# Four lane lap counting



## Jag240 (Jul 19, 2009)

Hello All, I have a four lane Tomy AFX track that is very large and I want to be able to count individual laps, can someone please advise me on a way to do this.

Thanks


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## demether (Aug 26, 2008)

hi, 

you simply have to install some detection system on your track. You can buy one "ready to use", or make your own, then plug on a PC computer (if you choose DOS sofware, an old pentium 1 will make the job flawlessly).

you can use reed switchs, photocells, ir cells, DS bridge, etc, etc... there is many solutions possible.

The difficulty when you make your own system, is to create something really accurate and stable. But it's possible. On my track, I use home made reed switch system, wich is really reliable after some tuning on it, and with all the cars I drive (tjets, tjets with brass pans, magnet cars, magnatractions). I plug the system on a old p3 700 running slotrace manager (great piece of software). The whole system cost me less than 15 dollars (the price of the reed switches). The other need material was free (old computer, freeware laptiming, etc...)

hope it helps


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## Jag240 (Jul 19, 2009)

Sounds good, however it is all very new to me, are there some web sites that show you haw to set it up on the track etc?


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## demether (Aug 26, 2008)

a good start should be to go here : 

http://www.hoslotcarracing.com/


and try to use search function on hobby talk too. 

I 'm sure other h0 enthusiasts will have infos for you soon 


regards


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## noddaz (Aug 6, 1999)

*well...*

Slotrace Manager is here:
http://www.cenobyte.nl/slotcarmanager/

I think that is just software....

If you need the whole timer/counter system, (hardware and software) have a look here:
http://www.infoserve.net/oss/slotcar/

And I think this site has a complete system as well (correct me if I am wrong, can't access it at work to check)
http://slottrak.web1000.com/


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## Zootmaster (Jun 12, 2008)

*Lap Counter*

Hey Jag,
This is the link to trackmate. It's a real good lap counting system and you can buy it complete with everything you need to hook it up and go, minus the PC. Check it out, I'm not sure how much your looking to spend but a lot of people use this system.

Zootmaster

http://www.trackmateracing.com/shop...row_red2.gif"+border="0">Lap+Counters+Windows


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## demether (Aug 26, 2008)

Yes, everything depands on two things : hwo much can you afford for your laptiming system, and are you ready to build it yourself or not. 


As I said, you can build a great laptiming system for almsot nothing, but you'll have to build everything from scratch, and need to use a computer too.


you can try to find some old AFX laptimers too, you'll need two of them.


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## slot_car_noob (Mar 1, 2009)

ok guys while where on this topic... i am building the slot car lap timer as shown in http://www.hoslotcarracing.com/. i have the software and the computer, and the photo cells are instaled under my track. i have it working, but there are a few kinks and i was wondering if anyone had any ideas...

first: at the moment i am using normal 12volt leds, but i would like to use infared leds Radio shak Part No. 276-143. i bought them, the same ones that gregory talks about in his site, and also bought the resistors he mentions to run the infra-red leds on a 12volt power pack, but if i hook them up, the lap counting software just keeps counting lap after lap...... i do have that reverse logic setting on, the one that says once the light beam is BROKEN it counts a lap, but at the moment it just keeps counting without it being broken

second: when the system counts laps, it is always two laps ago, not your last lap. for example.... if i get 12 seconds one lap, the next 14, once i go through the gantry, it dosn't show the 14 seconds, which is my previous lab, it shows the 12 seconds, which would then be two laps ago. i was just wondering if there is a setting for that or if the program just operates that way... by the way, the program is Lap Timer 2000, from hoslotcarracing.com


any help is great!


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## rbrunne1 (Sep 22, 2007)

Zootmaster said:


> Hey Jag,
> This is the link to trackmate. It's a real good lap counting system and you can buy it complete with everything you need to hook it up and go, minus the PC. Check it out, I'm not sure how much your looking to spend but a lot of people use this system.
> 
> Zootmaster
> ...


If you can afford it, I'd recommend a "turn-key" system like Trackmate :thumbsup:

After spending days trying to build and tune a home-made system, I bought a Trackmate System. I took it out of the box, plugged it in and now enjoy racing with my daughter instead of wondering why some laps aren't counted 

Bob B.


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## demether (Aug 26, 2008)

If you're lucky and organized (to double check everything, make tests, etc...) an home made system can be really precise too.

i use reed switch home made system, with slotrace manager. The whole system cost me less than 20 USD. I never had a missed lap with it, even with brasspan tjets !


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## rbrunne1 (Sep 22, 2007)

demether said:


> If you're lucky and organized (to double check everything, make tests, etc...) an home made system can be really precise too.
> 
> i use reed switch home made system, with slotrace manager. The whole system cost me less than 20 USD. I never had a missed lap with it, even with brasspan tjets !


