MagLev Track Timer

The Problem

For this High School project, Engineering II was to create a timer for the Engineering I's MagLev speed project.

We were tasked to use light sensors on an Arduino board to record the time of MagLev racers electronically

Materials:

Arduino board and breadboard
Two Light Sensors
LED's
Liquid Crystal Display Board

Research

There was not much research to be done on this project as it was fairly unique to our class specifications. The teacher provided us with a code that used buttons to make a timer and we needed to incorporate the light sensor into the code, and mount it onto the track.

Development/Coding

One of the biggest challenges of the project was figuring out how to use the display board. Code was provided, but it was difficult not only to transfer the code, but to figure out how to configure the breadboard to our greatest use. This process involved mostly trail and error, first to get the screen to output what we wanted, then to manipulate the code to use the light sensor.

The final code and Arduino configuration are listed next to here and below. The LCD screen was confusing at first to put together and get power, but once it worked it was a very useful display. After it is set up properly, the screen was easy to print on, and required only basic commands to form a display.

The timer code that was given was different from what I had created myself, but much more useful in the system of the code.

#include <LiquidCrystal.h>LiquidCrystal lcd(7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2);const int sensor = A0;const int sensor2 = A1;int sensorbase;int sensorbase2;boolean start = false;boolean finish = false;
void setup(){ pinMode(10,OUTPUT); pinMode(11, OUTPUT); pinMode(sensor, OUTPUT); pinMode(sensor2, OUTPUT); lcd.begin(16, 2); lcd.clear();
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(8, INPUT); digitalWrite(8, HIGH); pinMode(9, INPUT); digitalWrite(9, HIGH); digitalWrite(10, HIGH); digitalWrite(11,HIGH); sensorbase = analogRead(sensor); sensorbase2 = analogRead(sensor2);}double i = 0;double a = millis();double c ;
void loop(){ lcd.clear(); lcd.print("Ready"); delay(100);
if(analogRead(sensor)> .95*sensorbase) // first sensor not on {
lcd.clear(); a = millis(); if (analogRead(sensor2) < .99*sensorbase2) start = true; while(start == true) //second sensor start { if(analogRead(sensor) < .99*sensorbase)//first sensor stop start = false; c = millis(); i = (c - a) / 1000; lcd.print(i); lcd.setCursor(7,0); lcd.print("Sec's"); lcd.setCursor(0,0); Serial.println(c); Serial.println(a); Serial.println(i); Serial.println("......"); delay(100); }
if(analogRead(sensor2) > .99*sensorbase2)// second sensor not on { if (analogRead(sensor) < .99*sensorbase) finish = true; while(finish == true) // first sensor on { if (analogRead(sensor2) < .99*sensorbase2){ finish = false;} lcd.setCursor(0,0); lcd.print(i); lcd.setCursor(11,0); lcd.print(""); lcd.setCursor(0,0); delay(100); } } }}

Conclusion

The timer successfully worked as intended. It recorded the times of the Maglev carts that engineering I built with a more accurate time. For a few very specific car, the timer malfunctioned when they finished and displayed random characters. Since the problem was so rare, and we had begun to move on to the next project, the problem was not addressed.

IMG_7329.MOV

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