On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 12:04:08PM +1100, Liam O'Hagan wrote:
> I'm a member of a car club, and we often have track days where we're timed
> around a racetrack. Currently the timing consists of people with stopwatches
> clicking the button when they see a car go past.

Hmm... sounds like more serious racing than I do.  I'm an autocrosser doing Solo I, with only 1 (maybe 2, but no overlap) car(s) on the track at a time.  I built some basic timing equipment for us, just IR tripwires to detect a start/stop condition.

> Another option is to have an IR transmitter on the beacon, and an IR
> receiver on the car. The car would also have a RF transmitter, so when the
> car sees the beacon pass, it identifies itself via RF. This would be more
> expensive, but I think more reliable.

I like this method better.  I'm not exactly sure what kind of racing you're doing, but is it possible to have two or more cars near the beacon at one time?  I could see that introducing complications into the system.

Good luck, keep me posted on the progress.  If I decide to get into higher speed stuff I'll probably end up being volunteered to do the timing equipment too. :)

--
Alex Harford
http://www.alexharford.com
alex-spam@alexharford.com       Tel: (604) 738-5674

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