Guide

Getting started

From unboxing to your first roll. The app walks you through most of this the first time it opens — here’s the read-through version, plus the extras the walkthrough doesn’t cover.

Set up your Rollcaster rig

Rollcaster is built around its rig. The camera height is set and centered on the tray, so there’s not too much physical setup.

Put the rig on a flat, steady surface where you’ll be rolling.
Check the light faces straight down, centred over the tray. It sits on a ball joint, so it can be adjusted later in the Calibrate screen as needed.
Plug the rig’s USB cable straight into your computer. The one cable runs both the camera and the light; avoid keyboard, monitor and dock hubs.
Switch the ring light on with the control on its cable and set it to full brightness. Keep lamps and sunlight from shining straight into the tray.

The rig from the side: camera and ring light 9¾ in above a 5⅜ in curved tray.

Why the rig matters: Rollcaster’s dice reading is tuned to the rig’s view — its camera height, its even light, and its gently curved floor, which tips every die’s top face toward the camera so dice near the edge read as well as dice in the middle.

No rig? Using your own camera (not recommended)

We don’t recommend this unless you enjoy tinkering and have plenty of patience. A home-made setup can’t easily match the rig’s fixed height, built-in light and curved tray all at once. Expect many more dice to stop and ask for confirmation, more misreads (especially near the edge of a flat tray), and a lot of trial and error before results are consistent.

If you’d still like to try:

Copy the rig’s geometry as closely as you can: a round tray about 5⅜ in (14 cm) across, with the camera about 9¾ in (25 cm) above its floor.
Mount the camera pointing straight down at the centre of the tray, rigidly, and don’t move it once it’s set up.
Light the tray softly and evenly from above: no hard shadows, no glare spots on the dice.
Use a round tray, and keep rolls away from its edges.
Lock the camera’s focus and exposure if it allows it, and use the gold box to crop to the tray floor.
Teach Rollcaster your dice under your own camera and light. It can help it adapt to your setup.
Some Android phones (Android 14 or newer) can act as a USB webcam; expect accuracy to be lower still.

Only watching someone else’s rolls? Skip straight to step 5 — Rollcaster Eye needs no camera or rig at all.

Download & install

Get Rollcaster for Windows, macOS or Linux from downloads.rollcaster.net. It picks the right file for your computer, and the install steps for each system are right beside it. On a Mac, allow camera access when macOS asks; on Linux, add yourself to the video group, as the steps there explain.

Updating? Just install the new version over the old one — your settings and dice sets are kept. On Windows the installer removes the old version first; if it asks, leave Delete the application data unticked.

The first-run walkthrough

The first time you open Rollcaster, a short guided tour (about two minutes) sets everything up. Every change saves as you make it — there’s nothing to submit. It covers:

Getting the dice models. Rollcaster downloads its dice-reading models by itself the first time it runs, in the background. It needs an internet connection for this.
Picking your camera: the rig’s camera, from the list (not there? plug the rig in and press ↻ to rescan).
Framing your tray. You’ll switch on a gold box in the live view and fit it over the tray floor — choose Oval to match the rig’s round tray — so hands and the tray’s rim stay out of the picture.
Your name, shown beside your rolls.
Who confirms a doubtful die: Casual (you confirm your own) or Strict (adds designated approver).
Playing together — joining a friend’s session or hosting your own (step 5).

Want to run it again? Choose Restart Initial Config on the Calibrate screen. It replays the tour without changing your settings.

Roll!

Roll your dice into the tray and take your hand away. As soon as the dice settle, Rollcaster reads them and flashes each number right on top of the die:

17Read — it’s sure, and the roll goes straight out.
17Needs a look — the roll pauses so a person can confirm the number first.
?Couldn’t read it — you’ll be asked to enter the value.

Rollcaster would rather ask than guess, so a shaky reading never slips through quietly. Prefer to trigger a read yourself? Open Controls on the Play screen and press Detect roll now.

Play together

A shared session puts everyone’s rolls on everyone’s screen. You’ll find it under Shared session on the Play screen.

Hosting

Press Create shared session, then Copy the Invite and send it to your players however you normally chat.

Joining

Paste the invite you were sent into Join with an invite and press Join. That’s the whole thing — one invite carries everything.

Let them watch the dice land. Tick Share photos and video clips of my rolls to send a three-second clip of your tray with each roll. It’s off until you turn it on.
Friends without a rig? They install Rollcaster Eye, paste your invite, and watch your rolls pop up live — Eye opens itself when someone rolls.

Your privacy: Rollcaster only ever connects out to the session relay — it never opens your computer to the internet. The relay keeps only anonymous counts (session length, players, number of rolls), never names, results or pictures.

Beyond the walkthrough

Teach Rollcaster your dice

Fancy dice — marbled swirls, glitter, dark numbers on dark dice — read far better once Rollcaster has seen them. If there’s no dice pack for yours, teaching it takes a little while per die type, all on the Train screen:

Make a dice set. Choose + New dice set, give it a name, a short code (like BSPN for “black solid, purple numbers”), a family (Solid, Marbled, Glitter…) and a few words about how the dice look. Set Space to Enrollment and Save.
Roll and label. Start a Training session for that set and one die type, then roll that die again and again. After each roll, type the number on top and press Enter (“Save & next”). Aim for about 20 rolls of every face.
Check how it’s doing. Under Enrollments, pick your set to see how well each die type reads, from poor up to superb. For any that aren’t there yet, Deep enroll all trains a custom reader just for your dice. It runs fastest with a graphics card but works on any computer, and it tells you roughly how long it will take before it starts.

Your dice set is used from the very next roll. A set you haven’t deep enrolled double-checks what Rollcaster reads. A deep enrolled set does more: it reads its own dice itself and stays out of the way when someone rolls different dice, which keeps a shared table reading reliably. Deep enrolled a set before version 0.4.5? Run Deep enroll all on it again to get this.

Dice with pips. Rollcaster reads d6s with dots as well as numbers. Pip dice are new, and it has learned from only a handful so far, so some will read better than others. To teach it yours, choose d6p (pips) as the die type and type the number of pips.

Sharper reads

Check the picture. On Calibrate, switch the live camera to 2x or 3x: the numbers on a die should look crisp. If they look soft, make sure the lens is clean.
Keep the ring light on at full brightness, pointing straight down, and keep strong lamps and sunlight off the tray. A dim or glaring tray makes the picture slow and soft.
Keep the gold box snug over the tray floor, with the tray’s rim outside it.

Discord, Foundry VTT & other tools

Discord: on the Play screen, paste a channel webhook into the Discord card and choose Connect & send a test post. Each roll is then posted to your table’s channel under the roller’s name, with every die and the totals. Where do I get this? on the card walks through creating the webhook (it needs the Manage Webhooks permission, which your GM usually has). In a shared session only one person needs to connect: everyone’s rolls are posted, even from a GM using Rollcaster Eye. Pictures of the dice go along only if the roller turned on Share photos and video clips of my rolls.

Foundry VTT: a Rollcaster module for Foundry (version 13 and newer) lets your physical dice complete rolls inside your game — attacks, saves, checks — in any game system. It’s in testing and not yet publicly listed; get in touch through our contact page if you’d like to try it.

Anything else: on the Calibrate screen, paste a web address into Output → webhook and Rollcaster sends every finished roll there. Handy for bots and home-made tools.