal you are then just swaping into a mirror image The tilt cam would not do much, from a quick view is seems to be about 20-25% of the entire 360 wheel, so there is a 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 change both kick cams will be at the 12 oclock position and any given rotation, plus they will be near enought for the next few revolutions. Even if you disassembled and moved one of the kick cam wheels say 30 degrees out, with similar or different motor they will match up sooner or later. - Hmm i wonder if a resistor on one motor would mismatch the speed enough to make more variation or would is only achieve in say having the faster one continue to lay say 3 or 4 cards on top of each other. It does not appear to be a good randomiser, you are correct it needs to be supplements with several random hand shuffles. I would also get rid of the silly clear perspex door and just tilt the machine to get the cards out, or use it to store a full deck when not in use. I still use the Ipad 2 for the solitaire game, as well as the original MS Windows version ( the 3.1 version of SOL i think works up to Win 7 ) Re the hand tremor, my father had it since age 50, i get it time to time, but i found using those little foam sponge sleeves over pens / pencils / screwdrivers helps as your fingers are not as much in a claw position. I do not do much PC repair work any more but the odd times i go ok then all of a sudden drop a screw or stark fumbling when trying to locate it and hand start the first few threads. I have thyroid eye disease ( called graves disease with eye protrusion due to ineffective treatment over last 15 years - but i had thyroid removal 2018 ) - anyway the 2 hospitals have separate clinics Diabetes / Cancer plus the eye clinics so i have meet about 40 doctors in the last 4 years of treatment and we chat at times, re the random hand spasm etc, a few suggested some squishy jelly stuff kids play with like playdo and a few advised it may be a motor reflex issue as in the brain sending out false signals or the nerves just reacting on their own to other impulse, strange that 3 or 4 doctors suggested i keep a few coins and play with them from time to time and try and replicate some magician moves in rolling the coin and passing between fingers as a exercise in mental concentration and manipulating small objects. I am a accountant and i use the keyboard often in my 9 to 5 job, keyboard use if not really a problem but i do find using the mouse at times can be a issue - again that enforces that with my fingers extended when touch typing i am fine, but grasping and my hand in the almost clenched formation is where i feels the problem is Regards George
I agree about the old cards vs new cards thing. Got an old set of Marlboro Texan cards at a yard sale, unopened, and they are some of the nicest ones I ever had. Made back when cigarette companies could apparently do points reward type things. Says on the box that they are "authentic reproductions of cards produced in the late 1800's by the Russel & Morgan Printing Company." All I know is they are super nice old cards that come in a faux leather case. Best $2 at a yard sale ever.
My parents had a similar model in the early 1970s and I would play with it thinking it was a punched card sorter. It foreshadowed my tech career at age 6.
As many have mentioned, you don't want them perfectly in sync. Run them through the machine, cut into ~thirds, machine, cut again, machine, cut... repeat half a dozen or so times and it should be well shuffled. But secondly, how would you even be able to without making the unit larger? If you had a belt going from one side to the other it would be in the way of the chamber the cards fall into. Also it might be worth adding some kind of barriers to help prevent cards being shot out of the sides.
Do an online search for used Las Vegas casino cards. They offer collections of several decks for $10-30. I use a random number generator to produce a pseudo-random sequence of the numbers from 1 to 52, and then manually sort the deck to match the result. Much easier than using that machine. :-) I agree with others that two motors with the likelihood that they're not running identically helps with the randomization.
I think by the time you get a belt that would work, and 2 shafts & gears to connect the sides, then you'd probably need another block or extrusion to support the ends of that shaft because it can't go through the center because that's where the cards collect, it'd have to go behind the back, I think once you add all that you've outweighed the cost of another motor. Then also there's additional complexity in assembly and increased fail points, etc. Because you'd need the 2nd block either way, you'd just not need the motor.
I have noticed that my hands have become a bit shaky myself. It began around age 60 and has become progressively worse ever since. Now at age 69, it has become quite noticeable. Both my doctor and my family have commented on it, however nobody seems quite concerned a out it so I guess it isn't much of a problem. Thanks for the great videos, I do so enjoy them, it is sort of like a visit from a friend who drops by on occasion to share a cup of coffee and a bit of conversation. I am becoming more and more lonely now since my wonderful wife of 51 years and 4 days has passed away, taken from me by a rare form of cancer which was quick as it was deadly. Doctors say there is no chance of survival with that form so we knew what was coming, all I could do was stay by her side till the end came. Broke my old heart into a billion pieces. My daughter has come to live with me and insure that I get a decent meal as well as cleaning the house for me o once again thanks so much for the great videos, if not for RUclips I don't know what I would do to occupy my time left here on the old blue marble.
I've had intention tremor since i was a teen. Shackey handwriting, soldering requires a hand rest. Keyboarding can be bad. The harder i try to contol it the worse it is. Grabbing something with tweesers is a comic exercise. Ive learned to use props to stabiluze my hands for everything
A deck of cards for twelve bucks? Immediately after watching video I went to the local market and bought a full plastic poker deck for 120 rubles(approximately 1.60$). What a treasure I have now! I mean, of course it's most likely a cheap knockoff Chinese deck, but it's definitely more robust and playable than flimsy paper card you can buy here for less than 0.5$. God bless Siberia! Also, as always nice video. Thank you, Fran!
