Radio Shack Xmod Lap Counter

[Dragon40]

Anybody have any info on a Radio Shack Xmod Lap counter?
There were are few posts about a year ago, that one was in the works..... This one hooked up to a PC or Laptop.

RS has Xmods, Xmod Track... Where is the Lap Counter to tie it all together????

Dead Project???

[jaubery]

I have been interested in one of those since I got my rcp-track. Any news on the lap counter would be appreciated.

[newbitowner]

would the ZZ lap counters work?

[Dragon40]

The Zip Zap counter can only count one car at a time. I was talking about a Computer USB interfaced multi car lap counter, with some nice software. There was a supposed Radio Shack employee/insider that posted this was in the works... but we have had zero info for almost a year.

[Horshu]

Chalk me up as interested as well. I'm trying to organize a 500 lap race on about 50 feet of track with pitstops, but no way can I keep track of that. I thought RCButlers had one a while back, but if they did, they don't any more. Radio Shack races place some kind of receiver on the command light connector, so I wouldn't think that building a simpl lap counter would be that difficult(would be real cool if the connector allowed access to the crystal frequency so it could be used as an ID)

[Dragon40]

During the Stop Drop and Race Tour they were using a AMD transponder... I think. I just figured by now, they would have had their own.

[Horshu]

Those AMB transponders *look* like their connectors are similiar to the Radio Shack Command Light port. Is that some kind of standard connector on RC cars that would allow for the AMBs to drop right in, or is there some mod that must be made for them to work in the XMODS? I also don't need all that computer interaction that their stuff talks about, so I guess I'd really need to build a custom receiver to attach to my start/finish line that hooks into a scoreboard (computer interaction would lead to some really cool stats capabilities, though). Thinking about it some more, though, I think the ideal would be to have the same type of crystal slot as the car (using the car's crystal is not likely to be possibly from the command port), so you could just have a bank of, say, 4 crystal slots in your scoreboard and a crystal slot in each transponder, so you just use any extra RS crystals you have to ID your car.

[Horshu]

I ripped apart one of my old controllers (doing a painting project) and did some brainstorming while staring at the radio transmittor daughterboard on the thing. My current thinking is to have a setup with loop of wire around the finish line that has high-voltage current running through it. Now, I haven't messed with circuits in over 10 years, so my theory may be off, but what I'm after is for there to be, on the car, a small board that takes primary power from the command light port (figuring out which are power and which are data isn't a big prob). I need an induction coil on the car such that passing through the loop generates a small current that can turn on a transistor and allow command light power to temporarily power an RF transmission (this thing should accept a crystal) that is received by a scoreboard that has a corresponding crystal.
Anyone able to verify that the theory there is sound? I'm not sure if there are any caveats on that induction coil, such as whether or not a loop of wire that's, say, 6 feet total (2 feet wide by 1 foot high) is going to be able to induce current with only 9v or 12v. If I can get that part working, I think building the rest of the circuit should be relatively straightforward.

[Dragon40]

This company is coming out with theirs soon, using RFID. (Radio Frequency I.D.)

The system is currently under beta testing.


http://www.corespeedway.com/web_request.cgi?shop

[Horshu]

Sounds pretty good. I wonder how much it'll cost. I might build my own, cheap version that doesn't interact with a PC, but I've still got to figure out a ton of pieces of it.