Building Electronic Dice [Step-by-Step Guide] | Circuit and Code Available

This electronic dice project uses an ESP32 board paired with a selection of digital logic integrated circuits and LEDs to simulate a physical rolling die. The ESP32 acts as the central processing unit, running code written through the Arduino IDE or ESP32 development environment to generate a random number sequence whenever a roll is triggered. Instead of driving every single LED directly from microcontroller pins, the ESP32 coordinates with a combination of logic ICs—specifically the 74LS138 decoder, the 74LS260 gate, the CD4075 gate, and the 74LS04 inverter—to handle the complex combinational logic required to light up the correct patterns on a 5mm LED matrix. Each of the seven LEDs represents one of the dots on a standard dice face, protected from overcurrent by dedicated 330-ohm resistors. Male-to-female jumper wires connect the ESP32 to the logic IC and LED circuitry on a breadboard or custom circuit board. When you initiate a roll, the ESP32 rapidly cycles through numbers, creating a convincing animation effect before settling on a final random value. This final number is translated by the logic gates into the appropriate voltage signals, illuminating the correct subset of the seven LEDs to display a number from one through six.