Daves Old Computers – Robotic DVD Loader | Hacker News Reader

Daves Old Computers – Robotic DVD Loader

dunfield.classiccmp.org

158 pointsgscott23 comments

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Built one of those 15 years prior. https://www.sentex.ca/~mwandel/tech/changer.html

https://hackaday.com/2013/09/05/jack-the-dvd-ripping-robot/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmHycIOtYHA

https://github.com/ajayre/JacktheRipperBot

Just the icing on the cake that the monitoring system is hacked up from a barbecue thermometer. Amazing!

I had a similar task for a client many years ago. I only had about 300 DVDs though. I did complete the job manually, after 2 weeks of burning on multiple machines. Part of the deal was I got to keep the original DVDs, which I sold individually in addition to getting paid by the customer and keeping a digital copy of the DVDs for myself.

Worth it.

...This sounds like a lot of piracy (considering the DVDs were things worth selling individually). You got paid to pirate content for the client, also pirated the content for yourself, and then sold the only legitimate copies of the content in question.

So?

I went out of my way to find a slot-loading DVD drive. When the drive is mounted vertically, ejected discs will fall out and possibly roll away on their own. That just leave a hopper to hold the queued discs and one moving piece to reposition and insert the disc far enough for the drive loader to grab it.

My favorite game to play when working on hardware projects is "make it work (with what you have)".

It's way more fun than just going to the hardware store to get what you "need". Granted the end result is normally pretty ugly, but then again the end result is not why I play the game.

If you have a 3d printer, some motors and some cheap microcontroller boards you can make a lot of stuff.

This is by far the biggest reason to own a 3d printer. Even if you don't have any motors and just the microcontrollers, printing custom cases for them beats using Altoid or soap boxes.

It can take a project from a "bunch of wires and solder" to "hey, this looks like something from a store"

The moving ramp is a brilliant solution that prevents needing any lateral motion of the arm. It makes using a pulley system for up/down much more reliable.

I worked for a company that had 100 of these, AMA

Have you ever been so far as to even pretend to even want to go to do more like?

Reminds me a bit of Sprites' Jello shot-making robot made out of stepper motors from old CD-ROM drives:

https://spritesmods.com/?art=jello3dprinter

I remember this from many years ago. I seriously considered making one when I was ripping my cd collection to mp3z. Ultimately, I didn’t, but I still think an actually useful robot would be nice.

This gizmo looks quite good, considering that it was built from scraps!

In two days. I feel like a failure

Don't judge yourself - aspire.

While he was home sick too...

That said, the bar for failure is not so high as the ability to hack up a robotic dvd loader in two days from scraps while you’re sick.

The comments here are like that bit in the original Robocop:

"Ooo, guns, guns, guns!"

https://youtu.be/z5-1nVswz0I

my first youtube video! Built one of these at school. Oddly, it wasn't for a project, it was because a professor needed 100 copies of a cd done for some reason or another, and paid me for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsQKTUYtZvo

great choice of music

You can buy disk autoloader duplicators/copiers off the shelf at couple of $grands per 1000 disk Microboards model.

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