Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Robotics

Journal SlashChick's Journal: I'm Back With A Strange Question. Do You Have The Answer? 22

Journal by SlashChick

My apologies for not updating this journal more often; I've been extremely busy with work (Simpli). Simpli is doing well, by the way, and we're set to introduce a new website soon, so stay tuned! ;)

I have a strange question. Upon pondering this question and realizing I knew nothing about it, I immediately wondered where I could find the answer. So I've decided to mine you guys -- the geekiest people I know -- for an answer.

I have a client who wants to rip 300 CDs to a hard drive. He'd like me to come up with a solution, so I've been studying various methods of ripping CDs. Obviously no one wants to sit there all day and feed CDs into a computer, so there needs to be a better solution.

I've Googled and it appears that the best solution is a robotic arm that attaches to a computer. My basic idea is to have two spindles of CDs: one spindle which hasn't been ripped and one which has. The arm can pick up a CD from the spindle of "not yet ripped", drop the CD into the open drive, and, when the CD is done, it can pick it back up and place it on the "ripped" spindle.

Obviously this requires some communication between the computer and the robotic arm. The best solution would probably be to use Linux, a serial or parallel port for communication, and a script ("Arm, pick up CD from 'non-ripped' spindle. CD drive, close. Ripper program, rip. CD drive, open. Arm, pick up CD and put it into 'ripped' spindle. Repeat.") Okay, so that's kind of what this guy did. But I don't care about getting CDs out of cases or anything.

I'm willing to spend up to $300 for a complete solution (not including computer, which I'll buy separately.) So that's $300 for a robot and a script to guide it. What do you think? Is this doable or reasonable? Do some research and I might give you part or all of that money to build it. ;)

EDIT: To all you people who said "Just hire a teenager," well, that's just not nearly geeky enough for me. Plus, I may want to do this again in the future.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

I'm Back With A Strange Question. Do You Have The Answer? More

I'm Back With A Strange Question. Do You Have The Answer?

Comments Filter:
  • We had such a robotic "arm" that swapped CD's, which was designed as an automated CD-R burning/duplicating system. This was back circa 1999/2000, so I'm sure it has dropped from the original $5000 pricetag, but I doubt it has reached the sub-$300 level yet.
    • Right... I know exactly what you're talking about. A client of mine has one. They're about $2000 or so now, but that includes 5 drives and a thermal printer for the labels. That's very similar to what I'm looking for, but much more complicated. Generally, you feed it a CD image and something to print, tell it how many CDs to print, stack a bunch of blank CDs in a spindle, and hit a button, and it does the rest. That's more complicated than I need; I just want an arm that can pick up a CD and go from point A
      • I've got one on my desk right now... creating some code to automagically route stuff to DVD. Let me know if you want a pointer to some robotics dvd writer/printer kit. Feed it a file structure, it gens the iso, and the runs it through a 300 CD hopper...
  • Simpli r0x!!
  • I wonder if such things exist, and can be bought cheap on eBay. Like this, [ebay.com] but cheaper.
  • Yup, definitely doable. We have a system here that works like that and you can control it via a serial interface. It has a SCSI port so you can export/import images from a host system.

    The problem is that it costs around 2G. So, it looks like Ebay or a similar surplus shop will have to be your friend :)

    Of course, if this is a one-off job, you can always fall back on 2 or more regular CD burners and a teenager working at 10$ / hour, assuming a human can change out approximate 6 disks per reader drive per ho
  • http://www.deleet.de/projekte/ULF/
  • ... imagine a beowulf cluster of those robotic arms :o ....
  • I'd check with local CD duplication service bureaus. They may be able to do something like this with the equipment they have.

    Otherwise a teenager working for minimum wage is probably the best solution.
  • A couple other people have posted this suggestion, and I can't agree more. Don't worry about an hourly charge, just tell the kid you'll pay them $200 or whatever to burn all those cds over a weekend. From a highschool kid's perspective, it's a pretty good job - a one-off deal with no lasting obligations to get paid to sit around and do homework, read, or whatever and occaisionally change out a cd from a burner. I don't think you'd have any trouble, and you could theoretically get it done next weekend. Sound
  • Using the human option seems to be the most cost efficient, even if you do this more than once.

    Figure it takes 10 minutes to rip a CD, and you get the standard 6 hrs work/day out of your worker. 200 CDs * 10 minutes = 2000 minutes / 60 minutes/hr / 6 hrs =~ 5 1/2 days.

    I'd probably do a "fixed bid" thing where the worker gets $1 for every CD ripped, contingent upon finishing at a reasonable time. If speed is a factor, I'd hire more people and divide the work, since this is a fixed work project, you won't

  • Umm...do you have a little brother or sister you can force the task on? ;)

  • I did probably 100 audio CDs one day while I was working from home, just fed the drive when it spat out. Took like 6 hours or so with one drive. I had to occasionally polish a disc that wouldn't rip flawlessly, which would have been problematic for any automated solution.

    If you must throw hardware at it, do it with 10 drives.

    Oh, and I think trying to do anything for $300 is pretty hopeless. :)
  • What about a 100 disk CD changer? I have no experiance with them, but it seems like you should be able to rip from it, perhaps with digtial out to the soundcard, unless they have a direct computer attachment. Just a thought.
  • Outsource.

    No, i'm serious. Make it a group project; feed it to a local university CS department as a project in efficiency/robotics. get a group of geeks involved hands-on. This does two things- it can spread out the cost, AND you're likely to come up with ten solutions and half a dozen variations of each, and that's good stuff for when you want to do this again.

  • A robotic arm would probably work, but it'd be a lot of work to set it up and program it so that it correctly and reliably does its job.

    Cheaper would probably be to build a cheap computer, but equip it with one extra ide-controller, and hook up 6 cd-rom drives, then hire some student to swap cds for the few hours it'd take.

    One cd-rom drive typically needs like 5-10 minutes for ripping a cd (depending on if you use cdparanoia with a lot of paranoia or with few checks, and depending on if the cds are scra

  • www.ripdigital.com

    They do the service for you, ship it back on either DVD or external Hard Drive.

    A colleage of mine was deciding if this was a good business to get into, and found them.

  • Scootch 10 existing PCs next to each other. Put your ripping script on all ten machines. Sit there swpping CDs into those machines for an hour and blow your $300 on coke.

    A service bureau is the right answer. That way your $2000 robot arm solution can be amortized across multiple clients.
  • http://tinyurl.com/3hb3y

    After you've charged the customer for it, you could even resell the thing on eBay and get some of the money back.
    • On closer look, the hardware to control the 300 disc changer was a little more expensive than I had expected. It looks like the "Slink-e" (http://www.nirvis.com/slink-e.htm) itself is $249.

      However, if you can't find the robotic arm solution you're looking for, this may still be a good alternative for you.

      So, from what I can tell, you'll want the 300 Disc changer I mentioned, plus the "Slink-e" hardware unit linked above, and you'll probably save yourself some money by not having to write all of the contr

Slashdot Top Deals

An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.

Close