Build your own inexpensive timing system

[2FER SLOTS]

Yeah ! :clap: :dance:
Let the racing begin.

[2FER SLOTS]

[Dodgefarmer]

Congrats David. I've been following this thread since the beginning as I will be in the market for a system some time this summer. Glad to see your perseverance paid off.

Randy

[racerk86]

Very interesting post. What pins would you use in a 4 lane setup?

[urbanwarrior]

I sent you a PM in regards to this timing system. Maybe you could update your thread and let us know how its working out.
Thanks

[ddyke]

Laptimer 2000 is great for counting but makes errors in the times. I ran extensive tests against Trackmate and other timers and unless they are all screwed up it would get the times wrong every few laps up to .2 seconds. When the others were pitted against each other they were consistent.

[bobbyraz49]

[Gameover]

Thanks for digging this up!

[urbanwarrior]

Ok Dave or any other electronics whiz kids on here, I went to Radio Shack today and all they had close to 800 ohm resistors were 680 ohm resistors. Will these work or do I need to continue searching?
UW

[bobbyraz49]

[SpeedyNH]

sometimes the 9-pin serial port will still be there on an interim machine, which simplifies things greatly, at least for me. that one's almost a no-brainer. (so am I! lol.)
I'd go there before a 15-pin game port, which is less likely to exist anyway- - once we lost the 25-pinners, the old game port was rapidly next to go away. (I still have some old joysticks sitting in the cellar.)
garden-variety serial stayed around a little while longer, so it seems. if you don't have one of those, sometimes usb-to-serial adapters (which one has to buy, anyway) have their fair share of quirks. for a different application, I had to try like three of 'em to get one that would work. I'm no digital hardware guy, so I just go with the simplest stuff. just my take. find an old machine with the 9-pin port.
speedy

[urbanwarrior]

I bought a USB to 25 pin female, hopefully this works. Ill let you guys know tomorrow, I'm going to bed early, been fighting a damn cold that came on the other night, all day and its kicking my butt.

[RichD]

The serial to USB adapters are all 9 pin male as far as I have seen and those usually work OK. If the adapter has a 25 pin connector it may be a printer adapter and those rarely work. If you are connecting directly to a computer port you need to avoid getting a dead short across the port or it would burn out, that is the reason for the resistors. The resistor value is not critical, I have recommended 150 ohm resistors in the past. If you were to go with too high of a value the counter would not work. I am not certain about what might happen with a USB adapter. I use a USB adapter between my Trackmate interface unit and my laptop computer, so the dead strips are connected to the Trackmate unit via a special cable, not to the serial to USB adapter. I have not heard of anyone that has connected any sort of sensor to a serial or printer to a USB adapter. If anyone has and has gotten it to work I would like to hear about it.

[urbanwarrior]

Well I decided RichD is right, the USB to 25 pin connectors do not work. I spent a little while fooling with it to arrive at that conclusion. After that myself and my kids raced for about 2 hours! No Xbox, no cell phones, no tablets, no internet, no TV, NADA! It was awesome! I had a 2 lane Carrera that was up for about 2 years and we just never seemed to get the enjoyment out of it like we did the newly finished MDF track.
Well I went back at it a while later and ended up using an old PC we had in the back of the basement and wired the dead strips into the printer port in the back of the PC. As it stands now I was able to get lanes 2 and 3 to work and read laps and times but I can't get lane 1 to read anything. I put the lane 1 wire into each port in the pin connector and tried to see if I could figure out by good old fashioned trail and error, but no luck.
So tomorrow I'll be back at it again. In the mean time if anybody has any suggestions I would appreciate them.
Thanks,
UW

[ddyke]

resolder all the joints on the lane that won't read. I had this problem and just heated all the connection up an let them cool. Used a tester to see if power was going through.