Web/App-based Buzzer System

Six

I'm helping set up a teambuilding exercise for an event in a couple of weeks and I'm looking for a cheap buzzer system for a quiz bowl-like game. We'll have ten teams of 7-8 people, and I'd like for each team to be able to "buzz" in and notify me/whoever's running the game. If I can't find anything, we'll just do "first team to raise their hand," but I'd like something more elegant.

It needs to be really cheap and/or free. I found this link to a homemade buzzer system, but that seems to only scale to 8 players and would still probably cost too much.

An app or web-based solution would be great. Each team will have plenty of laptops and we'll have wifi. Ideally, we could just have a page where all the teams could access and just click a "buzz" button, which would then let me know what order everyone buzzed in.

There's an iphone/ipad/desktop app that seems to do this, but I haven't been able to try it (it requires 4.2 which I'm not on yet), and the reviews dont inspire me with a lot of confidence that it will work.

Anyone have any ideas for something like this? My Google-fu is turning up lots of physical buzzing systems, but nothing simple and web-based.

Ruckus

Any iphone/ipad/desktop solution probably wouldn't be a very good choice. Too much chance of lag between the sending devices.

The reason the button and basic light circuit were used and continue to be used is because they're foolproof, they're hardwired and basically trigger the indicator instantaneously.

Taking a look at the link you posted, they trigger mechanism looks like a basic normally open single throw single pole pushbutton, so you could theoretically wire in as many triggers in parallel as you wanted for each circuit (eg 8 individual buttons, any of which would trigger one of the LED's, you could have 8 triggers for each team). The only downside to that is that you would only know which team buzzed in, but not which individual.

Six

Convenience is far more important than perfect accuracy, so a web-based or iphone solution is preferable. I honestly can't see going with a physical buzzer for this. Just using people's hands/holding up cards would be preferable.

I dont need to know individuals, just which team buzzed in - though if there were a way to do individuals, that would be great. So if individual A from Team 6 buzzed in, I know it. but if individual B buzzes in next, I don't care - it's just team 6 that's first.

Ruckus

Six wrote: »

Convenience is far more important than perfect accuracy, so a web-based or iphone solution is preferable. I honestly can't see going with a physical buzzer for this. Just using people's hands/holding up cards would be preferable.

Then pretty much instructing each team to yell "BUZZ!" and smack the table is probably your best bet. Any tech solution that doesn't work 100% perfectly in a game like that is probably just going to wind up frustrating the players.

Six

Ruckus wrote: »

Six wrote: »

Convenience is far more important than perfect accuracy, so a web-based or iphone solution is preferable. I honestly can't see going with a physical buzzer for this. Just using people's hands/holding up cards would be preferable.

Then pretty much instructing each team to yell "BUZZ!" and smack the table is probably your best bet. Any tech solution that doesn't work 100% perfectly in a game like that is probably just going to wind up frustrating the players.

Something like that is my fallback if I can't find a better solution.

The stakes here aren't really high - it will all be in good fun, and if the system isn't 100% accurate it won't matter, and may even add to the levity.