Laser Detector which activates keyboard output

Hello first time here.

Purpose-

What I would like to do is wire several phototranisters to a keyboard. I will direct lasers at the phototransistors. Depending on which transistor's beam is broken a keystroke will be activated. The Keyboard needs to have a normal PS2 or USB interface so I can plug it into a laptop etc.

So for example each time laser 1's beam is broken the keyboard will output 1 (or what ever letter/number I set it to).

Apllication
I am a hobby RC car driver. I have built a track in my basement, but there is no good, usable (for me) option for keeping track of laps or times, so I would like to create something. The above keyboard would be used in conjunction with a lap timing program. The progam has been designed to record a lap in each lane (from 1 - 10) each time the respective keyboard number is pressed.

So using this when the car breaks the beam the lap is scored.

I have already tried another option which requires the wiring of a phototransistor to an db25 plug. Here is the schematic But for what ever reason my LPT port will not register anything. So I figured the keyboard would do.

I am good at soldering, not so good at reading schematics, but I can learn. Any help you guys can provide will greatly enhance the development of my race track.

Thanks for looking.

tested the lpt properly. ?

Not quite sure what you mean.

But I did go into my bios and ensure that the correct address was being used by the software.

And I wanted to set the LPT to normal, but the only options on my IBM r51 were EPP, Bi-Directional, Diable, and EPT

BlackRanger3d said:

Not quite sure what you mean.

But I did go into my bios and ensure that the correct address was being used by the software.

And I wanted to set the LPT to normal, but the only options on my IBM r51 were EPP, Bi-Directional, Diable, and EPT

Click to expand...

for ur problem stated ,i recommend the parallel port method . i donno how u checked the status of pins .
so try according to this.
https://pinouts.ru/data/ParallelECP_pinout.shtml