Derby Talk

As a special to the experimenters on DerbyTalk, I have a supply of LTE-4208 5mm round, high power, tight focus, 940 nm infrared emitters. This is the part that I have used from 1994 through 2007 on all models of The Judge, and are either exactly, or close to what all other commercial finish line man...

umm, I think you meant the 2003 needs pwr and gnd. Question: Are you joining the commons from the Light Tree to the common of the solenoid?

I had the same problem when I made my first spaceship. It was too heavy for one thing, which I worked on. The major problem, however, was that it was nose heavy. Constantly trying to fly to the floor, and putting all kinds of friction on the line. Once I carved out enough weight from the nose to mak...

They can run continuous at 12 volts but I zap them with 30, and get ten times the yank. If you hit them with that for a second every 2 minutes, they will stay cold. Solenoids are robust, unlike most other components where you have to watch your voltages. It is rare to find a complete spec on this po...

There seems to be an interest among the do-it-yourself crowd for solenoid powered starting gates. I am offering the same solenoid that is used in my line of solenoid gate latch mechanisms. They come with an elbow latch and tips on how to use them. $26 including shipping. http://www.newdirections.ws/...

I have some left-over light tree chips from last production run. $10 each, or 3 for $20. This is the heart of our best selling Pinewood accessory. http://www.newdirections.ws/lighttree.htm It is 8 pin 12F508. Add capacitor and battery to pins 1 and 8. Add a red, 2 yellows, and a green to pins 3, 5, ...

Ground is ground the world around. Of course connect the grounds.

That is worth a try. I will always remember one customer setting up his track for testing in his barn. We spent days trying to figure out why nothing was working. Then finally, he said it all worked when he turned off his heater. It was some kind of propane burner that was continually ignited by a c...

The impedance is a bit on the high side for sending things that far. I would certainly suggest twisting the wires, or perhaps going to a thin coax like RG174.

Interesting experiment. I once made a simple model to demo a principle using reflective IR from ink patterns on a spinning white paper disc, so it is certainly possible to pick up the motion by light without disturbing the spin. However, since the final object is to translate your calculations into ...

The chip delivers times to .0001 seconds expressed in ASCII and formatted serial 9600-8-none-1. The chip itself does not know or care that it is on a pinewood derby track and that the inputs are generated by IR sensors. The inputs could be switches, magnetic pulses into a Hall Effect device, mercury...

How many events are you looking at? If it is not over 8, you could use The Judge processor, and put the results into Excel, where you could compute deltas automatically. If interested, I could send you a chip.

I have samples of all commercial tracks. The plastic DerbyMagic and Supertrack are excellent running surfaces, but the support system of both of these tracks leaves a lot to be desired. If I was going to buy one of them, I would bargain for just the surface, and make my own stable pylon system. Just...

While Tungsten has a higher density, it is a very tough material to work with, hard to find, and expensive. By contrast, lead can be cut with a band saw, is readily available (see product 9032K274 at http://www.mcmaster.com" target="_blank), and inexpensive.

Sporty did a great job recently on converting a light stack available on ebay for $29. (ebay search: Tower Signal Stack) I had to buy one myself to see what it was like. Really nice. It is just light bulbs and lenses, so you have to figure out how to make it into a count down light. It includes a mo...