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Audible Dice Tower with Display

A project log for Sears Silvertone Audible Digital Dice Tower

Tabletop dice tower in a retro Sears Silvertone radio case with voice output

john-andersonJohn Anderson 04/03/2020 at 06:220 Comments

I have another Sears Silvertone radio case like the original one I built here. So, I'm going to build another audible digital dice tower with it. In the meantime, I got a request to add a display of some sort so it's possible to for a sighted person to confirm the roll results since the voice quality isn't perfect. So, I decided to build a tower using a slightly smaller case that simplifies the layout of the components. This way I could focus on the software updates to make these new features work and hardware changes would be easier.

So I built this little tower using a little sheet metal enclosure you can buy off Amazon or Ebay. It's powered by a single 9v battery, has a 3 digit 7 segment LED display, on/off volume combo switch/potentiometer, and uses the same 5 way joystick style switch to select the dice type, dice count, and initiate a roll. 

While I updated the software adding the display, I also added power management to put the CPU in extended standby mode between user input and roll events. I also tweaked the voice algorithm to re-use the "D" sound and the ones digits 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9. For example, the device says "four dee" instead of "fourty". The result is almost indiscernible to the ear. This saved enough room to fit the rolling sound and the word "hundred" into the flash memory.

If there is any interest, I'll post the source code and some more notes on the components.

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