NOOB last minute help for my School Teacher Project

Thread Starter

john hancock

Joined May 24, 2018
2
My wife teaches high school for future teachers.. they have a contest this weekend, she found on this morning one of the projects for competition is a duplicate of another group, so she needs to refactor it, its her fault not the kids, she asked if I could help. I have some experience in that I have a basic understanding of how it work, how logic works and I have tons of parts but now I am need some help.

I need a simple circuit I have arduino's but would prefer not to use them for this. This project needs to be interactive for middle school kids, basically we present them with 3 choices (pictures) and a question, like which one of these is poison ivy, which one of these is a conifer. Which one of these is an amphibian... the pictures would slide into a sleeve on a display board. Each sleeve would have a button. Push the button associated with the correct picture and the light turns green, wrong button and the light turns red. I need a way to code the pictures on the back with a dot or series of dots or colors or a black mark in the corner something so that the picture/questions really dont matter and can be added to quickly but the core functionality is the same. I also dont have much time so if I dont have the parts or something I can salvage them from then its not going to work. I know this could probably be done with a photo cell but no idea how to set it up..

Thanks in advance.
 

Marley

Joined Apr 4, 2016
501
Switches, buttons, relays and lights?
Have a 3-position switch round the back which selects the correct button. Press the correct button, relay latches, light green. Other buttons a different relay latches, light red. Also reset button round back (or possibly 4th position on the switch).
Something like that!
Better would be a small industrial PLC (if you happened to have something lying around) easier wiring, design can be tweeked/changed at will.
 

AnalogKid

Joined Aug 1, 2013
10,971
Do you want some kind of coding on the back of the pictures so the system knows which is the correct answer? Or is the selector switch idea good enough?

ak
 

djsfantasi

Joined Apr 11, 2010
9,155
There is a thread on this same topic, about a library making a multiple choice electronic quiz. Maybe it was a museum. If I find it, I’ll let you know. Otherwise I recommend some extensive searching.
 

MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
18,061
How about using battery power and LEDs for the lights. That makes the project safe and shockproof. Then have the code be aluminum foil glued to the back of the pictures to select which buttons feed which lights. And the mating contacts can also be foil. That is about as cheap, east, and fast as I can come up with. And there is an added benefit in that they will learn at least a little bit about circuit theory because of being able to see the entire circuit.
 

djsfantasi

Joined Apr 11, 2010
9,155
How about using battery power and LEDs for the lights. That makes the project safe and shockproof. Then have the code be aluminum foil glued to the back of the pictures to select which buttons feed which lights. And the mating contacts can also be foil. That is about as cheap, east, and fast as I can come up with. And there is an added benefit in that they will learn at least a little bit about circuit theory because of being able to see the entire circuit.
I built a Morse code trainer using just this technique.
 
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