Project: Trading card display pedestal

[tylerssims]

Figured I'd share some gifts I made for Christmas. I still need to upload the firmware this week, so I have a bit of work to do still.
They are display pedestals for PSA-graded trading cards. The 14-segment displays show the value and population of each card. The displays connect to an Adafruit Huzzah (ESP8266 module). The intent is for the value and population to be automatically updated through a server. There is a nice package on GitHub for scraping the data for the cards, so I will be publishing that data to my server, which the ESP8226 will connect to.

The front is made from Cherry, and the purple parts are all PLA/ PHA 3D prints wrapped in velvet. I had the aluminum machined locally, and the PCBs were made by Oshpark (also local to me). Each pair of displays is mounted on a board with an HT16K33 matrix driver chip.

Let me know what you think; criticism is welcome:)

 https://imgur.com/a/s8zkXwj

[BurningTantalum]

OK, I'll bite on this: Every day a schoolday, but having Googled 'PSA trading cards' I am still no wiser as to what they are and why they need a display case with electronics and alphanumeric displays. Are they a modern day incarnation of 'Bazooka Joe' cards?

[tylerssims]

Haha, that's a great question. I am not too into cards myself, but my family is. PSA is one of the biggest grading companies. You send your cards into them (sports cards, pokemon cards, whatever), and they grade it on a scale of 1-10, give it a serial number, and seal it in a special case. Cards are pretty much worthless to a collector unless it's graded.

There is a website that keeps track of the current value of the card (looks at the last auction price). You can also see the population (how many exist) of that specific card at that grade. My display shows the updated value and population of a card. Some of these PSA cards are worth thousands of dollars, so that's why you may want a unique display!

Essentially the display shows how much the card is worth and how rare it is. It's just supposed to be a cool thing to put on your shelf, nothing too serious.

I used alphanumeric displays so I could represent large values with letters. For example, I could display 5,000 as 5K.