nerdery + jeopardy = nerdardy?
Nearly 2 weeks ago, Nerdery honorary guest Mandy debuted the Nerdery version of the popular syndicated game show, Jeopardy. It consisted of a powerpoint presentation hooked up to a LCD TV with contestants yelling out when they wanted to answer a question. The following week brought another game with a similar buzz-in system.
But those days are over.
Introducing… The Nerdardy Buzzer System 0.9b!
It consists of a few bucks of radio shack parts thrown together with a Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller linked via cat5 to home-made buttons housed in PVC pipe. Ghetto? Yes. Hacked? Yes. Utterly useless outside of this house? Probably. Completely awesome? Definitely.
I will post code, written in PBASIC of course, as it is finalized and debugged during live gameplay tomorrow. Read on for pics.
The plug-in panel at the top of the unit for buttons
Wires!
Note the 4 LEDs on the front to see who buzzed in first, as well as the BS2 microcontroller that provides what little brains this device has.
Aren’t serial ports on the side of homebrew projects just cool? I think so. It also doubles as a working computer interface for easy re-programming.
One of the hacked-together buttons. Radio Shack SPST button: $.99; 4″ PVC pipe: $.55; PVC Cap: $.21; Kicking your roommates ass at Jeopardy: Priceless :)
As you might guess, this is still a WIP, but it should see it’s first real usage tomorrow. Maybe I’ll take a video and youtube it or something.
Oh, to live at the nerdery. Our forum passed 1500 posts today. It was started on December 19th. Oh, the nerdery is more than just a house, it’s a way of life.
With lots of beer.
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