Derby Talk

Ok, I am ready. The race is Friday and I got all the sensors and the gate switch installed in the track on Sunday. I wasn't able to get 4 of the LED displays because the red and blue ones have been out of stock. GPRM is working great with the arduino timer. On the track, I put in a new start gate an...

I didn't take any pictures last night, but I did successfully breadboard test the Revision 2 set up. I also tested it with the solenoid setup, except that the relay I had on hand needed more than 5 volts to activate it. I wound up adding an LED in place of the relay to the circuit to visually indica...

I went to Adafruit and ordered a couple of the LED backpacks. I noticed that they come in 5 different colors, red, green, yellow, blue and white. The blue and white cost a few dollars more, but it occurred to me that you could match the display and lane colors for a little extra coolness.

hotone wrote: Thanks for the tips. Where is the line for the start gate switch going in your test set up? It looks just to be hanging there from the pic.

I didn't have a switch handy so I was just touching the wire to the ground rail on the bread board.

You know the IR Emitters aren't really needed, especially for testing. You can use a regular incandescent bulb.

I have also seen it mentioned that bright white LED's actually emit mo IR than IR LED's do.

Here are the pictures from last nights testing. I was using the first version of the arduino sketch. This is the quick bread board set up just to see if it would all work. I didn't put in the "Win" LED for lane 3. http://a-ruud-awakening.com/CubScouts/PinewoodTimer/IMG-20121206-00058.jpg T...

We do run in a gym, but I am taking the easy way out and using a video projector. I got to test this out tonight on a bread board with three lanes and it worked very well! I even tested it with GPRM and it is working great. I was going to go for a four lane test, but one of the phototransistors was ...

I just found this today. I think another revision is in order.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a ... lay/#intro" target="_blank

- my first attempt was with a matched set from Radio Shack but I was not able to get good results with it (bad range, detection angle, etc.) I was involved in slot car racing for many years and we used similar set ups with phototransistors as well. The general consensus was that the IR Emitter/Phot...

I love this project. My pack is small and very low on funds. We do have our own four lane wooden track, but we only have an old "Lane Brain" which doesn't have times or a computer interface. I was looking into using a Raspberry Pi to build a timer, but it looks like the low level timers in...