Portable Electronic Roulette

Electronic Roulette System

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During the 90’s I built a lot of electronic kits from Dick Smith Electronics, one of my favorites was the electronic roulette system.
I’m going to have to go from memory here… When you press the ‘spin’ button it would start the discharge of a capacitor, that discharge would then equate to the length of the spin. The initial speed of the spin was at a certain rate, and if you held the button it would spin at the start speed forever. When you release the button it would start to slow down, until it finally click, click, clicked into its final resting spot.

Can You Cheat?

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Because the initial spin speed was a constant, and the length of spin was determined from the discharge of a capacitor, it theoretically would be possible to release the button at an exact moment to cause it to land at a certain spot. This of course assumes the capacitors discharge rate is identical for each spin, though actually releasing the button at the same point each spin is really hard.

The Black and Red segments were printed onto a Glossy White photo paper and glued to the PCB. Each component was pushed through and soldered.

Table Design

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I spent a long time designing the table, it was designed from scratch and matched exactly the size of the case. I really like the yellow separator lines, and the font. It took a long time but I’m really happy with the final form.

Oh and I nearly forgot the multilevel aspect of the table! Check that out, it was like a split loft so you can rake the chips into the front drop section.

Additional Features

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Chip holder

In order to always have chips I reused another roulette tables chip holder and mounted it to the case. The little holder of the chips was cut from something, I think it was a roller coaster part of some sort. And the white backing is a whiteboard style material so you could write the value fo each chip separately.

Battery and rake

They weren’t last minute thoughts, but they were hard to instal. The little chip rake is held in place with a little elastic strap which is glue into the frame. The battery is a normal 9v battery wrapped in white glossy card and rests in a battery holder (the white card is just so that it aesthetically fits in place.

Undressed PCB

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The Electronic Roulette Board pictures with the Black and While segments and numbers is not printed on the PCB, it’s a glassy printout I glued onto the PCB and then pushed the components though, finally soldering them in place. Without the printout this is what the circuit board looks like.