It is a pretty stale dad joke to tell someone you have ESP when you mean you have an ESP8266 or ESP32 in your hand. However, [Naufil Metkar] uses an ESP device to pretend — via a magic trick — that he does have ESP. The trick requires a bit of 3D printing, an MPU6050 gyro sensor, and a lot of showmanship.
We hate to spoil an illusion, but you can probably figure it out from the list of things you need. The die has a gyro in it and uses a small ESP module to transmit its current orientation out to a display. There is a small reed switch that lets you turn off the device with a magnet. Without it, the battery dies quickly.
The receiver is another, larger ESP8266 and as a proof of concept, it only outputs the coordinates from the die via a serial port. To really make this a winner magic trick, you should probably have it beam the top-most die face to your smartwatch or something clever like that. So there is a bit more work to do.
Frivolous? Sure. But still fun. Building something like this into a better-looking die with wireless charging could probably make a product you could sell in the magic stores. As it is, though, it would be a neat project to do with a kid or just for the fun of it.
We thought about LEDs on the die face but then realized that would really zap the battery. If you can’t get enough dice, check out electronic farkle.
The Seeedstudio Xiao BLE Sense is the perfect thing for a V2: super tiny, much lower standby current than ESP8266, lipo charger, and onboard IMU. Though it’s about 4x the cost of an ESP-01 and generic MPU6050 board.
Control cube may be?
extrasensory perception. it’s like telepathy
I knew you were going to say that.
How did you know before TacticalNinja said that? Does “seeing into the future” qualify as ESP? Wait, you probably knew that I was going to ask this question. LOL
I’ve been eagerly following https://gamewithpixels.com/ which was featured here quite a while ago, but is basically the idea put into an actual product. Going from the concept to the product is taking quite a while.
+1
Good question… it would have been nice if the editor of the article did mention that instead of assuming that it is common knowledge. Not everyone has a “dad” who makes silly jokes about this subject.
“The trick requires … a lot of showmanship.”
Making watchable videos can be an art in itself too.
A few tips for the next video: add some sound, keep the camera steady, allow the viewer to focus on what you are aiming at with the camera. But please… tell us what you are doing when you film it and tell us what we should be looking for. This is a really cool project and it deserves a decent explanation, it took me multiple views to see what’s actually going on, then I read the Hackaday article again.. didn’t get it, read the website of the project and then the coin dropped… ahaaaaaaa. I felt so dumb that I didn’t get it, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
But back to the project itself, very cool concept!
I wondered also. Had to reach wikipedia.
Actually I often have to look for words when reading hackaday. Granted, i’m not a native English speaker, but the problem (imvho) is rather about either “americanism” (references to TV, culture, or ..?), or just plain lack of context.
Is the Die Properly balanced. Would be very funny to make a die that can tell you what face is pointing up if the face is always 3…