I feel you Fran, I have essential tremors as well and they're terribly exacerbated from any kind of nerves or stress or exercise or anything. My hands are always shaking and I hate it, I feel like I constantly look like I'm nervous or trying to hide something and then that just loops around and makes the shakes even worse. Have you ever tried to get treatment or anything for it? Dunno if something like that even exists or not.
Fran, I think you are missing the point. The machine is not a card interliever, its a shuffler. 2 independant mechanisms working a 2 slightly diferent speeds, not alligned with each other adds randomness. The end result is a couple of cards from one side a single card from the other a couple of cards from the other etc. Tie them together and interlieve the cards once split them and reload and put them back exactly as they started.
ok, here's an idea. put a small resistor in series with one of the motors so that it runs a little slower, then always put the lower half of the merged stack into the slower side. that should eliminate the need for the intermediate manual shuffles.
Perfect shuffles require something like seven shuffles to generate randomness. Add in simply cutting the deck by 1/3 instead of 1/2 before splitting the deck for each shuffle will improve results immensely.
Oh yes, I've been playing a lot more solitaire too. I prefer the bridge sized cards rather than the larger poker sized ones. Just means I have to clear less space on my desk to play! They're plastic Copag brand cards, and are very worn, so they're not as slippery.
I have same shuffler. Picked it up at a goodwill recently. I took it apart cuz one side wasn't powered. Found the motor separated from the contacts and put it back in place. Prob was dropped. I actually put motor back in backwards and it was spinning outward once i'd put it back together. Took apart again and turned motor a half turn to send spinner correct direction. But, the gripper wheel won't pull the cards through at all or enough to get the kicker cam behind it to do its job. So, they just sit there and sometimes get pulled. Any suggestion on getting a better grip on the cards? (Excalibur Electronics Card Shuffler Model 425-F)
Interesting to see that the two kicker wheels even if you cycled them 180 deg apart would sync up eventually. I wonder if this happens because it transmits the vibrations across the whole thing...
Wonderful video as always, Fran! Essential Tremor is something that I think is plaguing me, as well... I have tremors in both hands, among other things as well, and I know it's not Parkinson's due to my symptoms; that plus that does not run in my family. Getting old is not pretty.
I speculate that the 'open' and 'close' notation was originally supposed to appear over some kind of indicator light set up that 'reminded' the user not to open the drawer when the machine was in motion ? Lights that were subsequently removed from the design partially because it saved time and money but mostly because they were almost totally useless. Also, 'suit' is pronounced as in a 'suit of clothes' not as in a 'suite of furniture'. (at least here in Europe.)
It's great if you want to play 52 pickup! Actually that would be a funny mode to have on a shuffler, if you hit the button it just spits all the cards off the table.
I have a little experiance with dc motors (ie Lego dc motors) In the early mindstorms sets, they used simple dc motors with geared down output. (increased the torque a bit). It was known that the motors were NOT all alike! Each one turned at a slightly different rate! So If you wanted a dual motor robot to move in a straight line, you had to compaire the motors, and then used the pair that was closest in speed. Your dual motor card shuffler will have some randomness built in because the motors turning slightly differently. Coolness!
A friend of mine had one of these back in the 80s and I always thought it was great how simple they were. I have no idea about the open/close either. I wonder if the label was designed before a locking mechanism was removed or something. Also, is the suit of a card normally pronounced "suite?" I've always pronounced it like a suit of clothing. I think the math works out that you need to run a deck through for at least six passes before it's reasonably well-shuffled. And you probably want the motors to not be synchronized so that there's a bit more randomness about the card selection.
I always enjoy these explorations of electromechanical devices. But solitaire with real cards instead of on the computer? I don't have the patience for that, shuffling machine or not!
There are two motors likely because the center portion is taken up by the cards and card holding area. No real easy to ling them without changing the design considerably .
The reverse of a two tape sort... To get a better shuffle from the cuts, maybe do an asymmetric cut first and then a symmetric one, so that the top never stays at the top. The thing is, can you design a better one, an arduino robot, perhaps?
Re: Two motors: you don't want perfect 1:1 in a shuffle. The common riffle shuffle, as used in casinos, is more random specifically because of the inability of most to be precise enough to get a 1:1 every time. The more uneven the interleave, the more random the shuffle actually is. The $15 ones I've seen ARE single "motor" (hand crank), and are far less random.
Is your drawer in backwards? The tabs look like they may be designed as detents to keep it from falling out. Also, we always said “suit” instead of “sweet” (phonetic)
I know, I'm being picky. It is suits, not suites. ;-) Casino style shuffle is a riffle, to mesh the two piles together, then by hand the 'strip the deck', which moves chunks of cards around in the deck, then riffle again. Finally cutting the deck in two and reversing the top and bottom stacks. This randomized sufficiently for casino game play. The shuffle machine is a good way to shuffle in most cases, but not after a full game of solitaire. You'll never see a casino put an unshuffled deck in a machine for that reason. They always first hand scramble, then shuffle virgin decks. I guess I should explain "scramble". You place all the cards on the table, facedown, and hand mix them, separating the cards and then meshing them together again until you feel the mix is random, then start a normal shuffle.
I have the hand crank version and have dropped that card tray so many times I cracked it. With the hand version, there is only one motor (me) so the wheels can’t be turned independently and I never have card kick back. Also, if you haven’t voided the warranty on something, do you really own it yet?
we had two plastic electric-powered card shufflers - to shuffle two decks worth of cards. the quickly broke. We now have a plastic hand-cranked shuffler,, same size, and its lasting just fine.
