hi this isnt really to do with robots but it is building something with electronics so i thought i'd ask here because i know the users are friendly and someone will probably be able to help me.
so my friend wanted to build a scaletrix track and he's cutting some wood and thats all fine but we are trying to work out how to make a lap counter for multiple lanes. we decided to use picaxe because thats all we really know how to do. so far we have decided on an arch across the track with infra red emmiters and in each slot (it is slot car racing) there will be a hole containing a infra red sensor. the car goes through breaks the beam sort of and the picaxe starts timing. one picaxe per lane so at the end the picaxe chips will know the time for their respective lanes. to keep cost down we hope to be using an 08m if possible to keep the cost down. anyway so the problem is we need some way of displaying the times.
i thought of using the program processing so we could show time difference and positions but i have no idea how to use it (dont bother trying to explain here but if yuo know somewhere that would be able to teach me how to use it with picaxe then that would be great)
so seven segment displays we thought of but they need loads of outputs and using picaxes thet have enough would cost a lot
so a seriallcd display but some one would have to change the wire between the chips to display each timeunless you got one for each lane which again would cost a lot unless they were non serial but agin we have no idea how to use them
so basicly it comes down to lack of knowledge or budget
thanks for reading all this and if you have any ideas or could tell me what you think my best bet is please answer below
thanks