After getting some Micro Scalextric for Christmas and shortly after acquiring a vast mount of second-hand track from eBay I decided I needed a lap counter so I could race against the clock with opponents. I didn`t just want to see who could do 10 laps first I wanted to time the laps to a reasonable degree of accuracy to see who was fastest. Bu
Click here to download the full size of the above Circuit.
ilding something to do that shouldn`t be too difficult I thought, and now here is my project page for my Scalextric Lap Counter. The lap counter is based around a PIC Microprocessor, a couple of IR LEDs and IR Photodiodes, and an LCD character display. The basic theory of operation is that the PIC will be running a timer and each time the IR light beam is broken by a car crossing the finish line the lap time will be recorded and displayed in the LCD. The circuit for the lap counter is actually fairly simple. There are 2 IR LEDs (one for each track) that are constantly powered and 2 IR Photodiodes to detect the light. When the IR light is detected (beam not broken) the voltage going to the input pin on the PIC is 5v. When the beam is broken the voltage drops to 0v (or thereabouts). I`ve also added a couple of push buttons to let the user reset the individual lap times and counter for each track. The last bit of the circuit is the LCD display which uses up all the spare pins on the PIC! The LCD display I chose to use is a 16G—2 character display. These displays have a number of control lines and eight data lines in order to display text on the screen. Once the display is initialised sending text to the the screen is pretty straight forward. You simply set the R/S line high as you`re sending text, set the R/W line low as you`re writing to the display, and set the Enable line high . You then send the ASCII code for the...
This project fits more for custom made battery casing that can have more space to hide things inside. This switch with few alterations can be used for any other project as well but is designed based on e-bike needs! This project use a clever functionality of....
The circuit described here uses ultrasonic oscillations and operates based on the propagation velocity of these oscillations in the air. Thus, we can easily determine the distance of two points if the time within which the wave travels this distance is....
Sometimes the precious metals are hidden too deep and are not detected except with complicated devices. In many cases, however, small pieces of precious metal buried near the surface can be detected by relatively simple means. Everyone is very attractive to....
Many times for various reasons we forget or can not water the plants that we have in our homes. And many humidity sensors units just notify us with a beeping sound or with a flashing light, that the pot needs watering. But what if we are away from home? This....
The principle behind a metal detector is really very simple. Proof of this is the circuit that follows, in which it proves that the construction of a metal detector can be done in the minute, with few components that we find very easily everywhere. With the....
The sub-harmonic bass generator is a sound producing unit for guitars. The sound it produces looks very much like that of the bass guitar. The octave generator is sometimes quite unusual since it does not produce any of the usual ways of coloring the sound,....
In the past the sounding (sea bottom measurement) was done with the "bullet", that is, with a heavy lead object that the seamen plucked into the sea hung from a calibrated rope. As soon as the "bullet" reached the bottom, the depth appeared directly from the....
This Amplifier was designed to have the following specifications: Distortion less than 0.1% at full power of 100W even at 20KHz. Power has to be attributed to an extended bandwidth. The output transistors must be protected against short circuits. The power....
A series of LEDs serve to alert the gardener when plants need water. Using two conventional digital integrated LEDs and a series of LEDs, we make a very useful device for gardening. The device detects the amount of water in the pot and alerts the grower.....
characters left: