pinewoods Derby.

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ptonsparky

ptonsparky

Tom
Location
NE (9.06 miles @5.9 Degrees from Winged Horses)
Occupation
EC - retired
Watched one of the grandsons race his Pinewoods Derby car tonight and some of the cars had to repeat a run several times before judges were happy. Good time. Fun to watch. Derby cars are 5 oz pine wood blocks with wheels that coast down a track.

Now what would be the best way to catch the winner in those cases.? Prox sensors, photoelectrics?
 
130106-2329 EST

In the long past in our area the car that went the greatest distance was the winner. This means low friction and high inertia.

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A low budget solution would be a cheap video camera connected to a computer where you cold playback the crossing of the finish line with slow motion and freeze frame/pause.
 
Our US GMC motorhome group got into pinewood derby racing with small GMC motorhomes. allows the kid out of us older folks :)

For our local group, I made a small box for end of track with IR LED facing down, IR transistor on bottom for thru beams on the 4 parallel tracks. basic stamp processor to do the math hooked to small rs232 type LCD display. added a prox sw to track start bar so we could give each person their exact run time too.
 
My grandsons raced last Spring. My son reports that adults race these cars, shipping them to the track. They have all sorts of secret lubes and alignment and balancing stuff.
 

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From my son, adults racing Pinewood Derby cars.

Derby discussion sites:

Derby Talk (this has the most frequent inputs - the moderator ?Sporty?
has some highly advanced discussions but poor writing style):
http://www.derbytalk.com/index.php

Derby Worx (gets a lot of input from the different performance shop owners):
http://pinewoodp.proboards.com/index.cgi

PDDR (tends to get more info on the pro and modified class of adult racing):
http://pddr.proboards.com/index.cgi

PWDR racing (runs various monthly races ? mail in car and watch on internet):
http://pwdracing.proboards.com/index.cgi
 
OMG, I was so in to Pine Wood Derby when I was in Scouts, but my son was totally disinterested and his Scoutmaster was adamant about parents not 'taking over" for thier kids (which I agree with).

But it never occurred to me that there was an adult version! I think I may have found my new addiction...

Laser line scanner would be perfect for this, as long as someone has a $5K budget. :roll:
 
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