Hello looking , I really like the "ambitious" projects though attainable they are challenging. Glyph recognition is not going to read well enough to do what you want I believe at least. Not to say you cannot try! I have seen other projects do the coin sorting and it involved cataloging images of what a coin looks like and it basically had a camera pointed straight down at the table and a vacuum suction cup. It looked at the coin , identified it and dropped it in a container. Sounds easy but I'm sure its a challenge. Fortunately I believe you could use facial recognition to catalog the coins. The reason I suggest that is the facial identification that is coming in the future Doesn't need a perfect match to identify something. It only mostly has to match. That could be a good tool to identify coins perhaps.

Currently I think you would need to use some custom HAAR detection, ARC is opencv compatible which should help however you can only use one custom haar at a time.

http://www.popsci.com/node/49360/

Maybe you could make one of these balloon filled coffee ground grippers. That way they can pick up different sized and shaped coins. It pretty simple it just needs a small vacuum. There are diy videos on YouTube for it.

Thanks for the Ideas. I really like the gripper idea a lot for another project.

Some how I thought if I could zoom in on the single date numeral on a coin, and make it appear as big as a printed glyph then I could do a simple optical character recognition (using the glyph DLL ) and place the numeral in a string. say 1, 9, 6, 2 Then do a string to num conversion and say, if coindate LE (Less than or Equal) 1973 then transport to save tube via the EZ-B servo controller.

The program would start with a coin sorter then a color detection for copper pennies (or not). Or size detection using miroswitches or photo cell. The coins would be tubed by size. Then the date ID program would run.

For example, say I have a tube of quarters. The quarter one at a time is moved via a servo down a slot to a camera station. The camera takes a look at the lower region of the coin for a date numeral. If no date then servo rotate clockwise until date num (glyph) is found. I figure the date should be read frontward to create the correct string sequence for a string to num conversion. For example datestring(1,9,6,2) string2num = datenum(1962) glyph2 = num = 2. If NO date found then wrong side of Quarter. Transport to wrong side tube to be re run , right side up later.

As described above the numerical date is created and 1973 and below are transported to keep tube any newer date is transported to dont care tube. You could of course always select for specific dates like 1943 steel penny Its worth a fortune.

@Rich, Thanks for the pointer to opencv. I'm assuming from what DJ has written, a glyph is defined by a haar as a table of x and y values. I'll have to look into that. I was hoping I could see what values were used in glyph 1 and then change the x.y values to what haar would return for an image of a 1 etc. I'm just starting to look at C#. I'm really familiar with Rbase SQL command code which is supposedly similar to Pearl or Python.

PS:I just nabbed a Brookstone Rover off eBay for $78 shipped, so I'm excited. I'm gonna have some fun. I want it to crawl down the isles in my garden and zap the weeds with a Laser. LOL

I already have a Wall-e