Senior Capstone Design - RC Timing System

Abstract

The Lynchburg Drag RC club meets regularly to host amateur street races using 1/7 scale cars that they construct, develop, and maintain. The lack of any concrete timing system or conclusive means of determining a winner in these races is the primary motivation for the work. The team will be constructing a fully automatic racing system for the RC club. The system will consist of two-boxes, governed by Arduino UNO microcontrollers, that will be wirelessly connected over Bluetooth along the 132 ft. of paved racing track. Each box will use two HC-SR04 ultrasonic proximity sensors along either side to detect the passage of a car independently and feed results to an LCD. The sensors should detect an object within 1 to 30 – 40 cm from the box. The first passage of any car will trigger the race time that will independently cut-off after cars pass the second box, with results being displayed likewise. The timing results for the races should produce 0.0001 second resolution as per customer requirements. The final system (as a whole) should also allow for the detection of false-starting cars, delay starting times along a side for slower cars, and have results uploaded to an iOS/Android app developed for car improvement and for members to schedule meets. The system will be tested by measuring the threshold triggering of the timer, evaluating the accuracy of the sensors in different atmospheric conditions by comparing results to controlled indoor fluorescent lighted races, and other tests as needed.