Synopsis - the whole point of this article is: “projects are messy”. When I’m in the middle of building, I am always thinking - “A ‘professional’ machinist, woodworker, or EE would know where everything is and would have the decks clear except for what he’s working on at the time”. I envision this ideal engineer out there with a pristine machine shop or clean-room quality lab amiably knocking out cool stuff right and left. I labor thinking everyone who’s doing things like this must be orderly. Me? Ha. I’m always looking for my wire strippers, phillips, or multimeter buried under the archeological layers of schematics and spools of wire. Maybe you’re the pro who has it orderly, but I throw this out for public consumption because for me, this is my reality when I’m in the middle of prototyping or building projects. Look at this as a small tour of ESawdust labs - such as they are.

[Afterthought: maybe this article is more about what defines an ideal “office” for a “maker” or “builder” which involves embedded hardware, software, metal, wood, power tools and paint. Not saying I have the ideal setup (far from it), but if you have thoughts on productive prototyping environments - tweet me at @esawdust and let me know]



Many more pictures after the break Read More...

Synopsis: This article provides installation instructions and hints for how best to install the speed climbing timing system.

Both timing systems arrived at their destinations for the southwest and northeast divisional championships.  Yeah!

Here is the wiring diagram for the system. All the cable to connect these modules is regular CAT5 straight through patch cable.




Tools you'll need for the install:

1) Diagonal cutters (used to trim tie-wrap excess)
1a) pliers - helpful for tightening down the tie-wraps.

2) 3/8" button head bolts:  2 short button head bolts work the best with the 3/8" washers in the package to secure the hand sensors from rotation.  Other bolts will work, but the button head bolts have the widest, flatest surface area that's best for holding the hand sensor brackets to the wall.    The flanged, martini bolts are a no-go - no surface area to hold the bracket.

3) an extension cord that has at least 2 outlets.   I usually bring one of those short 1-2 foot extensions that expands from a single 3-prong to 3 outlets.   Heavy duty, flexible...they cost about $10 at home depot.  Then I run a regular extension to the expansion extension.   An extension to a power strip will also work.

There's enough power cable leading to the display to eliminate the need (in most cases) to run any extension cord up the wall.

4) It would be ideal to plug the system into a filtered power source - something to catch line spikes.   Typical UPS or lightening suppressed power strips would be best.

It's quite simple to hook up, but here are a few tips for install.

1) Always attach the left lane foot and hand sensors' BASE jack to the base unit.   This makes the LEDs on the starter console line up left and right (unless you flip it over/upside down.)  It works either way (you could go from the base unit to the right lane instead), but one way is better.  The diagram shows it going from base to left lane.

2) Make sure you bolt the hand sensors offset from the rope - far enough that the loop and slack of the rope that is slapping around as they climb will not break the light beam of the hand sensor.   This is a very important installation/ positioning consideration.   A fast rope flick in the target area is enough to trigger the sensor, so configure the routes and lanes so this possibility is eliminated.
2a) it's also good to make sure the rope cannot get under the wires leading into the sensors.   One of the improvements we made after the regionals was we added another bracket to the back so the sensor can be flipped over.  This lets you route the cables to the sensor from the left or the right depending upon what the best way is to keep the cables out of the way of the rope.   The hand sensors work just as well in any orientation, so use the one that makes the install the safest to keep cables away from the rope.

3) For the long run of cable from the base up to the left hand sensor, if you are unable to drop the cable behind the wall and come out the front at the bottom, it works good to screw in some bolts along the path on the face wall up to the top.  Then you can use the plastic tie-wraps included in the package to secure the cable to the bolts.  It's an effective cable chase that keeps them tied back.  Same works with running the foot cable along the wall until it needs to come out to the foot sensors.

4) Make sure to leave a little slack in the wire to the foot sensors (don't tie it down to close to the wall), since the footbeds need to move around some where it's comfortable for the climber.

5) The sensors are interchangeable - they all have the same jack configuration.  Not all jacks will be used on a single sensor as shown in the diagram.

6) It would be good to tie-wrap the cables feeding into the display base unit to something on the wall close to where they connect to the base.  This will provide strain relief and especially, if someone trips over a cable it won't immediate yank the display off the wall or rip the cables out of the display.
6a.) Also makes sense to tie wrap the cables leading into the hand sensor jacks to a bolt in the 
wall or something secure so those cables have some strain relief as well.  This will make 
incidental hits to the cable less likely to cause an issue. 

7) If the cables included aren't a length you need, you can use whatever length you want - the cables are basic CAT5 straight-through patch cables which you can buy at CompUSA or home improvement stores like Lowes or Home Depot.

8) Finally, make sure you have at least one backup stopwatch on each lane - I'd hate to have some malfunction in the system hose up an event.   We should have some spare sensors built by nationals.

The demonstration video is still valid for how the system works (in operation) from a starter official's point of view as well as the climbers.

