Synopsis - These are the latest schematics for the Speed Climbing Timing system. In the process of improving and refining the system, the schematics changed substantially from the original schematics I posted. One of the biggest changes was eliminating the LM339 comparator circuitry for all 4 sensors (2Xhands 2Xfeet). It was just not reliable and too twitchy. Added an LED as feedback to the climber on the hand sensor and added the starter console schematics and base station schematic changes.

There are 6 pages of schematics that cover the system (currently). Click on each image to get an enlargement.

Base station display controller:


Hand sensor:


Foot sensor


Starter’s console:


Add capacitance to the power supply on the ET-AVR stamp dev board:


Example wiring diagram that shows two hand sensors attached to the Base Station through RJ45, CAT5 cabling:



I may scan and post the schematics of the large LED display board later. That board is a pre-assembled module I purchased based on the Maxim 7219 LED display chipset.

AVR Code for the firmware for the base station and sensor microcontrollers will be posted next week. All code will be open sourced as well as these designs.
Speed Climbing Timing Part 1 - Sensors
Speed Climbing Timing Part 2 - Controller
Speed Climbing Timing Part 3 - Integration
Speed Climbing Timing Part 4 - Touch Pad Construction
Speed Climbing Timing Part 5 - Schematics
Speed Climbing Timing Part 6 - Perf Board
Speed Climbing Timing Part 7 - Display
Speed Climbing Timing Part 8 - Hand and Foot Sensors
Speed Climbing Timing Part 9 - Demonstration
Speed Climbing Timing Beta Test Boulder Rock Club
Speed Climbing Timing - Sensor Improvements
Speed Climbing Timing SHIPPED!
Speed Climbing Timing Schematics (shipped v1)
Speed Climbing Timing Installation
Speed Climbing Timing - Laser-based Hand Sensor Design
Speed Climbing Timing Lessons Learned

Tags: ATMega128, Schematics, IR Sensors, ATMega8, LED display

Synopsis: Over the past weekend, I spent the time to take the sensor analog and digital interrupt logic off the breadboard and onto a more semi-permanent perf board. In the process, instead of a single sensor circuit which I’ve been using on the breadboard, this perf board incorporates all the circuitry for 4 sensors ( hand and foot X 2 lanes.) This perf board implements the schematics in Part 5 of this series with one exception...I added 4 LED indicators through another driver to show on-board when a sensor “fired” due to a touch.

Also, in this article are a couple of movies that show a single-sensor alpha test on a climbing wall.

2 Lane, 4-sensor Perf-Board

Here’s a picture of the perf-board that contains the sensor detection and microcontroller interrupt logic for a two-lane speed climbing system. The microcontroller is on a separate board. The schematics for this board can be found in Part 5 of this series. The 4 orange potentiometers on the upper left of the board are there to adjust the sensor sensitivity.



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Tags: Schematics, IR Sensors

I took a short break from the prototyping workbench to catch up the project documentation. This one in the form of schematics. Using Eagle, I created a short set of schematics focused on various subsystems of the speed climbing timing system.

They are:

1. IR Sensor and Interrupt Logic
2. Power Regulation
3. Microcontroller Interfacing
4. RJ45 pinouts for the Modular Connections

I won’t spend much time explaining the schematics. They could well change as I get further into this.

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Tags: Schematics, IR Sensors