Lane Judge

Hello everyone! New to the forums and a bit new to electronics. Well, sorta kinda. I took BEE back in 1991 but haven't used any of that knowledge except the common Ohm's law formulas. You see, I'm a Residential/Commercial electrician but have always been intrigued/baffled by the electronics (smaller circuitry) side since then. Never built anything since the electronics kit I received when I was about 10. That was 30 years ago. So I don't remember much at all.

What brings me here is the desire to follow through with my quest for knowledge and learn something that I probably would never have the time or inclination if we didn't have the internet. What I would like to build as my first project is a lane judge for a pinewood derby track. How do I go about doing such a thing? Or better yet, where do I start my learning process here? I'm not asking anyone to design this and do it all for me as I wouldn't learn anything so if you can, steer me in the right direction so I may learn how this whole system would work.

Just in case you need some info on my project, I need there to be a way to detect the placing of each car and be able to display that at the finish line using some 7-segment LED's. I am going to incorporate some flashing lights above the winning car as well. Another thing I am going to design is a countdown timer with lights at the starting line like the ones used at drag races. I saw one on another track that also incorporated an automatic car release once the light turned green. Ingenious concept! Anyway, that's the start of my projects. Please help a electronics tech 'wanna-be' get his feet wet. Thank you!

Ken

*sorry for being so long-winded.*

Hey,
I don't know if you necessarily need to come up with some custom built electronics for this. I find that sometimes designing electronics from scratch can be a real pain in the butt.

In another life I was a control systems engineer, and I know you would be able to do this easily with a PLC. You can get some chepish PLC's now (sometimes called shoebox PLC's) like the Mitsubishi Alpha or even something a bit gruntier like the Koyo. They cost a few hundred dollars, but the plus is you will probably save a lot of time compared to making your own circuit from scratch. With the PLC you could connect a few light sensors and program it so that it detects the cars. I have seen (but not personally used) 7 segment displays that you can update over a serial link.

Another thing to look at is maybe some of those control boards you can get that plug into your computer. I don't know if that's what they are called, but basically they are a microprocessor board that you can program from your computer and they have inputs and outputs on the board.

A buddy I work with made exactly what you are looking for. He documented it somewhat on his site.

tsstech.org

Thank you for the replies! I have done a search on PLC's as you have suggested KingKrak and will need to do more research on how to hook-up and program these. Looks promising and I just might try that!

Smanches, it looks like he is thinking on charging money for his project. I would like to know what his system looks like and maybe pay him for plans, but I don't want to buy a finished project. I know it would be easier, but I'm looking to at least build part of it so I can get the experience of learning something. I'll have to email him and ask if he would be willing to show pictures and/or tell me how much plans would cost. I would possibly be interested in that.

A big "Thank you" to you two for the info. I greatly appreciate it!

=)


***EDIT***

Smanches, could you possibly ask your friend if he could post some pictures of what his DerbyDecider looks like? Either that or ask him if I could email him for info. I still want to build this myself, but if he has plans, at least I could do the work myself. Thank you, and if this request isn't something you want to do, I understand. Later!