Interesting, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a suit referred to as a suite. Is this a philly thing? Suit makes more sense to me as they are kinda wearing their colors/patterns like you would a suit.
As for the On / Off button, Here in Canada the French don't really have a word for On / Off when it comes to a switch. I have heard many French people say please open or close the light when translating from French to English.. Hope that helps
Is it possible that the two independent motors help with randomization? If there was just one motor and the two mechanisms synchronized, then the pattern by which a card would taken from left or right would always be fixed
Here's a shuffling machine which will handle up to 8 decks of cards. 1-8 decks Casino Full-Automatic card shuffler ruclips.net/video/txl3gqIfwHM/видео.html
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You probably wouldn't want them in sync because then there can be no possibility of any randomness when the two cards are smashed together. I imagine that when they smash togethers, sometimes you'll get the left side one going under the right side one and vice-versa, at least adding some limited randomness at that point.
Totally agree! Also, notice how the two "cams" are proud of the surface, not to push the cards, but to shake them up and down. This causes the angle at which the cards enter the shuffle zone to change, helping them not hit each other as they stack and possibly adding to the randomness of the order.
I guess it's it's typical for the mind of an engineer to want to make things work flawlessly in sync, and random doesn't go along with that.
I totally agree. Shuffling cards requires randomness. So independent motors on each heap does help.
Where and how it grips the cards would add randomness anyways, I'd think. The gears could also be different sizes.
I'd try a diode in series with one of the motors to deliberately "randomise" the speed differential. Then do the shuffle test again and compare results.
Professional magician here with a few things to note: In theory, this works about the same as a riffle shuffle. In order to achieve a random result with a riffle shuffle, you need to shuffle about seven times. Given that the cards tend to kind of "clump" in this machine, probably about 10 times might do. In casinos I think the method varies, I think some tables use machines, where as poker tables the deck is shuffled with a wash ( where essentially the deck is dumped out on the table and the cards are swished around by hand. They also decks are replaced with new decks of cards periodically with the old decks being punched, marked, and resold or donated).
As others have mentioned, it is pronounced suit as in suitcase or pantsuit, as opposed to suite as in penthouse suite, but that is really neither here nor there.
Depending on how steady your hands are, a Faro shuffle is essentially the same as a riffle and is easy to do with a new deck and a little practice. I do have a friend and fellow magician who has essential tremor, for whatever that is worth.
My guess is that perhaps there was a previous model with a switch, and open vs close is open circuit vs closed circuit.
A piece of felt will make card handling on the table easier. Magic shops sell close-up mats, game shops sell play mats, PC stores sell oversized mouse pads, but if you really want to get cheep you can go to a craft store and get a piece of felt and a piece of foam and hot glue the two together.
I actually have written a computer program to simulate shuffling, I'll bet I could narrow down how many shuffles it would take by counting how many cards are clumped together on average in the first shuffle.
I bet your a good magician. The fedora in your profile pic checks out.
Going by the experience of having read various Chinese products' manuals poorly translated to English, Chinese often say "open / close" when they really mean "turn on / off".
I mean, electronically, it makes sense. Open or closed circuit
Yeah I took it to mean on/off.
@Nevir202 A closed circuit is one that allows electrons to pass through (on position) . An open circuit is one that does not (off position). In Chinese, an electronic device is "open" when the circuit is closed and vice versa. Counter intuitive.
Don’t sweat the essential tremor Frannie - I was diagnosed with one as well about a decade ago. I work in IT and deal with minuscule screws on motherboards and whatnot - it is what it is. I did notice as I began drinking less over the years that the essential tremor has all but dissipated [knock wood]. A few minutes of quiet mediation was really helpful to me before I would dig into tearing into a jukebox or turntable or rack cassette deck, etc. and I had good success with that minimizing or even eliminating my essential tremor while I was working on stuff. And of course limiting or cutting out caffeine did wonders for me back then too. Just some adjustments and tweaks I had to make on myself to get me fine-tuned and back to good. But yeah don’t sweat your essential tremor - most of us understand it’s just a thing that happens to many folks as we age. You’re awesome! 😄👍🏻
Honestly I agree, I had noticed it and only really hoped she was OK. I hadn't commented as I imagine you would already know so I'd just be pointing out the obvious!
I'm a double transplant recipient. Some of my permanent medication are steroids which gives me mild shakes in the hands. (Actually, the first week after surgery the high doses of steroids made me thing the floor was shaking). I repair laptops and PC's, but can't do tablets or phones. Recently got into making my own guitar pedals. I need to space things out a little more to compensate. At least for me I don't have a "career" as such fixing small electronics.
You are likely the only person ever to have considered maintaining that thing!
I have an old late 60s version of this shuffler. It has 2 buttons. One opens the motorized tray after the shuffle. The other one closes the tray and starts the shuffle if it senses cards in the upper area. It takes 4 D size batteries. There is an additional switch on the bottom of the unit that turns the power on and off. My grandparents bought it at Korvettes in the King of Prussia mall. I still have the original box, and it has a price sticker on it for $9.99. Also, different from yours, are rollers that are one directional mounted on C shaped arms that pivot from the center of the machine at the top. These rest on top of the cards and trigger microswitches to run the motor on whichever side still has cards to push into the center tray area. Pretty fancy. Also the sides are wood like yours, but the rest of the unit is sheet metal, except for the battery holder. Which is riveted to the bottom and has a hinged sheet metal door with a screw to cover the compartment.
