Autosport Labs

Would it be possible to use an IR Receiver to track lap times. Sometimes we have indoor races and GPS signal is not reliable?

Hi,

The system is not currently designed to do lap times via a beacon. Not currently on our to-do list either, I'm afraid. Sounds like you're talking about a karting application?

Sometimes we race indoors like at the Chili Bowl and GPS does not work well in big metal buildings.

Just brainstorming.. if you can get a logic pulse (0-5V or 0-12V) out of your IR sensor, you could hook that to a GPIO input on the RCP, then log that channel at high speed to find start/finish crossing times in your logs. Could maybe use a LUA script to do your own lap timing too. I haven't read up on Lua to know what it can do for numeric outputs to the dashboard. I'm guessing cellphones don't work well inside either, so telemetry isn't a concern?

With IR, what happens if you're side by side with another car as you cross the beam, and can't see the beam through his car? Or do they have multiple emitters shooting across start/finish from different positions?

The output of many IR receivers latch the triggered state (whether high or low) for longer than the immediate seconds when the IR breaks the beam. Your logging rate may not need to be that high.