Documentation on how to assemble the GiroZ lap counter

miércoles, 29 noviembre 2006

Here you have soem very interesting documentation where you can see easily see the assembly instructions of a GiroZ lap counter system.

www.lisergio-z.com
The current version of this guide has been adapted by SI Giro

The bridge

The first thing we have to do is open the package that contains all of the material for setting up the bridge, which comes in separate parts,
to make sure that all of the parts are present.

The parts that make up the structure
Stickers
Screws
IR (3) sensor plates.
IR to RJ45 Sensor Connection Plate.
Connection cables for sensor plate to RJ45 plate.
3 m UTP cable for PC connection.
RJ45 a DB25 adaptor (for connection to parallel port.)
FLaCo Counting Software.
Set up instructions.

Set up

The first thing we need to do is decorate the part with the stickers.
Following this you need to assemble the lateral pieces with the crossbar, fastening them with the screws available.

At this point you need to mark the center point of the crossbar, once on hte inner side and on two other pionts (one on each side of the center point) at 26cm distance from the centre. These points are where the IR sensors should be placed.
Now you need to place the connection plate of the receptors on the vertical frame of the bridge, using the cables already connected.

The cables now have to be connected, one to each IR receptor and then secured to the inside corner of the crossbar using electrical tape.
I prefer to use pvc pipe glue.

The excess cable can be tied up in a not and then secured with electrical tape.
We place the top of the vertical frame of the bridge.
Finally we screw together the veritical parts and place the logo plates.

The transponder

The GiroZ transponder emits an infrared light which is read by the receptors on the bridge.
So it is necessary to set it up just beneath the glass of the car body.

The transponder is connected directly to the electrical feeds of the chasses of our MiniZ and can be connected or disconnected thanks to the cable series.
It must be highlighted that the consumption is extremely low and that it operates on only two AAA batteries.

We can see what the transponder looks like once set up on different chasses, models and car bodies.

On a MR01:
On a MR02:
On a F1, here you can see the interior connection, the cable exit through the nozzle

and a possible position of the transponder.

On a MiniZ with Atomic VDS body:

Signal tester of the transponder

You need to be aware that the transmitter must be located in way so that once the body has
been mounted, the light emitted passes through the windshield.
To confirm that the transponder transmits and is placed correctly, we can use any type of digital camera,
even a mobile phone as we can see in the following photos.

The (FLaCo, The Free Lap Counter) Software

From this point onwards, the real interesting part begins; how to use this software to manage the races.

The software supplied with the GiroZ is a Linuz distribution in Live CD version based on slax. Considering that it is a Live distribution, no installation will be necessary on your PC computer. The only thing needed to be done is configure your PC so that the first start up device is a CD/DVD player in which we will insert the GiroZ CD.

To configure the CD/DVD player as the main start-up device we have to enter into an select the BIOS of the PC and in the BOOT section. The base plates have different BIOS for which it is likely that you may have to consult the manual if you are not familiar with how to do it.
Following this we restart the PC with CD inserted as this screen should appear....

Then click "enter" and wait until the entire operating system has loaded. Don´t worry because the data of the hard drive will not be affected

And the desktop appears....

To start the operation, we need to double click on the icon on the upper left called "FlaCo"

A warning should then appear saying that it is a "Live" version and you should create a directory
in which the race data can be saved. You can either use a folder on the hard drive or use a pendrive or external usb disk.

You then need to click the centre icon to begin to use the program

We click on "new" to give a name to the championship. You can try beginning with the name "New Champion"

Now the "races" section appears and you need to click on "new" and creat a name for the race
such as "New Race"

A new menu then appears in which you can see "pilots and configuration".
Clicking on configuration, we can configure ALL parameters fo the race (if you select race format more configurations will appear).

We then add the drivers, putting the name, alias, frecuencia, and transponder.

To begin we click on "generate series"

You now click on "Qualifiers" and in the menu that appears on the right,
You click on distribute drivers.

Once the drivers have been distributed, all you have to do is
click on "leg X" and click "begin" to begin the timing.

You need to follow the same steps to begin all the legs and finals.

One more point is that once each each leg is complete, you can visualize a lap by lap and a traffic of the times achieved.