My guess is that the "open ... close" text is just the manufacturer's abbreviated (and inept) way of saying "This is a drawer. Open it to take out your cards and then close it."
I'd also guess that they use two motors in attempt to make the shuffling more random. If the shuffling wheels were synchronized and the mechanism perfectly interleaved the cards (not likely, but ...), then you would get a "faro shuffle," which isn't randomized. (See the Wikipedia article; 52 faro shuffles would return the deck to its original order.)
Yeah, having two motors surely is better than one when it comes to randomness. However, they should be geared differently.
I thought it might be a residual artifact from a design that had a latch on the tray? Then it was later determined to be unecessary and the labels were printed so they used them.
Ahah!
There might have been a tray lock but that machine looks a little old.
It's not 52, in fact you can faro (shuffle every other card alternately) 8 times and return the deck to original order if the top card's position is preserved in each shuffle. If you do it the other way and always shuffle under the top card, it takes 26 times to return to the original arrangement.
I've said it before, but that intro you've put together with the BINA-VIEW is so, so, so awesome!
Also, since I was a kid, I've always been fascinated with card shuffling machines. I could play with one for hours and a little kid.
Hi
If you haven't seen DEALT on Netflix, it's awesome! Card mechanic Richard Turner is just incredible, one of the kind.
He's also BLIND, which makes the fact that he's perhaps the greatest living card manipulator all the more impressive and wonderful. He does a turn on Penn and Teller's "FOOL US!"
No show shows up called "Dealt" on Netflix
@@troymcdonald I'm in Canada and it doesn't show up here, either. Are you in the US?
@@moehoward01 Yes, in USA. Interesting, but I do know they show certain things in certain places, not all.
Yeah Richard Turner is unbelievable with cards. Its hard to believe hes doing what he is doing even when you KNOW what he is doing and watch his hands closely. What a mindblowing ability
"Colossus, my Hi-Fi, behind me."
ehr... I'd like to know more about Colossus. A _lot_ more. Do you have a video on Colossus? Or are you planning one?
ruclips.net/video/kQyLmTlKMYY/видео.html
@dothemathright 1111 What could possibly go wrong? I recommend sealing those inside a mountain behind a vast abyss of lethal radiation so no one can fuck with them for thousands of years. All you really need to communicate with them is a teletype, a speech synthesizer, and, ultimately, a whole shit-ton of surveillance cameras.
I think the motors purposely out of sync to introduce a bit more randomness.
I think so too.
Yeah, if you got a perfect ABAB shuffle, you could actually control the ordering of some of the cards.
I like the way your mind thinks, as well as your eclectic taste in items to bring out
"So this is a game I just finished" Okay Fran, flex on us like that!
The two motors not being tied together just adds to the randomness. The two sides angled down helps to guide the cards to the middle, even if two cards try to enter at the same time.
In the UK we pronounce a card suit as "soooot"
As does the rest of the world. Just watch poker tournaments and it's always soot not sweet
Same in the US. Fran is unique.
Some Brits (including me) pronounce it as 'syoot', though it's not as common. This tyoon/toon, nyooz/nooz thing is called 'yod dropping' if you want to look it up. As to where "soddering" came from... we Brits still can't work that one out.
I knew suite didn't sound right but couldn't work out why!
Yeah, in America too. Fran is just saying it wrong.
I took one of those guys apart when I was kid; we had one, and it quit working, so I thought I'd try to see if I could fix it. Don't thing I ever figured out what was wrong with it, but it was fun to see how it did what it did. The only difference between the one you have and the one I took apart was that ours was powered by 2 PP3 9v batteries. Thing was a beast. This was back when I was like 12 or 13, so...almost 23 years ago now. Crazy that they really haven't changed all that much in that length of time. Seems like it's just that the motors have gotten more efficient over that span of time.
They have solitaire in real life now? wow, wonders never cease.
On professional Poker tournaments, the dealer often shuffles by hand..just spreading the whole stack on the table and mixing with both hands, just like the young children do.. that's my favorite also.. that's most effective and will save your wrists and the precious cards also
That shuffle is called 'washing' the deck.
@@CrowManyClouds I did not know that term, thanks!
That amateurish looking method is always used by the dealer, when a new deck, or a recently checked (sorted) deck has to be quickly randomized. Therefore that's perfect for Frans use case.
I'm an engineer and thought of designing my own card shuffling machine. This helped a lot :) thx
I have that exact card shuffle machine. I had to fix it twice...But it still works great. Your the only other person I have ever seen, who actually owns one.
Very entertaining. I never ever envisaged you as a card shark. I believe you could extract even more "fun value" from that little beauty by shuffling the cards face up & watching the shuffling magic through that clear plastic window.
Thanks Fran. I remember seeing these things as a kid and thinking "How Fancy" I always wished I had one, either that or wished I was a "big shot" who could shuffle like the dudes on TV. LOL
The one without the faux wood sides are much cheaper here in Singapore. Barely US$10.
Thank you for showing this.
I have only one functioning hand and was considering one of these.
Now I'm not so sure.
Me, the other night: gee, I wonder how card shuffling machines work.
