Forgot your dice? No problem.
With the click of a button you can now roll a real dice in the real world and see the result! Introducing…
Robo Roll
Bring some real world randomness to the next game you play.
How this prototype works:
The little circuit board in the bottom left with all the wires coming out is a RaspberryPi. It’s actually a credit card sized computer with output pins!
On it I’m running a webserver using the python framework Flask. This webserver has the ability to serve users the website shown on the computer. This is how the internet works, dedicated computers (servers) serve websites.
Connected to the RaspberryPi is a camera whose live feed is fed to the website.
Also connected to the RaspberryPi, through all those wires you see, is a servo motor, basically a small motor that you can program to turn to specific angles.
When I press the ‘roll’ button, my laptop makes a request to an endpoint on that webserver on the RaspberryPi which triggers the servo motor holding the ‘dice chamber’ to rotate back and forth
The ensuing dice roll is streamed back to the user on the website.
Voila! A 5! I hope that was a good number for you
Since becoming a software engineer I spent my 9-5 I’ve building things that stay solely in the digital world. While that’s cool, y’all know I the things in the real world. Perhaps I’ll be able to work someday at the convergence of the physical and digital!