This week on the Adafruit Learning System we are going to take a look at all the guides that involve rolling dice. These guides include fun and creative ways to roll dice from D6 to D20. We will explore how to create a quick D6 dice roller using a Circuit Playground or create the fun 3D printed automatic dice roller shown above. But first lets take a look at what’s new on the Adafruit Learning System.

Favorite New Guide

This week my favorite new guide will show you how to make a sketch drawing toy with CircuitPython

Build a self-contained Dial-a-Song using a Western Electric 2500DM telephone and a Feather RP2040 + mono amplifier. People can dial a number to hear a song or message played through the handset earpiece. The CircuitPython keypad library makes it simple to read the Touch Tone keypad matrix. It’s a fun conversation piece — especially with its accurate dial tone, touch tones, and other teleco messages — and perfect for escape rooms or other puzzle games. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, however, should you choose to put some They Might Be Giants songs on there, you’ll be a hero.

Use the two knobs to move a cursor up, down, left and right. The toggle switch lets you do a pen up and down so you can turn off drawing to make separate shapes. Use the button to clear the screen. Easily customize the background and drawing colors using CircuitPython!

Creative Ways to Roll the Dice

Click here for the full dice group on the Adafruit Learning System

Talking d20 20-Sided Gaming Die

The 20-sided die — or “d20” as it’s known to tabletop gamers — is an icon of geek culture. In this project we’ll 3D-print a jumbo d20 and outfit it with electronics…because that’s how we roll at Adafruit.

The talking d20 is fun and good for a laugh…though with electronics inside it won’t be 100% perfectly random or balanced…so it’s not suitable for all gaming situations and doesn’t replace your trusty dice bag. Think of it as a geek version of those “executive decision maker” toys.

The code and sounds are completely customizable. For example, you could load each of the 20 faces with the names of local lunch spots and use it to pick the day’s destination.

NeoTrellis M4 Animated Dice Roller

In this project we’ll take the NeoTrellisM4 and use it to make a dice roller.

We want to be able to select between 1 and 8 dice to roll, and the type of dice: 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, or 20 sided. To keep the interface simply, we can’t mix types of dice.

The number of dice is selected using the top row of buttons: 1-8 starting from the left. As the count is selected, a bar fills in from the left.

The type of die is selected by buttons on the second row. Each type of die is assigned a unique color that is used to display the result of rolls as well as the associated selection button when a die is selected.

CLUE Dice Roller

How many times have you been sitting at the game table and needing to roll some dice. But you forgot to bring yours and the dice box is on the other side of the table. All you have within reach is a CLUE (maybe in a snazzy case). If only there was a way to roll dice with your CLUE.

There is. All you need is the code in this guide.  Read on to see how to set your CLUE up as a universal set of dice.

Automatic Dice Roller

This project allows people who need accessibility tech to “roll” the dice. Use it to play games like Yahtzee, left right center, math activities, war with dice, rock paper scissor dice and even bowling dice.

Just press the glowing arcade button to spin the platter! The twisty top snow globe easily comes off and you can put dice or whatever object (LEGO maybe?) you want on the platter to roll and spin. The platter spins pretty fast so you can get a good roll. Or use D20’s to make a random number generator!

This idea originally came from the ATMakers.org facebook group. A thread about adapting a dice roller featured some ideas and started the conversion about different design methods. Member, Brady Fulton, shared a concept he designed in Fusion 360 that I really liked and decided to base our design off his.

ALS Deep Cut

With so many guides on the Adafruit Learning System, some amazing guides of years past get buried and lost. ALS Deep Cuts brings these guides back up to the surface. This week’s guide is from back in 2015.

Build a tiny handheld raspberry pi portable computer

This is a Raspberry Pi notebook. Our 3D Printed enclosure turns the Pi and a 3.5” PiTFT into a sweet retro mini laptop. The mini chiclet keyboard is both adorable and wireless. It features a trackpad, but you can also use the Touch screen on the PiTFT.

Rechargable through the PowerBoost 1000C, the 2000mAh battery fits between the screen and the Raspberry Pi. 3D Printed hinges attach to the enclosure, making this a tiny portable computer!