RUclips, this morning: hey I read your mind and sent you this Fran video
I know this is an older video, but question? Did that shuffler work correctly when you put it back together? From what I saw the two motors were spinning the same direction, so one side would be correct and push the cards to the center, but the other side would be throwing the cards away from the unit!!! Maybe it needed to be turned 180 degrees so it fed the cards to the center? Maybe the spinning at the end was a "trick of the video" that made it appear to be spinning incorrectly (I guess like bicycle wheels appear to be going the opposite way!!!). Great video Fran.
If the motors were perfectly in sync, they would give exactly the same result every time you shuffled the cards I think. It wold always perfectly alternate LRLRLR etc. By adding some uncertainty to the mechanism, it seems to make a more random shuffle by adding the possibility of LLRLRLRRL etc.
But then again, it’s a $25 card shuffler.....
If I remember correctly, if it did a "perfect" riffle shuffle (LRLRLR...), then after 7 shuffles the deck would be returned to its original position. Card sharps and magicians both use this fact to good effect.
@@tammymakesthings Almost. After 7 shuffles it is about as "random" as you can get with a riffle shuffle. However, any further shuffles after that tend to bring the cards back toward order. So when doing a riffle you want to do 7 shuffles, but not 10 or whatever.
Wow, what a piece of 80's gadget catalog tat! You have to do half the work yourself! Very interesting though. See if you can get hold of a Shuffle King shuffler, that would be something.
Here in the UK we call 'Solitaire' 'Patience'. We have an alternative game call 'Clock Patience' where the cards are dealt out face down in a circle of 12 and one position offset in the centre ('13th stack - of 4 cards deep-1). That last card is used to start the clock 'ticking'. If it's a 9, it goes outside the circle, face up at the 9 O'clock position then you take a face down card off the top of the original circle also at the 9 O'clock position. This card then is placed around the clock face according to its value similarly - and kings being placed inside the circle - until the last card is overturned or the 'clock stops'.
The two games result in the cards being sorted in different orders so by alternating between the 2 versions of game, less shuffling is required :)
One way to increase the randomness is to cut the deck unevenly and reverse one of the stacks. I usually do that a couple of times while hand shuffling.
There is no randomness.
There is just some pattern that it is more difficult to recognize.
Since the total number of possible combinations is 52! any shuffle will do.
Alex Ferr That misses the point I’m trying to make. The shuffler will produce shuffles where all cards within one color are still largely increasing. Several shuffles might cut those chains. Cutting the deck and reversing some cards speeds up that process.
Bengt Johansson what do you mean by “reversing some cards”? Face down results in a deck in which half the cards are face down, which is utterly useless no matter how random it is or isn’t, and flipping it 180 degrees top to bottom makes no difference whatsoever given that cards are rotationally symmetrical on their face.
Jasper Janssen Reversing the order in one of the stacks. I.e. let cards a b c d e become e d c b a.
Bengt Johansson like, manually? I don’t see how that is any quicker than just riffling another couple times.
If you do two perfect riffle shuffles, one after the other, then you get the cards back in the same order they started. That's why the motors aren't synchronised, to add more randomness. In a casino, the cards actually get mixed before getting put in this machine, because the cards are mixed flat down on the table before they're put in this type machine. It's actually just an anti-stack machine, so it's impossible to 100% guarantee the order of the last and first few cards on the top and bottom. I think the open/close might refer to a stainless steel drawer with tabs on that can be slid to one side to lock it in place. On this model, they just substituted cheap plastic on the drawer and lid on the top. You will probably find also that more expensive versions also have a circuit board inside (hence the two layers, to seperate the motor magnets from the randomiser circuit) that alternates the motors randomly and has a light sensor on each side to sense when all the cards have been shuffled, so the dealer only has to press that start button once, or just put the cards in, to start the sequence. Also, more professional grade machines would have sides on so that the cards don't fly out the side and to make it extremely awkward for the dealer to sneak cards out once they are in the machine.
I think the word for the quarter-deck of cards sharing a symbol is a "suit", pronounced like the article of clothing, not a "suite", a homonym of sweet. This confusion isn't at all unusual, as the word "suit" in this context is both a noun and a verb (much like "color"), such as in "a four-suited deck", where the e "wants" to make the i long (but doesn't).
Then again, it could be a Philly Thing. There are lots of Philly Things, most of which I've long forgotten.
There are just under a bazillion ways to shuffle cards, including my big brother's favorite: "52 pick-up". Here's a summary of some of the more popular ones: shuffletech.com/card-shuffling-methods-types-techniques/
Long ago, while recovering from a badly sprained wrist, I had to learn to shuffle and deal one-handed. I tried several of the magician-like "trick" shuffling methods, which annoyingly often turned into "52 pick-up". What I settled on was "the big smear" AKA "washing the cards". The key is using a large enough area: Too small, and little shuffling occurs. But there's no need to go much beyond an 18" diameter circle.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. I play a lot of texas hold em at casinos and never heard it pronounced 'sweet'
I was wondering if yanks pronounced it differently that rp english. Ty
I came here for this. Suit not Suite. 😂
I did wonder ...
Card shortage. Who knew?
Certainly an inadequate TP substitute.
Well, you could try scraping...
tastes fatty, nothing like the melt in your mouth texture of TP
I'm just a weirdo who has like 30 decks sitting around because I use them as decoration.
