Buzz Wire game / Steady-Hand game

[SparkyTris]

skoool Xmas fares coming up in community centres in these parts. I have wanted to do a giant buzz wire game thing for ages. I remember back in the 80s a local electronic firm did one for the school, just a simple affair with a telephone bell & shiny brake-pipe "route" to trace the (wired) wand along.

easy enough. BUT>>>.. Im thinking:

lets have a wireless wand....
and an arduino or similar to handle the triggering, so that you can set the "difficulty" with a potenitometer. (ie, variable time delay before the bell will ring, or more than 3 touches etc)

anyone got any previous before I dive in?

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

lets have a wireless wand....
and an arduino or similar to handle the triggering, so that you can set the "difficulty" with a potenitometer. (ie, variable time delay before the bell will ring, or more than 3 touches etc)

Op-amp, comparator, capacitor on the input, with the wand discharger via a variable resistor. Output of the op-amp, to power a piezo oscillator/sounder.

 

[SFK]

DIY Arduino Controlled Buzz Wire Game

DIY Arduino Controlled Buzz Wire Game: The Buzz Wire Game is a timeless amusement that challenges players to navigate through a twisted wire maze without touching the sides. It's not just a game, but a test of patience and focus. Usually, buzz-wire games are simple and don't require a mi…

www.instructables.com

Buzz wire game using Arduino

A fun and simple project. Make your own DIY Hand steady game.

projecthub.arduino.cc

Google Search

 

[morqthana]

lets have a wireless wand....

Why?

and an arduino or similar to handle the triggering, so that you can set the "difficulty" with a potenitometer. (ie, variable time delay before the bell will ring, or more than 3 touches etc)

Why?

skoool Xmas fares coming up in community centres in these parts. I have wanted to do a giant buzz wire game thing for ages. I remember back in the 80s a local electronic firm did one for the school, just a simple affair with a telephone bell & shiny brake-pipe "route" to trace the (wired) wand along.

And it worked just fine, didn't it.

And everybody was perfectly happy with it, weren't they.

Remember the KISS principle and stick with it.

 

[morqthana]

SS > jokes > The Breakfast Food Cooker

 

[SUNRAY]

Remember the KISS principle and stick with it.

That is always my suggestion for use at events where a range of operators are likely to be using it.

Also useful to have interchangable different sized wands for different age groups etc

If something different is wanted, I once went big, using 5m of 22mm copper pipe bent into a suitable pattern (it happened to be the number 40 for a schools 40th anniversary) and a firebell plus a siren at the end for the winners. Except I couldn't resist, I also added a relay to lockout the siren if contact had been made earlier and the wand had to be returned to the beginning to reset the relay.

The only thing I will say is the person running it has to be able to complete the game to prove it's possible, I saw one once with thin pipe, possibly brake pipe, and the wands loop was only a tiny bit bigger.

Another version I made: The wand was a 15mm copper pipe about 1200mm long 'lance' which had to be passed through a row of rings without touching them to push the target (an old CD with coincentric rings design on a microswitch) at the end.

It has to reach of course which my quick sketch may not

 

[ebee]

I once made one for use at the local Junior School Fate , kept it simple and let a few kids have a go with it, then observed the results.
First trick I noticed was they put their small fingers in the gap between the eye of the wand and the wavy bit to form an electrically insulated barrier .Always get kids to test things, they find a way to cheat around things rapid style.
Ok solved with a little bit of electronics, logic gate to compare the resistance in megohms and of course the child finger problem was solved.
Added a tach arrangement and two LEDs , LED 1/ was Red and illuminated and latched if you touched the loop to the course on the way to the home position and it disabled the Green LED.
2/ The Green LED was purely to show you had got to the home end without hitting the Red one.
Both LEDs latched the buzzer on .

A simple device that was popular for a few years, I dont know if it made them much money though.

Wooden handle, a wand with a wire and old type coat hanger bent as required (unusual to find one not used to replace a broken car ariel ).

Speaking of using your kids as test engineers, a pal of mine developed a box with buzzer type thingy and a pressure switch to place under a video recorder to give some security against the recorder being stolen, even had a key-switch and an internal battery.
Asked his kids to "Steal" the recorder.
It didn`t long for success, they picked up the whole assembly including the alarm as one unit and made off with it. Stole not just the recorder but the alarm as well!
Always get your kids to test stuff

 

[SparkyTris]

Why?