The main things that have changed since that video was done:
1) the hand sensors now have LEDs on the end-cap that light when the sensor is activated - giving the climber some clue that he hit it OK.
2) the starter console LEDs now not only light when the foot is in the footbox, but also will light when the climber has activated the hand sensor.

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

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

Today I shipped a speed timing system to USAC representatives in Texas and New England - one for use at the Southwest Divisional Championship and another system for Northeast Divisional Championships.  One should be in Texas in 2-3 days and the other in Mass in 3-4 days.

Here's what was in the box:




Large display with power cable (includes 2 wall warts - one for the digit displays and one for the electronics - integrated into a single cable).

White CAT5 cables - various lengths from 50', 30', several 25' and 20' and 10'.   Since I don't know the gym and installation, a variety of lengths were enclosed.   You will not use all the cables sent.

2 Hand sensors (those with the yellow dots).
2 Foot sensors for false start detection (white triangles).
1 Starter console - using one of the CAT5 cables, connects to the main display
1 Bag of installation helpers (white cable ties to tie CAT5 cable to bolts in the wall to keep it out of the way of the route, 2 3/8" washers.)

This is a momentous occasion as it represents hundreds of man-hours of design, testing, improvements, and build-outs.

We hope that others may improve and build off this design for the benefit of speed climbers everywhere.

Landon

For more on the design and development of the Speed Climbing Timing System see these links:
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

Synopsis: We’re into the 20% of the project that takes 80% of the time. In this case, after the regional championship and another day’s session at the Boulder Rock Club, I decided I needed to make further improvements to the detection at the hand-sensors. In this article I have two videos - one showing a typical detection failure of the first generation hand-sensor and the second video showing some standalone tests of the 2nd generation sensor after an ATMega8 micro was installed in the end-cap of the hand-sensor in order to do the voltage comparison. The second video also shows the 2nd generation sensor which includes a bright LED on the end cap to help show the climber that the detection occurred.

The first video below shows an analysis in slow motion of a typical 1st generation sensor detection failure.

Videos below the break..... Read More...

Synopsis: The speed climbing timing system was installed at the Boulder Rock Club (BRC) May 12-13. There were three objectives in doing this. One, Sparkfun wanted to do a photo shoot of the system with my daughter climbing and me belaying. The results of this shoot will end up in an ad for Sparkfun in four geek magazines this fall and some banners on their website. Second objective, the BRC ABC and youth climbing teams would have a chance to practice with it and get in a good speed workout. Third, I would get a lot more testing done on the system, in a different gym installation, and in a setting where we could more easily replicate issues if they came up.

Prior to this install at the BRC, I made several of the improvements I listed in the trip report from the beta test at Albuquerque. Namely, I added the second T bracket to the hand sensors so that the sensor was completely symmetrical and could be installed with the jacks on the right or left side. Secondly, I made a power cable extension that took power from the base display station out about 15 feet to the two wall warts (9VDC and 18VAC). This made a cleaner power install on the wall by not having to run an extension cord and multiple outlets up the wall to the base station.

Videos and photos below the break.... Read More...

Synopsis: This article is a redux of the lessons learned from the first trial of the speed climbing timing system at the regional championships in Albquerque last Saturday, May 10.

Overall, we were very pleased with the performance.  I didn't do a final count, but out of 10 categories each category probably averaged 5 kids - some older categories had just a couple but the younger ones were busting at the seams.

Given that estimate, there were approximately 100 climbs (10 X 5 X 2 climbs each) we did with the timing system.  Once the results are posted, we'll know exactly, I could be off 10 or 20....it's always chaotic. Read More...

Synopsis: In part 9 I demonstrate the speed climbing timing system in a “Compact” form. In this configuration, all the sensors are within an arm’s reach so it’s possible to demonstrate the operation of the system from both the climber’s and the starting official’s point of view. The video below demonstrates a typical starting sequence, race finish, clock reset, and false start detection. Finally, the video has a very brief overview of how the system is wired up when it’s installed.

The speed climbing timing system is going to receive its first real-world test this weekend at the USAC Youth Regional Championship in Albuquerque. Once that event is completed, we’ll assess the performance, make any adjustments or fixes, then build a second system. These first two systems will then be sent to the USAC Southwest Divisionals and the NE Divisional championships. Assuming all goes well, both systems will ultimately perform the timing duties at the USAC Nationals 2009.

Video below the break.... Read More...

Synopsis - In Part 8, I cover the finished hand and foot sensors to the speed climbing timing system. Way back in Part 1 and Part 4 of this series, we covered the IR sensors and touch pad design and construction....the “bones” of what you see here. This article includes a system block diagram and photos and explanations of the final design of the hand and foot sensors.

These sensors are “finished” in that they are more done than some of the other parts of the system, and finished enough that this is what we’ll install in the rock climbing gym for our first major tests.

Diagrams and images below the break...read on... Read More...

Synopsis - This article covers the speed climbing timing display. In the architecture of the timing system, the display is the base station and holds the microcontroller (ATMega128) and sensor board presented in Part 6. The microcontroller drives the LED display, manages the real-time clock, and responds to the touch sensors described in Part 4.

