has anyone ever seen or heard of anyone trying this we are raceing mini zs and we are wanting a lap counter and we were toying with the idea of a photocell based counter i have experimented with this and we can get this to work up too two feet but we feel we need about five feet lane with what im wondering is do you think a guy could use lazer pointers to get the distance with the light source or do you know if anyone is makeing one that would work that is available for purchase

hey thanks to everyone who helped me the other night in the chatroom the lazer pointers work great and i have wired the photo cells to work with a keypad on the computer and im useing the laps free program and i have a automatic lap counting system now and very cheap too

can you post pictures and the supplys you used?

How much do you have in the system?

lets see as to the cost i have 12 bucks in six lazer pointer keyrings and 24 bucks in photocells from radio shack i forget the part number but its on the hoslotcars.com site and we made a tower from 1x4 and 2x4s we had laying around but you can get those from home depot for cheap and i got the keypad at walmart for 13 bucks so what id say 50 to 60 bucks and ill take pics soon for you guys

i guess i should tell you how it works. If you have raced slot cars those lap counters have a tower above the track with a photo cell under the track so when the car goes under the bridge with the light under it and the photo cell under the track with a hole drilled in it it breaks the beam of light with triggers the photo cell and counts a lap so to get the rc cars to work we put the lazers on the side of the track at one inch intervals vertically we have six pointers but you could do as many as you want now to get the cars to count. We put flags on the attenas with electrical tape that is one inch long. the attena isnt wide enough to compeletely cover the light emited from the lazer pointer. now if you want to go really cheap you could use calculators and wire to the = button to start the counters you plug the equation in each calculator 1+= and each time the photo cell breaks its beam it counts the calculator up one digit to reset the calculator you just press the 0 . you then take a cassete tape and make a tape for how many mins or raceing you have left so if you want to race for four min you start the the cars and let the tape count down then have everyone stop there cars just like the old days cept no pencil and paper lol. Otherwise you take the keypad and take it apart and hook wires up to each number and the lapsfree program will count the races just like as if you were sitting there pushing buttons

Sounds cool!

We run the LapsFree program as well along with their transponders and bridge. For the 1/18th scale stuff we run, it is fantastic.

yes we wanted to do that also but the cost keeps us from doing it

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXRJC9&P=FR

robitronic lap counter

We started out using the Trackmate system
http://www.trackmateracing.com/

It works fine but the software is fairly limited and you can only put 14 transponders in the system. That means no personals. I saw very quickly that once the entries surpassed 14 the rounds really slowed down due to swapping transponders and having to re-enter everything between heats.

I just switched to I-lap this week.

http://www.rclapcounter.com/

The cool thing about this system is that it emulates an AMB decoder. That means any software that works with AMB will work with this one. There is a special deal on RC Scoring Pro with I-lap. You get a free 5-car "lite" version with the system and can purchase an upgrade to the 20-car per heat "pro" version for a reasonable price. I admit that I only have a few days of playing with it but what I've seen so far is pretty awesome. It allows basically unlimited transponders on the system. With everyone being assigned their own transponder it will make my job as race director much simpler and should speed up the rounds tremendously.

Both systems seem to read the transponders without fail. The transponders are small enough to work with Micro-T trucks and fit under the body. I don't want this post to get much longer so if anyone has any questions I'll be happy to post what I know.

Keith

try this one - free and can run a big race. Many tracks use this..

http://www.rctiming.com/index.shtml

back awhile ago one track i go to uses a transponder that is mounted in each car and the signal from each transponder is picked up by a receiver cable mounted in the track at the start-finish line and read by a cpu to log laps by which car and also logs times for each lap...............bob

....

Bob,
That is a Iris system. R/Ctiming is where it came form. The system is a good one. Each transponed has a code that is pick up by the loop and transmitted to the encoder and the conputer records it. The software if FREE and down loadable from Carl's site. Carl has all of the upgrades there as well. In the down load section you can get the US frequency chart and audio commands for you system.

The one feature that I like ins the audio portion of the program. It keeps up and manages the race completely. After you have set up the race with the drivers, frequencies and driver ability, the program will prompt you when the first race in round one will start and from there on will control the race schedule. It will keep up with frequencies, driving ability and quailifiers for the final main races. I f you have a large road course you can use a time stager for time trials or en mass for a short track race.
The killer, it will keep up with 20 cars at a time for free you can't beat that.

It is also the only program that's free that can use yellow flag or red flag stops.

We had a few problem or glitches as of late but it was due to operator error or to many cooks in the kitchen and NOT the program.

Look the wen sit up, down load the program and play with it.