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"You Don't Know Jack" Hand Buzzers
By Nick Vazzana (AKA M3talhead)
After more than 5 months of playing "You Don't Know Jack" on the
arcade and ignoring the little voice in the back of my head telling me
to build some hand buzzers, I finally caved. Using the tutorial at Arcadeparadise.org
as a starting point of sorts, I decided to take the design a step
further and make some really unique and "professional" looking hand
buzzers. Since "You Don't know Jack" can only support a maximum of 3
players at a time, I only needed to create 3 buzzers. Each one took
about 30 minutes to assemble and finish.
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Material list:
(3) Handset phone cords, or one really long one to cut into thirds
(3) 6" metal or plastic pipes
(3) Mountain-bike rubber hand grips
(6) Plastic furniture endcaps, like those found on cheap metal tables and chairs
(3) 8" of red and black wire, 18-22 ga
(3) 1/2" vertical momentary pushbuttons (not microswitches)
(3) 1/8" 2-Channel audio jacks - Male
(3) 1/8" 2-Channel audio jacks - Female
Tools needed:
Soldering iron & solder
Electrical tape
Hot-glue gun
Strippers (no, not that kind!) |
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| Start by working a handgrip over a section of pipe. |
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| Using the soldering gun, solder the 8" lengths of red and black wire to
the momentary pushbutton and independently wrap the connections in
electrical tape to prevent short circuits. Set that aside. |
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| If the handset cords you're using came terminated with RJ-11s, clip
them off. Slip the plastic audio jack cover over the phone cord and
remove about 1/2" of the outer sheathing to expose the 4 telephone
wires. Clip the 2 middle ones, you only need the wires on the sides. |
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| Strip and tin the 2 remaining phone wires (they're 26ga). Then crimp
the metal 1/8" audio jack to the external insulation of the phone cord
while keeping the exposed telephone wires from wandering in the middle.
Carefully solder the wires to the outward facing sides of the terminals
and test for continuity with a multimeter. |
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| Heat up a hot-glue (hotmelt) gun and inject a small bit between the
newly soldered connections to give it support and prevent the frail
wired from breaking off. |
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| Thread the plastic jack cover onto the jack to close everything up.
Make a hole appx 1/4" in diameter at the end of a plastic endcap.
Thread the other end of the phone cord through the cap as shown and tie
a knot to prevent it from being pulled out by accident. |
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| Connect your button/wire assembly to the unfinished end of the phone
cord by stripping the wire as described before and soldering the 2
outer wires to the un-finished ends of the red and black wires (It
doesn't matter which one goes where, just as long as they make a good
connection). Wrap the wires up independently with electrical tape to
prevent shorts in the buzzer. |
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Next, make a hole in another plastic endcap the same diameter as the
button's threaded mid-section. Work the it through the pipe, and push
it though the new endcap's hole.
Once you get it through, thread
the small nut onto the button-shaft to prevent it from backing out of
the cap. Roll up the ends of the bike grips and push the endcaps over
the pipe. It'll take some elbow grease to get them on, but once they're
there, you wont have to worry about them coming off by accident any
time soon. Flip the grips back down over the cap and you're done! |
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Continue to page 2
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