I really actually think this is a good design. You want there to be a little bit of slop in this machine. If the two sides would be feeding exactly one card and then the other, it would have a very specific and predictable effect on the deck, rather than a random one. You want one side to feed two cards occasionally before the other side feeds one. I would have used a slip belt on both sides.
Fran, on the mathematics of shuffling a 52 card deck, I think I remember from Martin Gardner (Scientific American's Mathematical Games column) that a "faro" shuffle is a perfect shuffle where the deck is cut exactly in half, and cards fall by strict alternation from each hand. The "faro shuffle" is divided into two variants, the "in shuffle" (where the card in position 26, bottom card from the top half of the cut, takes position 52, the bottom of the shuffled deck), and the "out shuffle", where the card at the bottom of the deck falls first and remains there in position 52. My recollection is that 52 perfect "in shuffles" or 8 perfect "out shuffles" will restore a deck to its initial configuration. I don't know where the 8 comes from, but I reflect that 2^8 is 64, which is a little larger than 52. Incredibly, there are said to be card mechanics who can reliably perform 8 perfect in shuffles in a row. Others have mentioned the blind card mechanic Richard Turner, here he is, amazing Penn and Teller. ruclips.net/video/TwFIJyWKs1k/видео.html
Cool vid, and your memory on the perfect shuffle is quite good too, even if it isn't quite as simple as 2^8 which equals 256. ;-)
www.mathaware.org/mam/2014/calendar/perfectshuffle.html
My grandma had two of those because we played Canasta with Pennies from Heaven (5-7 decks).
We did them with 2 people doing 1 pass through a machine then 1 pass by hand each...then trade half with the person doing the other half...and repeat for total of ten passes.
It worked very well for randomizing all the decks.
Fran, I never noticed you have beautiful wood floors, in the lab! Very nice 👍
That intro never gets old 👍😂❤
Hi Fran, nice video. I was not aware of a shortage on playing cards, here in Australia we have the run on toilet paper, sanitiser, Glen 20 / Eucalyptus spray ( smells much nicer than Glen 20 ) , rice, pasta, tomato sauce and pet food ( yes people staying home are overfeeding dogs and cats )
I have spend about 20 mins trying to figure is one motor should be faster than the other, but that would just place more from say left deck in tackle with right deck.
If the motors are equal you are then just swaping into a mirror image
The tilt cam would not do much, from a quick view is seems to be about 20-25% of the entire 360 wheel, so there is a 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 change both kick cams will be at the 12 oclock position and any given rotation, plus they will be near enought for the next few revolutions.
Even if you disassembled and moved one of the kick cam wheels say 30 degrees out, with similar or different motor they will match up sooner or later. - Hmm i wonder if a resistor on one motor would mismatch the speed enough to make more variation or would is only achieve in say having the faster one continue to lay say 3 or 4 cards on top of each other.
It does not appear to be a good randomiser, you are correct it needs to be supplements with several random hand shuffles.
I would also get rid of the silly clear perspex door and just tilt the machine to get the cards out, or use it to store a full deck when not in use.
I still use the Ipad 2 for the solitaire game, as well as the original MS Windows version ( the 3.1 version of SOL i think works up to Win 7 )
Re the hand tremor, my father had it since age 50, i get it time to time, but i found using those little foam sponge sleeves over pens / pencils / screwdrivers helps as your fingers are not as much in a claw position. I do not do much PC repair work any more but the odd times i go ok then all of a sudden drop a screw or stark fumbling when trying to locate it and hand start the first few threads.
I have thyroid eye disease ( called graves disease with eye protrusion due to ineffective treatment over last 15 years - but i had thyroid removal 2018 ) - anyway the 2 hospitals have separate clinics Diabetes / Cancer plus the eye clinics so i have meet about 40 doctors in the last 4 years of treatment and we chat at times, re the random hand spasm etc, a few suggested some squishy jelly stuff kids play with like playdo and a few advised it may be a motor reflex issue as in the brain sending out false signals or the nerves just reacting on their own to other impulse, strange that 3 or 4 doctors suggested i keep a few coins and play with them from time to time and try and replicate some magician moves in rolling the coin and passing between fingers as a exercise in mental concentration and manipulating small objects.
I am a accountant and i use the keyboard often in my 9 to 5 job, keyboard use if not really a problem but i do find using the mouse at times can be a issue - again that enforces that with my fingers extended when touch typing i am fine, but grasping and my hand in the almost clenched formation is where i feels the problem is
Regards
George
I agree about the old cards vs new cards thing. Got an old set of Marlboro Texan cards at a yard sale, unopened, and they are some of the nicest ones I ever had. Made back when cigarette companies could apparently do points reward type things. Says on the box that they are "authentic reproductions of cards produced in the late 1800's by the Russel & Morgan Printing Company." All I know is they are super nice old cards that come in a faux leather case. Best $2 at a yard sale ever.
My parents had a similar model in the early 1970s and I would play with it thinking it was a punched card sorter. It foreshadowed my tech career at age 6.
Yeah, my grandparents had one too from that era, when we found it, it still had batteries made in west germany.
The intro tho 🤣🤣🤣🤣 my mom said what r u watching when she heard the intro🤣🤣🤣🤣
I hope lots of girls will watch your channel. You are a great role model!
Thank you Fran! Your a great person, and your videos brings joy to alot of us and for that we're grateful.