You have more patience than I have. I tried photo resistors with infrared LED's and incandescent lights and reed switches. 

The photo resistors were a disaster. Following the instructions from Slot Race Manager, I spent hours trying to calibrate them and I could never get them to reliably trip the counter. They would either flicker on and off or not count anything 

The forums in Hobby Talk made reed switches seem simple. At least they’re either on or off. They were at least consistent...they consistently counted 92 out of every 100 laps


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## demether (Aug 26, 2008)

For reed switches, I used my own personal technic. I ran more or less 1000 tests turns with different chassis, never had a missing lap. Perhaps my reed switches are particulary sensitive too, I don't know.

I'll try to explain my technic : 

first, I sanded the back of the rail, to discover some metal :












I installed the reed switch like in figure 1 (back view of the track section) , ON THE METAL RAIL (be carefull for short cuts!). I tried the other way (figure 2), but I had problems with strong magnet cars (tomy turbo). 











Why did I install the reed switch directly on the metal rail ? I made a theory for that 


If you install reed switch like the usual way, under the plastic track (near the slot for example). The magnetic field of the chassis is detected only ON the reed switch assembly : 













But if you install the reed switch on the metal rail, it is the metal rail that transfers the magnetic field to the reed switch. The transition i longer (because the metal of the rail is magnetic conductive) and progressive in this way : 










So the detection period is longer, and stronger since the reed switch in glued right on the metal rail. 


With that technic, even the almost magnetless tjets, even with an installed non magnetic brasspan are lap timed. 


But, once again, perhaps my reed switchs are just more sensitive that some others. It's totally possible, I can't say because it's the first time I mount reed switchs for laptiming. 

Before that, on my last track I used photocells, and never achieve a good accuracy too.



Dimitri


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## Wainman (Sep 7, 2009)

I like the laptimer 2000 software for timing laps. For lap counting, I made a counter that uses electro-mechanical counters. I use the radio shack IR receivers and have a light bridge overhead. My counter energizes reed switches for each lane when light hits the photocells. When a car blips past, (no matter how fast), the short interruption allows the reed to turn off, and the counter advances. That is, the reed holds the counter(s) energized.

I expect I will be the lone person not singing the praises of trakmate. A couple guys in our club used it and it missed laps often. We always had a video camera taping the race, and used video review to correct erroneous lap counts. I was the one who had to review the tape. On a night that ran at a Trakmate house, video review would correct bad counts every time, usually several over the course of the event. 

I entered all the data into a spread sheet, and unusual performances, (slow or fast), were selected for video review. The review was also used to help me write our club newsletter, as I was able to describe the racing action, and snap stills from the video of some of the more exciting moments. 

These same guys still run Trakmate and love it. I expect it still misses laps, but they're not paying as much attention to it anymore. Kinda like letting the "bad call" by the ref stand.


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## AfxToo (Aug 29, 2003)

With TrackMate the reliability is mostly tied to the sensor system. If you get one of the prefab sensor designs from TrackMate then you are going to be in very good shape. Trust me, when pro racers are running a race or practicing, missed laps will be noticed immediately and loudly. 

TrackMate is more reliable than LT 2000 due to the fact that the lap counting function in TrackMate is largely handled by external hardware. For all the MIPS and MFLOPS in a fairly modern PC, and even high end gaming systems, PCs are lousy real time controllers. PCs are mostly designed to interact with people and perform tasks that are really quite slow and plodding compared to a machine designed specifically for a single task, like counting and timing laps. Multitasking operating PC operating systems, like Windows, are even less predictable and deterministic than antique operating systems like DOS. Windows can get interrupted in the middle of processing a lap update to do some other task, and the time that it is away doing something else can be reflected in the lap timing it computes. Windows also has a couple of different timing sources and a poorly written timing routine can result in impressively high precision but inaccurate timing calculations. The bottom line with any Windows based timing system that is software based, unlike TrackMate, is that you are going to have random occurrences of timing errors that are way off the mark due to interrupt latencies. In most cases software-only systems like LT 2000 are "good enough" for casual use, but hardware assisted systems like TrackMate are better. The best solution would be an external controller, like a low cost micro/nano PLC to handle all high speed real time timing and counting tasks and use PC for what it does best, handling users interface, race management, and data management tasks.

DOS is no panacea either, since it is like Windows tied to a platform that was never meant for real time processing. To achieve decent performance on DOS you need to use the whole PC as a timing device and play funky games with the computer timers (like SRM does) that has some odd effects on other parts of the system, like the wall clock. Even then, there are still some scenarios that will cause a PC/DOS system to fall flat on its face due again to the fact that PCs were not designed to perform real time control. Again, in 95% of the cases they are still "good enough."


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