Game show button project

[Tosa1]

Hi,

I wanna build a game show style set of buttons, where if one button is pressed, the others get deactivated. A button should have eg. a light attached to it to see which button was pressed. A fastest-press-wins type of situation. Then there would have to be a timer or reset button to reset the whole thing.

How would I go about doing this? I'm not looking for a complete answer, but it would be great if I could get some pointers in the right direction. What kind of components would I need, general functioning priciples and so on.

Thanks in advance!

 

[rjenkinsgb]

How many positions? Two is dead simple, more add slightly more complexity but not much per position.
That's just using buttons, relays & lamps, no complex electronics or microcontrollers.

 

[AnalogKid]

What you want is called a ... wait for it ... game show circuit. If you search for game show circuit or game show schematic, you will get lotsa examples.

game show schematic - Yahoo Image Search Results

ak

 

[gophert]

The trick is to find one of those internet suggested circuits that actually works! No cheating - give the cylinder a good hard spin before pulling the trigger.

 

[crutschow]

Here's the LTspice simulation of my favorite game-show circuit, which uses small SCR's (~$0.60 ea) as latches.
It's simple and should be reliable.
When one SCR is triggered, it removes the trigger voltage from all the other SCRs.
It can be easily expanded to any number of players just by adding an SCR, LED, and push-button for each player.
The reset (SW1) is a normally-closed push-button.
Note that the only battery load when no position is triggered is just from about 4V across the 50k resistor to ground, so a standard 9V transistor battery should last a long time.

 

[gophert]

Someone did something similar with relays a few years ago with doors on a wall of boxes at some nature preserve - a sort of self-test game after the tour. Maybe it was on another site but I think crutschow figured out the lock-out trick once the first relay was latched in the multiple choice (locked out other options in the same way one could lock-out other players).