TCGArchivist CS100 Gen2 - Review

Conclusion

The CS100 Gen2's value proposition is $300 USD for not having to flip cards in front of your scanner application manually.

It takes some fiddling to get it working just right with your scanner app of choice. Once you find the sweet spot of speed, camera position, background, and lighting, it makes scanning piles of cards quite easy.

That said, the device is 3D-printed plastic with a motor and some basic control boards. Especially considering the missing features and rough fitment, it seems like it should cost closer to $100, not $300.

Improvements over CS100 Gen1

TCGArchivist debuted with the CS100 Gen1 for $200 USD. They seemed to have put a lot of effort into making sure the Gen2 was a literal iteration on the Gen1 design. For those that already have a Gen1, they can merely buy a Gen2 upgrade kit for $100 USD and perform the upgrade themselves.

Because of the iterative design, TCGArchivist advertises the Gen2 with a list of changes:

Speed Control

We have added a mechanism to allow users to adjust the delay between card ejections by turning a small knob.

One of the main complaints about the Gen1 was that the card dispensing operated at a fixed speed. Gen2 provides a tiny screw inside the back of the machine that can adjust the speed.

While this is certainly a welcome improvement, it's immediately disappointing that this isn't a more convenient external control. It's also disappointing that there's no indication which direction corresponds with increasing or decreasing the motor speed.

I am pleased with the range of speeds the device accommodates. The fastest speed is ~3 cards per second. Far too fast for scanning but appropriate for counting a stack of cards. The slowest speed is ~1 card per 30 seconds, which is about slow enough if you prefer scanning and then manually picking the set and treatment for each card as it goes. Because the speed control is an analog dial, you're able to use any speed in between those two.

Improved Start/Stop Button

The button on the Gen2 is large, in a prime location and has a nice tactile “pop” feel when pressed.

No complaints here. The button is easily accessible, highly visible, and seems to reliably start and pause the motor without delay.

Card Count Display

By adding a card count display, users will now know the exact number of cards that have been fed through the machine with each scan.

Again, no complaints here. The 7-segment LED display is large and appropriately bright.

In my tests, the card count was always accurate. The machine never double fed two cards on top of each other or dry fired without any card dispensing. Occasionally, a card will dispense and the edge of another one will peek out. But the Gen2 seems smart enough to know that it needs to run in reverse for a split second to pull the card back in.

General Review

That covers the specific points that TCGArchivist calls out about the Gen2. So how about the rest of the construction and usage?

In general, I believe the Gen2 parts and assembly are the same as the Gen1. So, if you already have opinions about the Gen1, not much should change here.

Let's start with some highlights:

• The feed tray holds ~100 cards
• The machine only fits unsleeved cards. Even inner sleeves are too large to fit in the trays. Anything even slightly larger than a standard MTG card won't fit
• The feed roller has soft, rubber washers to contact the cards. I didn't see any marks or damage on cards from feeding them through the machine dozens of times

Fit and Finish

As noted at the top, most of the device is 3D-printed plastic. Nothing feels flimsy but the finishes are inconsistent. Some surfaces are perfectly smooth, some have a gentle bumpy texture, and others have the usual striations of unfinished 3D-printed parts.

Perhaps the greatest sin of the printing techniques used is how tight or loose some fitments are.

The card try is removeable, which makes it fairly easy to unload a stack of dispensed cards.

However, the tray very loosely sits within the groove visible above. Even light bumps can dislodge the tray or cause it to bounce on the groove loudly. This is especially notable because cards land in the tray by hitting the vertical back wall. I'll speak on noise later but this combination of design choices is a big annoyance.

The phone stand has similar fitment problems. It comes in three parts: the main stand and two optional extension posts.

On the positive side, this phone stand system is highly configurable. The two extensions are different lengths, allowing for 4 different phone heights. The phone itself sits on a grid-like tray that supports 32 different horizontal positions (depending on the size and weight distribution of your phone).

However, all four of these pieces fit either too tightly or too loosely. The stand and extensions barely fit together at all. They require some real force to connect and disconnect. That may be intentional, to provide extra security to the stand holding up a possibly very expensive phone.

But the phone tray fits very loosely on the top of the stand. The stand has a small hook that "catches" the grid holes in the tray, letting gravity and the phone's weight keep the tray in place. It certainly allowed you to pick up and replace the phone very easily but the tray wobbles so much that it's hard to say the overly-tight fit of the stand and extensions is intentional. All it'd take is a small bump in the right direction for the tray and phone to fall right off.

Noise

Tolerance for noise will be very subjective but I believe the CS100 is significantly louder than it needs to be. There are two main sources of noise:

The motor itself is pretty loud. It makes a grindy, whiny whir as it runs. Thankfully, it only has to run in very short bursts but I imagine a higher-quality motor or different mounting and housing techniques would result in more tolerable noise levels.

The second main source of noise is from cards striking the removable tray. This isn't so violent that it damages the cards but the edge of cardboard striking a loose 3D-printed tray makes a loud, hollow "tap" with each card. A different 3D-printing technique/material and making the tray not bounce loosely in the groove would likely reduce this noise.

I tried padding the interior of the tray with white paper and tissues, which did reduce the noise significantly. However, my scanner app refused to scan cards if there was anything else in the tray. It seems that having the cards stack perfectly is necessary for reliable scanning, and any padding I can make results in slight misalignments of the deposited cards.

Suggestions for the next version

• Lower the price
  • $300 USD makes the device hard to recommend for people who don't have more money than time
  • Ultimately, all this device does is save you from having to manually move cards in front of your phone camera. It can't scan the cards itself, it doesn't sort the cards, it doesn't detect if the scanner app failed to scan a card
• Add an actual on/off switch
  • The new button starts and stops the motor but can't turn the device off entirely
  • You have to unplug the device to turn it off
  • While on (even when paused) the device has several bright LEDs that could be annoying
• Make the speed control a real, external knob
  • Having to use a tiny screwdriver in a tiny hole at the back of the device isn't user friendly. It's easy to imagine people will lose the screwdriver and that people with dexterity issues will struggle to adjust the speed how they want
  • Indicate on the device which direction of the speed control increases and decreases speed
• Quiet the machine
  • Perhaps use a quieter motor
  • Perhaps change the design of the card tray to be heavier/less hollow, to fit more securely in the machine, and maybe to have some internal padding
  • Add (optional) felt or rubber feet for the bottom of the device
• Improve the phone stand fitment
  • Make the stand and extensions connect and disconnect more easily
  • Make the phone try connect more securely
• Allow scanning of larger cards
  • Perhaps the card trays could be adjustable, similar to the paper trays of printers
  • Would allow for scanning or counting stacks of sleeved cards
  • Adding extra space around the input tray would also make it easier to slide a stack of cards in and out of the top of the machine