January 14, 2015

Interfacing a Punched Card Reader with Arduino

In the previous century early mainframe computers were programmed with a series of punched cardboard cards, with each card containing one instruction. These cards were placed in order into a reader device, which had sensors to detect holes in the card and converted the hole position into data. In hindsight this method may have seemed incredibly odd, but at the time it worked well.

As an interesting homage to the past, Kyle Owen has located a punched card reader, a deck of cards and successfully interfaced it to an Arduino board. With a relatively simple sketch the Arduino can interpret the data from the card reader and send it to the serial monitor - as shown in the following video:

An interesting example of old and new technology, and follow Kyle's YouTube channel for updates to this interesting project. And for more, we're on facebookGoogle+, and twitter - so follow us for news and product updates as well.

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