I'm new to Arduino, and currently working out my first project, and was wondering if I could throw some ideas at you guys to see if you could help me hash them out so to speak.
So here's what I'm thinking. I have a buddy who's in to dirt track racing, and he's interested in seeing if we can put something together that can be strapped to the driver's vehicles that can track multiple things during races; namely, finish line detection and average speed during a race. This would have to be done without modifying the track in any way, so my thought was I could build an arduino board that could be attached to the car in some fashion that could do the dirty work, and then relay the data to a base station next to the track. What I am unsure of is the best way to go about this:
My first thought was to use IR beacons, operating at different frequencies, with a receiver at the base station; but with the nature of the dirt track, I'm unsure how reliable this will be.
Second thought was, GPS modules, and XBee (or ZigBee, since my research suggests I need series 2 to do mesh networking) to send the data to the base station, but that brings the price up a little higher than I would like.
I've also read that you can do location based tracking with only the ZigBee modules, I'm assuming by using the "time it takes the signal to get from the sender to the reciever" but I'm also not sure how reliable that would be, and I don't know how I would be able to do the finish line detection.
I've though of RFID, but cost is a concern there as well.
Is there anything else that I haven't thought of? Is arduino not the direction to be heading in at all with this project (please don't say yes to that question...I love the idea of arduino and have been wanting to do an arduino project FOREVER!!! You guys rock!) Thanks in advance for looking at my question!
Racetech data loggers would do all you want and more, and I'm sure there are other suppliers with similar products. It'd be more expensive than a DIY solution, but it'll work right out of the box.
Don't really have a time budget at this point. Money is a bit of a concern, and looking at what Racetech has, that seems like overkill, both in technology and budget...I was thinking something a little simpler than that.
As far as skill wise, I've been a developer for 10 years now, mostly .NET, and I've dabbled in some electronics here and there, but this would be my first arduino project. I'm a total hands-on person, and love learning "trial by fire" so I don't mind getting my hands dirty, and I'm not afraid to fail and fail and keep on trying till I get it right. I also plan on starting pretty small with this...probably with toy cars that I can dig up out of my son's room, then moving on to RC cars and on and on and scaling it up as I get more confident...I just don't want to start before I have a good idea of what my end goal will be...does that make sense?
Hi,
I am using IR to track lap times however this is for grip orientated racing where the car will be passing the at a more or less perpendicular angle, are there sections of track where the car will be hooked up and pointing straight ahead or will it always be passing with some degree of slip angle ?
I have done most of the things you want to do and its all very easily achieved with Arduino and readily available add ons -
Data logging - add accelerometer and SD Card
Lap Timing - I am using IR, others have used wire loops etc.
Have a look at my blog, most of it relates to RC Cars, but the hardware, data and software is the same regardless of whether its 1:10 or 1:1 scale. You should be able to find a bit on lap timing, data logging etc.
Awesome, looks like some very useful information there, thank you very much! An accelerometer never occurred to me either, that could have some uses.
Not too sure about the angles in your first question, but I think for the most part they are going to be perpendicular. Another thing that concerns me is that the races are run at night as well, though I don't know if that makes a difference (sorry if I'm showing some inexperience there) would the IR still work fine at night under the lights, etc? I don't know if I would be able to track wheel speed the same way you do, I believe I saw on your site that you hooked IR leds to the wheel wells correct? I may need to have something a little more compartmentalized than that.