Thank you
Fun vid - thanks! Now do one on Colossus!
You can add arrow up and arrow down signs to the Close and Open label so it makes more sense.
I do maintenance and repair on casino shufflers as part of my casino tech job.
Talking about random.... didn't expect a card shuffling vid this morning...
As many have mentioned, you don't want them perfectly in sync. Run them through the machine, cut into ~thirds, machine, cut again, machine, cut... repeat half a dozen or so times and it should be well shuffled. But secondly, how would you even be able to without making the unit larger? If you had a belt going from one side to the other it would be in the way of the chamber the cards fall into.
Also it might be worth adding some kind of barriers to help prevent cards being shot out of the sides.
I love the way you say Suit.
I really like these types of videos
We have the hand crank design of the same shuffler. One crank drives both sets of gears.
Do an online search for used Las Vegas casino cards. They offer collections of several decks for $10-30. I use a random number generator to produce a pseudo-random sequence of the numbers from 1 to 52, and then manually sort the deck to match the result. Much easier than using that machine. :-)
I agree with others that two motors with the likelihood that they're not running identically helps with the randomization.
I think by the time you get a belt that would work, and 2 shafts & gears to connect the sides, then you'd probably need another block or extrusion to support the ends of that shaft because it can't go through the center because that's where the cards collect, it'd have to go behind the back, I think once you add all that you've outweighed the cost of another motor. Then also there's additional complexity in assembly and increased fail points, etc. Because you'd need the 2nd block either way, you'd just not need the motor.
OMG I haven't seen one of those since I was a kid!
After watching this, I think NOTHING is ever random. Thanks.
Fran, would it be too geeky to count the teeth in each of those gears and see if the roller and the kicker actually DO track? :) (16:35)
I've had so many of these. Great video!
Thah is exactly what I was looking for, thanks !
Exelent vid. I knew these existed, but it's the first time I've seen one.
I have noticed that my hands have become a bit shaky myself. It began around age 60 and has become progressively worse ever since. Now at age 69, it has become quite noticeable. Both my doctor and my family have commented on it, however nobody seems quite concerned a out it so I guess it isn't much of a problem. Thanks for the great videos, I do so enjoy them, it is sort of like a visit from a friend who drops by on occasion to share a cup of coffee and a bit of conversation. I am becoming more and more lonely now since my wonderful wife of 51 years and 4 days has passed away, taken from me by a rare form of cancer which was quick as it was deadly. Doctors say there is no chance of survival with that form so we knew what was coming, all I could do was stay by her side till the end came. Broke my old heart into a billion pieces. My daughter has come to live with me and insure that I get a decent meal as well as cleaning the house for me o once again thanks so much for the great videos, if not for RUclips I don't know what I would do to occupy my time left here on the old blue marble.
I've had intention tremor since i was a teen. Shackey handwriting, soldering requires a hand rest. Keyboarding can be bad. The harder i try to contol it the worse it is. Grabbing something with tweesers is a comic exercise. Ive learned to use props to stabiluze my hands for everything
I'm sorry for your loss
A deck of cards for twelve bucks? Immediately after watching video I went to the local market and bought a full plastic poker deck for 120 rubles(approximately 1.60$). What a treasure I have now! I mean, of course it's most likely a cheap knockoff Chinese deck, but it's definitely more robust and playable than flimsy paper card you can buy here for less than 0.5$. God bless Siberia! Also, as always nice video. Thank you, Fran!
My grandma had that same mechanical shuffler. 😀
I'd be interested in hearing more about Colossus
I feel you Fran, I have essential tremors as well and they're terribly exacerbated from any kind of nerves or stress or exercise or anything. My hands are always shaking and I hate it, I feel like I constantly look like I'm nervous or trying to hide something and then that just loops around and makes the shakes even worse. Have you ever tried to get treatment or anything for it? Dunno if something like that even exists or not.
Fran, I think you are missing the point. The machine is not a card interliever, its a shuffler. 2 independant mechanisms working a 2 slightly diferent speeds, not alligned with each other adds randomness. The end result is a couple of cards from one side a single card from the other a couple of cards from the other etc. Tie them together and interlieve the cards once split them and reload and put them back exactly as they started.
ok, here's an idea. put a small resistor in series with one of the motors so that it runs a little slower, then always put the lower half of the merged stack into the slower side. that should eliminate the need for the intermediate manual shuffles.
My first thought now you've showed the mechanism is if you put the batteries in backwards will it fire cards everywhere?
Every cardist and magician are just shaking their heads right now
Perfect shuffles require something like seven shuffles to generate randomness. Add in simply cutting the deck by 1/3 instead of 1/2 before splitting the deck for each shuffle will improve results immensely.
Fran: " How do card shuffle machine work"
Francesco: "did such machines really exist?!"
Oh yes, I've been playing a lot more solitaire too. I prefer the bridge sized cards rather than the larger poker sized ones. Just means I have to clear less space on my desk to play! They're plastic Copag brand cards, and are very worn, so they're not as slippery.
I have same shuffler. Picked it up at a goodwill recently. I took it apart cuz one side wasn't powered. Found the motor separated from the contacts and put it back in place. Prob was dropped. I actually put motor back in backwards and it was spinning outward once i'd put it back together. Took apart again and turned motor a half turn to send spinner correct direction. But, the gripper wheel won't pull the cards through at all or enough to get the kicker cam behind it to do its job. So, they just sit there and sometimes get pulled. Any suggestion on getting a better grip on the cards? (Excalibur Electronics Card Shuffler Model 425-F)
Interesting to see that the two kicker wheels even if you cycled them 180 deg apart would sync up eventually. I wonder if this happens because it transmits the vibrations across the whole thing...
