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Educational/board game apparatus

  • US 5,088,928 A
  • Filed: 03/16/1990
  • Issued: 02/18/1992
  • Est. Priority Date: 11/15/1988
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. An educational game apparatus for use by one or more players that incorporates:

  • a plurality of printed sheets;

    a low-cost touch pad with interface cable to a personal computer system having a game port, said touch pad interfaced directly to said game port;

    where the printed sheet contains a multiplicity of answer regions;

    where said answer sheet lies over the low-cost touch pad;

    where said touch pad comprisesa. a first sheet of insulating material with one surface coated with a first plurality of parrallel conductive strips which are connected at one end with a resistive coating strip, which has a terminal resistance value in the range compatible with that of a joystick potentiometer;

    b. a second sheet of insulating material with one surface coated with a second plurality of parrallel conductive strips which are connected at one end with a resistive coating strip, which has a terminal resistance value in the range compatible with that of a joystick potentiometer;

    c. A ground return network of a plurality of parallel conductive strips coated on either the conductor coating surface of said first sheet or said second sheet of the insulating material, each strip of said network interleaved with said plurality of conductive strips such that each conductive strip of said ground return network is in closer proximity to an associated sensing conductive strip than the separation distance between any two adjacent sensing conductors;

    d. a spacer pattern of a plurality of dots/bumps coated on either the conductor coating surface of said first sheet or said second sheet of the insulating material, each dot/bump of said pattern printed in-between the printed conductors;

    e. means for orienting said first sheet of insulating material and said second sheet of insulating material such that the conductive strips of the two sheets are facing each other in orthogonal orientation forming a touch position sensing region, and such that by pressing a selected point on the oriented sheets, a selected on or two of said plurality of conductive strips on one sheet come into contact with the interleaved conductive strips of the other sheet, thereby changing the terminal resistance values proportionally to the touched position in the said touch position sensing region;

    f. means for implementing two separate touch switches on the said two insulating sheets outside the said touch position sensing region;

    g. means for interfacing the resistive coating strips and the two said separate touch switches directly to the game port of said personal computer system with the same pin configuration as the commonly known joystick device connector pin allocation;

    h. means for the resistance between the last position sensing conductor and the common ground return much larger than the resistance between any other position sensing conductors by lengthening and/or narrowing the corresponding portion of the resistive coatings;

    and where said personal computer system calibrates the touch pad, displays questions, decodes the touched position, checks for the correctness or incorrectness of the player'"'"'s selection, and provides video and sound feedback to the player.

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