Building your own lap timer?

[TurboRA28]

All good points..

I would really like something by next week but chances looking slim

I'm amazed there is not more DIY cheapo home made lap timer designs on the internet.

Can't spend $300 - $500 on a professional one at the moment.. And don't need all the bells n whistles.. Just something to capture the times and thats it.

[brett_celicacoupe]

maybe you could set up the beam type but have someone trackside holding a button as you go past. so it only registers your car?


jaycar dont seem to have a DIY digital display timer

[timbosaurus]

I don't know which tracks you go to, but do they have magnetic strips on the track? All the go-kart tracks have them... usually 3 strips per track. But I don't know if a car is low enough to pick up the field though.

My Mycron (kart timer - cost me $500 US including a steering wheel made specially to mount it inside) has a pickup for these strips.





If the track you go to has these strips throughout them, maybe try mounting a magnetic reed switch under your floor that is OK with vibration, or rig up a some sort of hall effect sensor to work of metal strips.

I've no idea what car tracks provide in terms of strips, but might be easier than going for the infra red beacons.

Timbo

[lojik]

ok so this is how my attempt would go.

Build one of these: http://www.lirc.org/receivers.html

If you have a palm pilot or laptop, use one of the derivitives of this software: http://www.lirc.org/software.html

Get an old junk remote, one of the buttons needs to be wired on permanently.

Mount IR reciever on side of car.
Mount an old junked remote on a tripod, place it trackside.

The button press will be tied to a signal using the lirc software and,
The signal when recieved is used to start, stop the timer and other such things etc.


You may find that the remote is a bad idea (maybe the time it takes to pass the remote may be too long to get a full sequence for lirc to recieve, etc.) In which case I'd make it simpler and just pulse an IR Led at a known frequency, and look for that using the reciever.

...hmmmz

[TA-022]

http://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/produc...pcode=F/IRCA19

seems the goods right there.

1 or two people buy the full setup .. others can just buy beacons for when were all at wakefield.