PACEBuzz - A low-cost PC buzzer system

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Mike Bentley
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PACEBuzz - A low-cost PC buzzer system

Post by Mike Bentley »

The Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence is pleased to announce the release of PACEBuzz. PACEBuzz is a quizbowl buzzer program for Windows PCs that interfaces with USB buzzer controllers made for the Playstation 2. If you already own a Windows PC, the combination of this program plus these buzzers can be significantly cheaper than a purpose-built buzzer system.

To download the PACEBuzz program, click here.

You simply plug the buzzers into the USB port on a laptop and then run the program. Buzzes will make sounds and light up who buzzed like on a regular buzzer. The moderator can click a button or hit a shortcut key in order to reset, as seen in the screenshot below:

Image

This program supports at least 32 players, assuming that you own enough of the buzzer controllers and enough USB ports. PACEBuzz allows for regular quizbowl team buzzing formats. It also supports buzzer queuing and cancelling, which can be useful for singles tournaments.

Due to the limited supply of these controllers, we are investigating support for other types of USB devices. It's strongly advised that you only purchase new bundles of PS2 Buzz games. We have not had good luck with buzzers being included in used versions, even ones that advertise coming as bundles. We suggest contact sellers before purchasing any used version.

Right now, this program will only run on 64-bit Windows machines. If you're interested in contributing to a Mac port of this program, please contact Mike Bentley at [email protected]. The source code will soon be posted to GitHub. This software is based on USB drivers written by Ashley Deakin.

For technical support, please contact Mike Bentley at [email protected].
Mike Bentley
Treasurer, Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence
Adviser, Quizbowl Team at University of Washington
University of Maryland, Class of 2008
JosephHHunter
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Re: PACEBuzz - A low-cost PC buzzer system

Post by JosephHHunter »

I know this is a fairly old post, so forgive me. I have one working set of tournament buzzers, but have roughly 12 people on the team at practices I would like to have a practice set that accommodates larger numbers. I only have 3 USB ports on PC. If I plug a 4 port hub into each port on the PC, does it allow this to work with 12 controllers? Would each lockout the others?

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