Wonderful video as always, Fran! Essential Tremor is something that I think is plaguing me, as well... I have tremors in both hands, among other things as well, and I know it's not Parkinson's due to my symptoms; that plus that does not run in my family. Getting old is not pretty.
I speculate that the 'open' and 'close' notation was originally supposed to appear over some kind of indicator light set up that 'reminded' the user not to open the drawer when the machine was in motion ?
Lights that were subsequently removed from the design partially because it saved time and money but mostly because they were almost totally useless.
Also, 'suit' is pronounced as in a 'suit of clothes' not as in a 'suite of furniture'.
(at least here in Europe.)
I wonder if you shuffle once then flip the deck over, would it put the cards back into a less shuffled state?
Fran review: Don't buy this one, it shuffles cards to the floor.
It's great if you want to play 52 pickup! Actually that would be a funny mode to have on a shuffler, if you hit the button it just spits all the cards off the table.
I have a little experiance with dc motors (ie Lego dc motors) In the early mindstorms sets, they used simple dc motors with geared down output. (increased the torque a bit). It was known that the motors were NOT all alike! Each one turned at a slightly different rate! So If you wanted a dual motor robot to move in a straight line, you had to compaire the motors, and then used the pair that was closest in speed. Your dual motor card shuffler will have some randomness built in because the motors turning slightly differently. Coolness!
"suit", not "suite" :) Love you Fran!
A friend of mine had one of these back in the 80s and I always thought it was great how simple they were.
I have no idea about the open/close either. I wonder if the label was designed before a locking mechanism was removed or something.
Also, is the suit of a card normally pronounced "suite?" I've always pronounced it like a suit of clothing.
I think the math works out that you need to run a deck through for at least six passes before it's reasonably well-shuffled. And you probably want the motors to not be synchronized so that there's a bit more randomness about the card selection.
Wonderful video, keep it up!!
I always enjoy these explorations of electromechanical devices. But solitaire with real cards instead of on the computer? I don't have the patience for that, shuffling machine or not!
There are two motors likely because the center portion is taken up by the cards and card holding area. No real easy to ling them without changing the design considerably .
The reverse of a two tape sort...
To get a better shuffle from the cuts, maybe do an asymmetric cut first and then a symmetric one, so that the top never stays at the top.
The thing is, can you design a better one, an arduino robot, perhaps?
Re: Two motors: you don't want perfect 1:1 in a shuffle. The common riffle shuffle, as used in casinos, is more random specifically because of the inability of most to be precise enough to get a 1:1 every time. The more uneven the interleave, the more random the shuffle actually is.
The $15 ones I've seen ARE single "motor" (hand crank), and are far less random.
Is your drawer in backwards? The tabs look like they may be designed as detents to keep it from falling out. Also, we always said “suit” instead of “sweet” (phonetic)
My grandma had this same shuffler when I was a kid.
I know, I'm being picky. It is suits, not suites. ;-)
Casino style shuffle is a riffle, to mesh the two piles together, then by hand the 'strip the deck', which moves chunks of cards around in the deck, then riffle again. Finally cutting the deck in two and reversing the top and bottom stacks. This randomized sufficiently for casino game play.
The shuffle machine is a good way to shuffle in most cases, but not after a full game of solitaire.
You'll never see a casino put an unshuffled deck in a machine for that reason. They always first hand scramble, then shuffle virgin decks.
I guess I should explain "scramble". You place all the cards on the table, facedown, and hand mix them, separating the cards and then meshing them together again until you feel the mix is random, then start a normal shuffle.
Lmao, is that a bop-it on the shelf hahah very cool
I have the hand crank version and have dropped that card tray so many times I cracked it. With the hand version, there is only one motor (me) so the wheels can’t be turned independently and I never have card kick back. Also, if you haven’t voided the warranty on something, do you really own it yet?
we had two plastic electric-powered card shufflers - to shuffle two decks worth of cards. the quickly broke. We now have a plastic hand-cranked shuffler,, same size, and its lasting just fine.
Interesting, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a suit referred to as a suite. Is this a philly thing? Suit makes more sense to me as they are kinda wearing their colors/patterns like you would a suit.
Hi Fran, can you do a video about your HiFi system. That tube amp looks awesome.
I like that intro.
I like your song at the end
As for the On / Off button, Here in Canada the French don't really have a word for On / Off when it comes to a switch. I have heard many French people say please open or close the light when translating from French to English.. Hope that helps
@2:16 that is called a riffle (the bdrdrdrdr) and bridge (the ftrtrtrtrtr).
I figured the "open/close" designation was for an upgrade that features a mechanical lever that opens the drawer
Is it possible that the two independent motors help with randomization? If there was just one motor and the two mechanisms synchronized, then the pattern by which a card would taken from left or right would always be fixed
Maybe next you could find a Hammond Bridge Table to to share it's operation with three other close friends.
Here's a shuffling machine which will handle up to 8 decks of cards.
1-8 decks Casino Full-Automatic card shuffler
ruclips.net/video/txl3gqIfwHM/видео.html