After a very long time, i’m posting a new project of mine. Its a timer specifically designed for car rallies.
It was back in 2008, when I made my first timer for Lahore Rally Cross 2008. It was a very urgent project, got only 15 days to make it. Though it was very fun, and learned alot from it.

I named the first timer as “TauHam LT-187″.

My First Race Timer

It uses two displays, one for real-time clock and other shows time at which the reached the start or end point. The timer is only capable of displaying the time of event and send the time along wth the point of information to the PC. The software running at PC is responsible of calculating the difference of both Start and End point times and then storing the information into database.

Due to very less time given for designing by the organizers,I used 7-Segements. As they were the only possible source I think for displaying purpose. But unfortunately, the idea of using them proved to be very fatal. The race was held at daytime, and daylight killed the segment’s light and we were able to see nothing but the huge black box they were in. Gladly, I managed to develop the PC software in those 15 days, which was only capable of displaying the time of event.

Development of Timer

The Lahore Rally 2008 was all timed by my timer, and everything went right as it was supposed to. I gained alot of confidence and experince regarding the time-keeping and non-technical aspects of it.

Sensors at finish point.

These red boxes contain the sensors, aligned infront of each other. They are very much immune to external light and have very fast response. They best thing about them is that they take very vast range of power input. From 5VDCto 30VDC and 110VAC to 220VAC.

Second Timer LT-188

Yesterday I got off from the development of the second timer LT-188. It is developed for the Cholistan Desert Rally 2009 which is starting on 26 February. The race comprises of a stage break at the middle of track. So I have to develop two timers one for Start/Finish points nand one for Stage Break. This time I have used Graphical LCD, to avoid the hassle of dim display. Since LCDs work on the principle of contrast with the background and not on light emitting.

Second Timer LT-188

This timer uses PIC18F452 as main controller. I also used PIC16F876A for displaying purposes. The PIC16F876A sits in between the GLCD and main controller. It takes data which is to be displayed from main controller through serial and display it on the GLCD. This way I replaced 12 pics with one serial output. And it also saves lots of hassle of using GLCD, as all of the display routines and functions are embedded into PIC16F876A. The block diagram clearly shows the interfacing.

Interfacing between Main Controller and GLCD

Sensors

This time the same sensors are being used as of previous timer. But the casing are made more attractive.

Sensor boxes for LT-188

PC Software

The PC software is developed in Visual Bssic 6. It saves the timing and racer’s data in Access database. Below is the printscreen of the GUI.

GUI of PC Software

The Cholistan Race is startig tommorow, and lets see what my new timer plays there.

Happy Racing =)

P.S: Thanks to Sir Noaman, its becuase of him that I started using GLCDs