Still moving slowly forward. I soldered everything that I can do up to this point. Now I have to tune the antenna, then solder the TI module in and it should be done. I greatly dislike tuning antennas....
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Power Is Nothing Without Control
The antenna may still need some fine tuning but in the current state I can now put it in an enclosure and take it to the track for testing. If our next race night has near as many people as the last having this second lap counter is going to be really helpful
Here is a picture of the board close up.
I had a couple of mistakes on the layout that I will correct for the next version. Nothing major, just measurements from manufacturers that were wrong causing me to improvise. The obvious ones are the resistors that are much bigger than the spacing I gave the leads.
Unfortunately I did not have any female headers so I soldered the TI module directly to my board. I could not find any locally. It's a bummer how hard it is to find electronics components locally now.
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Power Is Nothing Without Control
Sorry for the lack of response, the forum did not send me an email about a new post....
I had set aside this half of the project to focus on the software side. Now that I have an alpha release of the software I can now turn my attention back to this. Plus we had an incident in the room we race in that resulted in it getting flooded, my Core lap counter was under water so I do not know if it will work again. So I pretty much have to get my prototype working fully so that we can run races again.
My prototype has worked well enough for testing but I still need a more reliable antenna. I have tried a few different materials so far but either could not get the signal strength or had durability problems resulting in failures after repeated transport. I think I am going to switch to using coax for now. While it is thicker it should be reliable.
Hopefully in the next couple months I will have something durable enough that I could build and ship to people knowing it will work when they finish assembly.
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Power Is Nothing Without Control
oh man that really sucks about the Core, did you get if dried out?
I accidentally (yea right) landed my heli in my swimming pool this summer. After a complete disassemble and dry I was supprized that it still worked.
I'm in no rush, but just wanted to check the status of the hardware. Once completed I'd like to possibly put together a HFAY package using your timer.
I have disassembled it and let it dry. But before I try using it again I am going to put it in a vacuum chamber with a moisture absorbent material to get it as dry as possible. Since you can not buy the Core hardware and I want to ensure my software works with it along with my own hardware I need to have a working Core lap counter to test with.
But this motivates me to get my own hardware done quickly as we can not race again until I have something.
That is a good idea with a HFAY package. The only catch will be some assembly will be required. I can not sell this as a fully functioning unit without getting FCC approval which will cost quite a few thousand dollars. Some basic soldering may be required to finish assembly. But it will be easier than solder FET's.....
If I were to give a safe high estimate I would say total cost will be around 300$.
You will need to buy a few parts yourself including the TI S6350 module for 160$, but tags are cheap at around 1$ each. Higher quantities could bring parts costs down some.
Email me so we can chat more about the HFAY idea.
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Power Is Nothing Without Control
We are just starting up a club and i am very interested in your system i have downloaded software (only mac friendly system i could find) we are hoping to be in hfay next session. but since core is no longer available and used ones are hard to come by i would be very interested in your hardware also. thanks
A big up
@pinwc4: I like know if your project is alway in your head, and perhaps could you explain with some images and a tutorial will be welcome for my little hands.
A big up
@pinwc4: I like know if your project is alway in your head, and perhaps could you explain with some images and a tutorial will be welcome for my little hands.
This project is not just in my head, I do have designs of it and originally had 5 boards produced for myself so I could tweak the design. It has been slow going I know as I have focused more on the software side. I needed software first as without it the hardware would be useless.
I have tried and failed at quite a few antenna designs, either they are not strong enough for the signal, not durable enough or not easy enough to produce. Right now I am trying to use simple computer ribbon cable, like is used to plug a CDROM into the motherboard of a computer. This approach looks very promising, it is durable, cheap and I can actually tape the antenna together at the right dimensions so that people would not have problems getting the antenna loop the right shape.
But I think I have a flaw in the antenna tuning circuit somewhere. No matter what I try I tune the antenna at one location and then when I take it somewhere else it is out of tune and can not pick up the cars good enough.
So while I have not said much I do work on it every couple of weeks and try to get it finished, I just have focused more on the software.
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