Lap counter

Projects General Guidance
1

during a talk to some local racing club members. we were wondering if its possible to have an Arduino driven sensing station where it
will detect and identify model cars passing over the start line to measure racing lab info for each participating car.

kind of transponder and a receiver setup.

is this possible and what hardware would be needed.
I have a good background in coding, my challenge is selecting the write hardware

any help will be greatly appreciated. And I will win a free Night's drink.

2

rfid's and - Arduino Playground - StopWatchClass - should get you started...

3

Thanks for the reply,

The setup is meant to be Master/Slave
the Master station can identify each car(slave hardware mounted on each racing car) passing over the start line.

Someone proposed BlueTooth on each slave node.
I m sure that there would be other options.

cheers
Viper

4

I m sure that there would be other options.

You can paint a barcode on every car and when it passes under the reader it is recognized :wink:

You can use a color detection mechanism

you can do an FFT of the sound it produces

you can add different strength magnets

you can determine the outline (from above) of the car with a sensor also used for line following robots.

so choose one!, On your marks and GO! :wink:

5

Or you can just do this -

EDIT - I have started a Lap Timer build along for the personal lap timer here -

Build Along Part 1 -

Its cheap and works very well. My design is a personal lap timer because I want something robust enough to throw in a tool box that I can use for lap timing in a kart (transponder on the wall, lap timer on the steering wheel) or lap timing my RC Cars (transponder on the car, lap timer on the wall).

It would not be too hard to extend the principle to multiple cars by design some 2 dollar transponders using 555 timers or Attiny's that would generate a unique code per car.

You need a sensor bridge across the track which consists of whatever you want to make the bridge from and some 1 dollar IR Sensors. At our track we use a commercial system which uses the same IR principle at a cost of around 600 dollars. I strongly believe you can built a similar system for less than 100 dollars.

Duane B

rcarduino.blogspot.com