This Project Is Just a Roll of the Dice
Check out this cool dice project - no electronics, but pretty darn awesome.
Abraham - the Dicecreator - is an inventor/electronics tinkerer/dice maker. While he makes all sorts of cool dice, such as Dr. Mahattan themed dice, we came across a pair of his dice that were just too cool not to post about. While these don't actually have any electronics inside of them, they definitely fit the category.
If these look like components - it's because they are!
These dice are meant to show the history of electronics components - and I'd say they do quite an admirable job. As Abraham describes the dice on his website, the numbers are represented in the following way: .
- Resistor. Any metal wire has electrical resistance.
- Capacitor (+ resistor). Two metal plates that can store energy between them.
- Coil (+ capacitor + resistor). A wound wire that resists electrical current change.
- Diode (+ coil + capacitor + resistor). Allows electrical current in one direction but not the other. Precursor of the transistor.
- Operational amplifier. Makes use of all the above components to create a singular circuit capable of amplifying, filtering and much more.
- Integrated circuit. The pinnacle of electronics. Any component of the above doesn’t get smaller than in this package.
These dice will definitely take a little bit more brain power at first to figure out what they're showing, but they are extremely cool. If you want to pick up a pair for yourself, they are on sale via the Dicecreator's Ebay page (note however that the store is currently closed but we'll be open again May 10th). Nice work, Abraham!
LOL yes I was thinking the same thing but keeping it at the component level as the dice currently are. Roll the device, draw the component. Roll the dice, attach the new component to any other point on the schematic so far.
Can you make a working circuit in 10 rolls or less?
On second thought this technique may improve my designed markedly... ;-)
Love to see a rapid build contest or something, roll the dice and make something using the results from the dice. Looks like we'll need an arduino die, and a sensor die, and a danger symbol....lots of danger symbols
These are like "Adult fun" dice for robots.
"Lick my... Resistor! Ooh baby!"
I was wondering when are YOU guys going to have in stock.....It seems a perfect electronics paraphernalia piece....
We could, but then we'd need to get the 12 sided die, and of course the 20 sided, and then a deck of SparkFun cards as well... Pretty soon we'll be opening the SparkFun casino and Colorado really frowns on that. Maybe we'll just sell electronics that drive you crazy rather than games you can't win.
Who says the SparkFun casino has to be in Colorado? There's plenty of room on the Vegas Strip.
Set up a civilian DARPA challenge and have long-range autonomous vehicles fly themselves from the casino roof in Vegas to the SparkFun parking lot in Boulder to kick off the AVC.
Gotta think big, man. :)
Agreed. It would go nicely with my new sheet of SparkFun RTFM stickers!
Back in the 1970's, Radio Shack had an electronics kit like this. Each cube had a part. I miss that kit.
It would be even more awesome if it had a built in RFID tag.
What about the memristor, the properties of which depend on both current state and the history of the system? HP announced their implementation two years ago today.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor