Racing micro cars

[mangoman]

Guys, i was just wondering has anyone worked out a way of lap counting these little guys are all the racing clubs for these just social and for bragging rites only?

Ive order one of the little suckers couresty of azza but im assuming they are too small to mount an AMB transponder so do we have any electronic whizzes who have any idea how to mock up a mini transponder. I have the feeling those AMB transponders dont need to be that big and are probably used for a number of other purposes which is why they are larger.

[James]

there would definately be a way, the only problem is, it's difficult to make a transponder an accurate device. As it is the AMBit stuff is pretty damn accurate.

Someone with quick fingers and good vision could time them manually with alycat using pressbuttons as someone crosses the line, but it's never accurate enough.

Before I go on, have you seen this:
http://www.amb-it.com/images/upload/ambrcdp_miniz.jpg

AMBit make a transponder just right for micro racing, and even have a how-to for wiring it up!

Problem is, your local track is unlikely to have these units, and more likely to have the older units.

A dedicated micro racing track will surely have all this covered.

James

[azzachaz]

I know the guys at ausmicro have talked about this in depth. I think the way to go (money wise) is a modified slot car timing system which laps the cars as they go under/over the timing strip. The software I have seen is Dingo Timer or something like that

[mangoman]

Thanks for the suggestions

Hmmm yeah i wouldnt need allycat to do a push button system that would be easy to program, you just need a gopher to sit there and push the buttons. I saw a mechanical system which my club used to use way back and cant believe someone would ever have bothered to have raced like that.

As for the transponders that AMB diagram talks about hard wiring them into the shell and im sure you wouldnt get enough people willing enough to buy them theirselves for racing and i think its important to remember while these micro cars are cool (btw is micro the right word) i think its important to note they are also cheap and transponders i think are gunna a whole lot more than the car itself.

The Dingo Timer is really interesting though from what i can tell for it work on each slot car track and wouldnt be able to differentiate between cars, you would also need to trail a piece of metal on the ground from our cars to close a contact and trigger a signal, however im wondering if perhaps there is any kind of sensor, anyone can think of, which could detect a colour passing over it (ie colour the underside of the car).

Ive also been thinking if you had a camera hooked up to a PC you could record the start finish and try to analyze the picture afterwards. Im thinking the processing power required to analyze something like that live would be astronomical. I think something like that may be possible but would require a fair amount of work to set up.