Sorting Machine: Raspberry + Arduino Collaboration

Hello.

I’ve got Raspberry Pi and Arduino kits en route… this will be my first time doing any kind of DIY programming and tinkering. My goal in posting here is to get some insight as to not waste TOO much time crawling all over the dark corners of the google-verse… althought, I fear that’s unavoidable. My programming skills are very limited. I plan to use minibloq initially.

I hope to create a system that FIRST scans laboratory specimen labels, and using Raspberry Pi OCR, acquires a unique value from the specimen which then feeds it to an awaiting Arduino section. SECOND, the Arduino portion of the system will wait for the OCR feed, and route the specimen down a conveyor belt, moving servos to open/block specific pathways - depending on value of the OCR data.

The Raspberry will handle all the “ADMIN” and data logging, whereas the Arduino will handle the “MUSCLE” work. The Arduino will run ONE cycle, wait for the OCR feed, then run another cycle. It will also run a conveyor belt that will detect presence of specimens (somehow) and stop if there’s nothing in the system.

This will take months to build, but I think it will be amazing and beautiful.

Any guidance will be highly appreciated.

//Mark

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An important piece of info is to take this project one step at a time. It sounds like a huge undertaking. Don’t do everything at once. Google will be your best friend.