Hi there was a couple of threads going on in the old board that got locked up because of the move. I along with Wolseley Hornet and Rocky were working on home made timing systems using ideas put forward by Rich D. I am reopening the discussion here so that it can continue.
As refresher, Rich offered two alternate ways to trigger a count similar to a conventional dead strip but using only one side of the track power circuit as the conduit for the count. Rich offered up drawings of two style set up one being an inline dead strip and another being a split rail design that actually leaves the car under power as it rolls through the counting strip. Rocky has successfully used the in line dead strip, David (Wolelsey Hornet) has successfully completed a split rail and today. I successfully (well sort of) used an inline strip on one of the lanes of my track. I say sort of because I am occasionally missing counts. I was testing my split rail made from printed circuit board and only had the solid copper type telephone wire that I am using twisted together in a temporary wiring set up. I am hoping that my problem is simply due to a poor connection and that if I solder the joints together, the counts will become more reliable. I can't find any pattern to the missed counts. They happen on different cars with different guides and differing softness of braid.
Here is a pic of my PCB split rail. The main body of the rail is connected to the positive side of the counting circuit going into the computer.
In the systems that Rocky, David and I are using, we are using pins 10,11, 12 &13 of the parallel or printer port for the counting side of the circuit and Pin 25 for the common (ground) side. One of the counting wires from Pins 10,11,12 &13 go to each lane. with Pin 10 going to lane one, Pin 11 to lane two etc. You should run separate wires from each lane back to pin 25 ground. David wound up using Pin 23 on his as the Pin 25 would not work. A 150 ohm resister must be used in each of the counting wires. My resisters are rated at one watt and 50 ohms.
I'll add more later.