There have been several attempts at bringing Dungeons & Dragons up to date with modern technology. Most attempts have been in the form of computer games that somehow fail to capture the essential experience. This attempt, however seems to add some techie flair to while keeping the game the same. [Itay] has built some digital dice. Simply choose how many sides you want your dice to have, then give it a shake. OK, a random number generator isn’t that groundbreaking, but he did have to do some pretty intense soldering. The LED matrix is pretty cool, but we like looking at the back. You can see it in the video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWZV98KE_Ec&feature=player_embedded]
Sweet! This reminds me of one my first QBASIC scripts I had written back in high school. :)
It’s still slightly ‘loaded’
What would have been even greater is if you used the data from shaking the dice as a seed (or a basis for the seed) for the RNG. Would have truly been digital dice then. :D
cool!! being an “old” D&D player this is sweet. btw shinji, if you don’t like it, build your own. This is truly a home brew project.
I’m a bit disappointed that using this die looks like *more* work than traditional dice. Back is pretty crazy – at some point I think it’s worth your sanity to just have a PCB made (particularly with services like batchpcb around.)
way better idea 6x 7-segmented display with accelerometer in center, and it just displays the same number on all sides when it lands..
the bcddriver in there too
@tapius… did you watch the video? it does any number of sides up to 20. hows that going to work on your “way better” 7 segment display?
i didn’t like looking at the back…looked like a really bad perfboard layout ;)
sorry, didnt read post about many sides.
Pretty nice, but was this video seriously done with a running washing machine in the background?
whenever i see wirewrapping like that i die a little inside. you can prototype a pcb for so cheap, why do people torture themselves running a hundred wirewraps/jumpers?
@da66en – Because it’s fun and requires great skill and/or patience. Sometimes it’s just more satisfying to do the prototype entirely by hand.
Surely the problem with something like that is people will claim that other is cheating with an electronic dice?
Really cool tech though.