This week I helped work on nearly every major task we completed from Monday through Friday, but my primary focus was getting the dice-detection system fully working. I spent many hours refining the dice plate algorithm and finally got it to detect pip patterns accurately and consistently on the Raspberry Pi. This required switching to DBSCAN and combining it with the stopping/rolling detection logic I wrote earlier. I had to tune pip size thresholds, adjust clustering parameters, and deal with lighting variability on the Pi camera. After multiple iterations of both software and physical dice-plate designs, the system now detects dice with roughly ≥90% accuracy, which is a big improvement from where we started. I also worked on transferring the entire dice-detection pipeline from the Mac to the Pi, fixing camera issues, debugging FFmpeg and v4l2 errors, and testing everything in real gameplay scenarios.
In addition to the software, I helped with all of the major hardware tasks this week. I helped fix LED soldering problems and worked with May to resolder unstable connections so the rings would behave reliably in-game. I also glued the resource tiles, cut more tiles, and redesigned and reassembled the dice plates. A large part of my time went into building the full base-board structure: using CorelDRAW to design the base support, laser-cutting all required pieces, adding spacers, and assembling the complete board so it was sturdy enough for gameplay. Overall, I spent the week on a combination of coding, debugging, soldering, laser-cutting, and assembly to push the project forward.
My progress is on schedule, and we are not behind. Next week, I plan to focus on polishing the dice-detection code even more, reinforcing the board structure with magnets, and helping prepare the final presentation. I also hope to finish any remaining debugging and clean up the code so everything is ready for final testing.
Below is a video of me testing and refining the dice roll algorithm with a GUI display I coded:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DVNEzwVgGazKlUYmCNaQBRux-3qgsN41/view?usp=sharing