[Gadre] built his own ATtiny project without using any batteries. It’s an electronic Dice (or die if you’re being critical) which uses induction to charge a storage capacitor to act as the power source. The voltage generator is made from a tube of Perspex which houses a set of rare-earth magnets. At the enter of the tube [Gadre] machined a channel wich accepts about 1500 windings of 30 AWG magnet wire. When someone shakes the tube back and forth the magnet passes the wire, inducing a current. The product is stored in a 4700 uF capacitor, which feeds a boost converter to power the rest of the circuit.
The ATtiny13V that controls the circuit is running its internal RC oscillator at 128 kHz, the lowest setting possible in order to minimize power consumption. After a good shake the user can press a button to roll the die, which is then displayed for several seconds on a group of seven LEDs. See for yourself in the video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHOUamO67uk&w=470]
I’d love to see a smaller, more elegant d20 version of this. :)
I think a bare bones kind if dead bug design with a smaller supercapacitor (those 3 volt 1f ones should do the trick) would have made it a little smaller. Perhaps even using a peizo for something that you “roll” would also be cool.
What need could this be used for?
You are in the wrong place.
My god… the music… and the mic!
Ok, just an observation, but don’t ya think should be TWO dice? :D
Awesome job though.
Fantastic man, great job! Simple and effective.
save vs poison!
Better get your patent before Apple files for a zero power PSU patent.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-psu-patent-zero-power,13393.html
Isnt that describing a laptop power system in general?
Normal use charges battery, circuitry powered by battery, power supply detects if circuitry is on…
NO JUST STOP IT APPLE!
This is really great work.
It’s very rube goldberg… Microcontrollers, capacitors, machined tubes and magnets all to ‘randomly’ give a number between 1 and 6. Or, you could use a regular old school dice :)
Don’t listen to people who say “it could be smaller” or whatever. This was an exploration, not a production piece. It was fantastic. I really like how the traditional “shake it up” motion for rolling dice was integrated into the object. Nice work!
Agreed, don’t listen to anybody that fails to show you their superior achievement. Their only achievement is being able to post criticism.
That is just such a great idea. It mimicks what we already do when preparing to roll a dice. Genius.
Would it be possible to incorporate the Tiny with this setup? http://www.instructables.com/id/Shake-it-like-a-Tic-Tac!/ Same concept, but it only illuminates one LED. Probably would need a bigger cap?
I kind of want to watch True Lies now.
I also like that the act of shaking dice before a roll has been preserved, very nice!
Pretty neat setup.
I wonder though, how its lifespan is affected by the moving parts. I’ve gone through a couple linear induction
fleshflashlights.If I were asked to make a shake activated, battery-less, die, I’d tear apart a $4 solar calculator and add a tilt sensor.
Is it possible to kiss or blow on the device to influence the outcome to be more favorable to the user?
If not, I’ll have to stick with the real deal.
Well of course you can kiss, and blow on the device. No doubt the effect will be the same as doing so on traditional bones. Transfer of bacteria, an virii?
Yes, but you need to put just the right amount of conductivity across just the right pins.
good idea, bad video lol
Great job!
I wonder how the ‘Por una cabeza’ argentinean tango from Carlos Cardel, got to new delhi to be the music track of this video. ¿?
Oh, that is nice! There’s got to be some way to harness more random motion like from walking or driving.
Did you see this attiny45 robot hack over on embedded projects? Just when you thought it was tiny enough already, they have surface mount ones too!
http://www.embedds.com/tiny-robots-with-microcontroller/
@ Mike Szczys: You might want to tag this as ATtiny hack.
Very neat idea!
Why press a button to roll the dice? Detect the incoming voltage fluctuations and roll automatically.
I might be looking into this wrong, and while the sound could be better (neat build though) I HAVE to know what song that is. It’s driving me up the walls.
Figured it out (after just clicking through, doh) it’s “Por Una Cabeza”
This is also featured in “Tiny avr projects for the evil genius” also written by the author.
Here’s an idea for digidice for your next round of roleplaying geekery. Look up how the SGI Lavarand system was built.
Basically it pointed a crappy webcam at several lava lamps then periodically sampled a frame of video to use as a seed to run through some random number generation algorithms. Since the seed data was completely chaotic the whole system functioned as a true random number generator with absolutely unpredictable output.
Instead of lava lamps, the camera could be aimed at any source of visual chaos, like a room full of RPG playing geeks and nerds. ;) For more chaos, add a microphone for additional random seed data.