All sensor cables and the starter’s console will connect to the base station through CAT5 cable.

Dale Herbert and I got together one weekend and finished off the two hand sensors, two foot sensors and did an initial fit of the LED display in the enclosure that Dale built. Here are some photos that show these components.

This is Dale working on the hand and foot sensors in the living room of my house. You can see the upside down display enclosure on the far right of the picture. More on that in a minute.



More below the break.... Read More...

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.



More below the break.... Read More...

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.

More below the break.... Read More...

Tags: Schematics, IR Sensors

Synopsis: In Part 4, get a sneak peak of the mechanical design and construction of the sensor for stopping the clock at the top of a speed climbing route, the hand sensor. A video outlines the thinking behind the design and how it can work well for the climber and the routesetter to mount the sensor on the climbing wall.

Some of the critical requirements for this sensor are:

Robustness - it has to be able to take a direct, forceful hit by a climber’s hand. Often a climber will launch for the finish and smack the finish switch. It’s this behavior that has destroyed more speed climbing timing systems than any thing else. So, this touch pad has to be robust even though there’s no mechanical switch. A corollary to the robustness is safety. It has to be robust, but it needs to be safe for a climber to hit, even if he or she hits it very hard.

Assuming this IR light based sensor works well, climbers will quickly figure out they don’t need to practically destroy the sensor in order to stop the clock. The finish technique and behavior for finishing a speed climbing route will change to more finesse as a result.

Inexpensive - Another major requirement is the touch pad should be inexpensive to build. This mechanical and mounting solution uses easily attainable and inexpensive components from your local home improvement store. The sensors themselves are about $10 each (GP2Y0A21YK from Sparkfun), so there are $20 of sensors and about $10 of other materials for a total per-pad cost of about $30. For a 2-lane system, there are 2 touch pads for hands (one for each lane’s finish) and two base sensors for feet to detect false starts, so the system cost can get quite high if the per-pad cost isn’t kept low.

Easy to Mount - Finally, it had to be lightweight and easy to mount. This sensor, because it is installed at the top of the speed climbing route, needs to be ported up a ladder by a routesetter and mounted to the climbing wall. The solution presented is both lightweight and extremely robust and can be mounted with the standard climbing hold hardware - a 3/8” bolt. The bolt can be tightened as much as desired to keep the pad from moving on the wall without any damage to the sensor mounting hardware whatsoever.

Video below the break.... Read More...

Tags: Speed Climbing

Synopsis: This is a video to show the initial integration of the IR sensors with the stop switch interrupt of the microcontroller. There’s more work to do as you will see. Later in the article are a couple videos which show the system working after an EMI issue caused spurious interrupts.

The basic integration of the IR sensors with the AVR is:

• IR Sensors have a high frequency component and the overall wave goes from about .8v to 2.5-3V.
• I take the IR signal into a low-pass filter to clean up the signal and remove the high frequency components
• That signal goes through a non-inverting comparator and amps the signal to the rail when the IR beam is reflected with a hand
• The output of the comparator goes to a hex inverter (74LS14) schmitt trigger
• The output of the schmitt trigger goes to the interrupt of the ATMega128.

Video below the break....
Read More...

Tags: ATMega128, Max7219, LED display , Speed Climbing, SPI Cable, Watch Crystal, XBee

In Speed Climbing Timing Part 1, I introduced the touchless sensor concepts of a speed climbing timing system. In this part, I’ll demonstrate the basic controller and the timing functions as well as the display driver.

The display is based on a Maxim 7219 LED multiplexor. The controller is an Atmel AVR ATMega128. I’ve developed the Max7219 driver code and the basic timer to deal with a two-lane speed climber competition.
Read More...

Tags: ATMega128, Max7219, LED display , Speed Climbing, SPI Cable, Watch Crystal, XBee

Most of my kids climb competitively and do an event called speed climbing. The name pretty much says what it’s about, but in general, 2 climbers go head-to-head on 2 25-50’ routes. After a climb is finished, they switch routes and climb again. The addition of the times of the two routes is the total time for the climber.

A problem that has plagued the event is the speed timing systems used are very unreliable. Most of these systems rely on some type of mechanical switch for the foot pedal and the top hand sensor to stop the clock at the finish, the top of the climber’s “lane”. Because the systems malfunction so frequently and can ruin the flow of the event and drastically extend the time it takes to execute the event due to re-climbing or fixing the system, I set out to design a system that did not use mechanical components. The goal is higher reliability, ease of installation, and also safety for the climber because sometimes mechanical switches have injured speed climbers hands.

Below is a video of a sensor concept I’m working on which will apply to the hand sensors at the top of the lane and the foot sensor at the bottom that’s used to detect a false start. These use an IR technology that’s relatively cheap (about $10 per sensor, 2 sensors per “pad.&rdquo and immune to most IR emitted in ambient lighting situations. Read More...

Tags: IR, ADC, GP2Y0A21YK, Speed Climbing