F3F RC slope racing timer

rpleym

Hello

I'm planning a project to make a timing system for F3F competition. This is a RC glider slope racing competition, where you basically set up a course which is 100 m long, and fly back and forth in this course 10 times as fast as you can. In each end of the course there is a referee who pushes a button when the plane passes him, which sounds a buzzer behind the pilot so that he knows when to turn.

What I want to make is a timer that starts when the first button is pushed (referee 1), then counts laps and stops when referee 1 is passed again·at the end of·the 10'th lap.·I also need a simple LCD display of course, to display the results.

I was thinking I could do this with a BS1 with an external timer chip, but I'm not sure. Any tips would be greatly appreciated [noparse]:)[/noparse]

Which timer chip should I use? I need about 1/10·sec resolution I think

- Richard Pleym

rpleym

I'm having trouble finding a RTC chip that can give 1/10 and 1/100 sec which isn't surface mounted, any hints?
·

erco

You can do it just using the BS1 and calibrated timing loops, without any external RTC.

Your code will have several nested for-next loops (maybe with short pauses) that count the seconds and minutes. You'll experimentally determine the loop size by comparing with a real stopwatch. Depending on the total timing interval, you could calibrate it within reasonable limits, perhaps 1/10 second. You'll have if-then statements monitoring the pushbutton inside your loops. Write your code so that your loop execution speed doesn't change if & when·the button is pressed, and wait to output data to a serial LCD until your timing is finished.

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·"If you build it, they will come."