Amusement devices: games – Miscellaneous – Electric
Patent
1992-06-10
1993-09-14
Grieb, William H.
Amusement devices: games
Miscellaneous
Electric
340642, A63F 900
Patent
active
052442144
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to a gaming device comprising a display panel with several areas to be lit up by means of sources of light, as bulbs, to give the player substantial information about the course of the game and a control unit for the control of the sources of light of the display panel.
A gaming device, as a slot machine, capable of money payouts, is supposed to operate absolutely reliably both for the supervision of the run of money and for the presentation of the course cf the game to the player. If the result of the game cannot be shown reliably to the player, the player and the operator of the machine cannot rely .on the operation of the device.
In a gaming device according to this invention, the information on the course of the game is given to the player by means of display panel areas lit up by means of sources of light, e.g. normal bulbs. The reason for using bulbs is that they are easily controllable, because they can be made to light by connecting a suitable voltage to the poles of the bulbs. As voltage can be used both direct and alternating voltage. To the advantages of the bulb belongs, in addition to the simple control, a wide wave range of the emitted light, making it possible to handle different colours for instance by filtering. The wave range of LED display components primarily used as signal lamps is narrow, and therefore, filtering different colours does not correspond to the result to be achieved by means of a bulb. However, a restriction of bulbs is their relatively short lifetime. This lifetime can be limitedly increased by feeding the bulbs with a voltage lower than their rated voltage, on the one hand, and by leading a low biasing current to the bulbs when turned out, on the other hand. Such a biasing current is usually 10% of the normal value of the current of the lit up state. Nevertheless, the lifetime of a bulb cannot be increased by means of these measures more than up to 10,000 hours either.
The object of the present invention is thus to put forward a gaming device, in which bulbs can, in spite of their unreliability in principle, be utilized for the presentation of substantial information on the course of the game to the player without the reliable operation of the gaming device suffering from it.
The object mentioned above is achieved by means of a gaming device of the invention, which is characterized in that each light source is provided by means producing a signal indicating its working condition and that the control unit is connected to receive these signals and arranged in case of a signal indicating defective operation either to turn off the gaming device or to control the operation of the gaming device in such a way that the display panel area containing the light source with defective operation is not used, but the information is given to the player by means of another replacing area of the display panel.
Thus, it is not necessary to turn off the gaming device of the invention at once when one or several sources of light go out. Consequently, it is possible to increase the total operating time of the gaming device, which is advantageous for the possessor of the gaming device.
When bulbs are used as sources of light and when they are fed with direct voltage, the means for producing the signal indicating the working condition of the light source comprise a voltage divider arranged parallel with a switch feeding the light source with current and provided with a tapping. The switch can then be a semiconductor switch, which is easy to control, also by means of integrated circuits.
In the following, the gaming device of the invention is described in greater detail referring to the enclosed drawing, in which
FIG. 1 shows a general front view of the gaming device of the invention,
FIGS. 2a and 2b show one side of a display panel included in the gaming device of FIG. 1 in full working order and with a partially damaged operation, respectively,
FIG. 3 shows means for the control of a source of light and for the production of a signal indicating its working condition and
REFERENCES:
patent: 3654710 (1972-04-01), Barnard
patent: 3690665 (1972-09-01), Becker
patent: 3987424 (1976-10-01), Brouwer et al.
patent: 4036500 (1977-07-01), Kiernan
patent: 4339135 (1982-07-01), Breslow et al.
Laatikainen Jouko
Leino Kari
Tuomola Timo
Grieb William H.
Rama-automaattiyhdistys
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