Website and contents created by: Michael A. Hornback - Logo and Banners created by: Mindezigns
This Hardware and Software was designed by me as a unique Race Management package to 'Measure and Record' race times and calculate Finished racing Positions for any miniature Race Track. It also performs Record Keeping associated with all aspects of the race for each player. This package can be used with the Awana Grand Prix, the Pinewood Derby, the Shape 'N Race Derby, the Kub Kar Derby, the Cub Scouts, the Royal Rangers or any other similar racing event where miniature racing Timed Events and Placed Positions are essential. The tracks Tower can be customized to fit any width track up to 4 lanes with a maximum height clearance of 14 inches.
A big advantage of this system is that the Interface Board connects to any USB port on your computer, thus eliminating the ever disappearing serial and parallel ports. The Grand Prix Tracker is designed for the Pinewood Derby wooden block cars or anything else equivalent. This software runs in the Windows Platform (not DOS) and has been tested using Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The software will track a roster of up to 96 players at once and will accumulate and compute all Race Data throughout the Event. The Database itself can hold 200 players. The Race Times are displayed on the computers monitor in real time (displaying it on a large TV screen or Projector is an added attraction).
The software offers three exciting Racing Formats: Double-Elimination, Round Robin and Progressive. Each are different and exciting in their own way. The formats are fair to all players and gives each participant several heats to race before being eliminated. Many formats offer rotating lanes eliminating handicaps and some offer Random player selections. A running Flowchart can be viewed at anytime that gives you the current status of the race as it unfolds showing races ran, racing order, lane selection and who's on deck.
Many different reports are generated showing Best Times, Average Times, Accumulated Times, Accumulated Points, Individual Times, Global Times, Track Average and much more that can be viewed or printed. The software allows for many custom settings depending on the type of race format chosen. Complete accurate race times are acquired via the digital microcontroller chip (independent of the Windows environment) which does the actual timing process to within one thousandth of a second.
Great care was taken in the software that allows for complete recovery in a catastrophic event caused by a power or computer failure so that NO race event is lost! This Grand Prix Tracker can be purchased as a Complete Built Package or Build Yourself Version using my Software, Schematics, Parts List and Construction help. Much more detail is contained in the programs 'help' files.
Note: if you would be using a laptop computer to run this system, click here.
