Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 10

Nice Dice

BUILD A PAIR OF ELECTRONIC RANDOM NUMBER GENERATORS.

By Charles Platt

For me, a good construction project should create an object that is fun, functional, and pleasing to the eye — and if it teaches me something interesting along the way, so much the better. I managed to satisfy all these requirements when I designed and built a pair of electronic dice. Although dice simulations have been around for many years, I was able to simplify the project while at the same time making it more interesting.

The basic principle is easy to understand. One chip generates a rapid stream of pulses. A second chip counts them and displays each number via an array of LEDs imitating the pattern of spots on a die. At an arbitrary moment, we stop the process ...