Why?




And it worked just fine, didn't it.

And everybody was perfectly happy with it, weren't they.

Remember the KISS principle and stick with it.

gaaaah

yeah true but
wired wand detracts from dexterity
with intelligent control you could get around the fingers-as-barrier thing
also you could just lightly touch the things together and maybe the resistance too high to get a good ring on the bell?
know whatcha mean though.

 

[morqthana]

First trick I noticed was they put their small fingers in the gap between the eye of the wand and the wavy bit to form an electrically insulated barrier

I can think of way to stop that.

But the children would cry, and Health & Safety, Social Services, the police, would all want to get involved.

 

[ebee]

I can think of way to stop that.

But the children would cry, and Health & Safety, Social Services, the police, would all want to get involved.

LOL

 

[ebee]

wired wand detracts from dexterity

Agreed.

with intelligent control you could get around the fingers-as-barrier thing

Running thru a logic gate the input resistance required could easily be set between two limits so any touch, even a slight touch, could be detected and a time pulse could set the duration to a few seconds.

I field tested it the tested it by observing it at the actual fete (it was actually in a field, where they held the fete). It was some years ago when my kids were young and much of todays stuff was not yet mainstream.
Although a few years later with last child still remained at school I did devise a computerised horse race using a ZX Spectrum (Remember those), programmed it in Spectrum BASIC (Although I was aware of machine code etc I could not master it sufficiently) and the graphics were not that great (Just two characters 8 x 8 pixels for each horse,) I used a random generator on the Spectrum and I even had a random generator to check the odds of actual wins each few hundred tries now and again.
Oh such fun.
10p per try and you could win from 20p to 50p depending on the winning horse.
Funny thing, one little lad had a pound and he lost the first nine tries (he tried for the 50p winner each time), his last 10p he changed his strategy and guess which horse won? The 50p winner. LOL.

 

[SUNRAY]

Agreed.

Running thru a logic gate the input resistance required could easily be set between two limits so any touch, even a slight touch, could be detected and a time pulse could set the duration to a few seconds.

I field tested it the tested it by observing it at the actual fete (it was actually in a field, where they held the fete). It was some years ago when my kids were young and much of todays stuff was not yet mainstream.
Although a few years later with last child still remained at school I did devise a computerised horse race using a ZX Spectrum (Remember those), programmed it in Spectrum BASIC (Although I was aware of machine code etc I could not master it sufficiently) and the graphics were not that great (Just two characters 8 x 8 pixels for each horse,) I used a random generator on the Spectrum and I even had a random generator to check the odds of actual wins each few hundred tries now and again.
Oh such fun.
10p per try and you could win from 20p to 50p depending on the winning horse.
Funny thing, one little lad had a pound and he lost the first nine tries (he tried for the 50p winner each time), his last 10p he changed his strategy and guess which horse won? The 50p winner. LOL.

Tis ever the way

 

[morqthana]

Funny thing, one little lad had a pound and he lost the first nine tries (he tried for the 50p winner each time), his last 10p he changed his strategy and guess which horse won? The 50p winner. LOL.

Hopefully that taught him a very useful life lesson, which has persisted.

 

[ebee]

Hopefully that taught him a very useful life lesson, which has persisted.

No idea I`m afraid, My Eldest lad (who had left school and had a week or two before his first job) helped with a pal, both of them were then ex-pupils and were runing my device plus a few other things and were watching this young lad having a go and had a reason for placing a bet on the same one each time and mostly just a coincidence it was the highest win payment but lowest chance of being picked, each time he picked that one but lost his nerve on the last chance he had and that was his wrong decision. Poor kid.

As tradition the schools were set into separate " houses" . Senior school followed famous Brits such as Arkwright Chaucer Scott and Newton dependant upon your surname as far as possible. At Junior School when I was there it Was Echo, Ranger, Sputnik and Trlstar but when |I left Junior School and my kids later attended the houses names were selected from local notable areas.
When I named the horses for the race game I gave them the house names, just to add a little more interest.
This young lad went for the horse that was named after his house mainly and this particular one was also the highest prize win.
Ironic? Unlucky? or what? hopefully it did teach him a valid lesson and he did realise it eventually.
I actually set to program to give around 80% average payout if I remember correctly.