Generating dice-rolls over at the GamesByEmail HQ is a surprisingly efficient (and analog) matter. The conveyer belt based Dice-O-Matic can toss up to 1.3 million rolls per day, recording the results via die-recognition software.
The Dice-O-Matic is 7 feet tall, 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep. It has an aluminum frame covered with Plexiglas panels. A 6×4 inch square Plexiglas tube runs vertically up the middle almost the entire height. Inside this tube a bucket elevator carries dice from a hopper at the bottom, past a camera, and tosses them onto a ramp at the top. The ramp spirals down between the tube and the outer walls. The camera and synchronizing disk are near the top, the computer, relay board, elevator motor and power supplies are at the bottom.
Wow – a mighty fine alternative to generating pseudo-random sequences in software! [via Gizmodo]
In case you missed it, this is quite a leap forward from the earlier lego-based version we highlighted here many moons ago –
Dice rolling machine made from LEGOs
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