Speed traps

[J Solinger]

I am looking for a design for a speed trap for our rc boat club. Does anyone have one or a link to one?

[J Solinger]

I can't believe the speed trap idea has never been looked at. Some one out there must have tried something with an electronic trip timing system. :confused:
What I would like to see is a speed trap that you can run your boat through and the driver gets a reading from a screen in front of the drivers stand. I'm open to most any idea but I don't want it to be a two man opperation like Radar is. :)

[jeffs555]

I haven't seen anything like this for boats, but one idea would be to have two floating pontoons connected by an underwater cross brace. This would form a gate to run the boat through. You could then use photocells and led's or cheap laser pointers to form two ir beams which would be broken by the boat. It would be a simple matter to measure the time difference between the two beams being broken, and compute the speed. You might search for "pinewood derby timers". Here is one link. http://www.sensorsmag.com/articles/0902/32/main.shtml

[J Solinger]

Thank you for the info. This is a very interesting site. :cool:

[JohnMianowski]

I haven't seen anything like this for boats, but one idea would be to have two floating pontoons connected by an underwater cross brace. This would form a gate to run the boat through. You could then use photocells and led's or cheap laser pointers to form two ir beams which would be broken by the boat. It would be a simple matter to measure the time difference between the two beams being broken, and compute the speed. You might search for "pinewood derby timers". Here is one link. http://www.sensorsmag.com/articles/0902/32/main.shtml


We've got this very thing working. See photos at: http://www.jkmiller.net/ntxbg/pgBattleStations/pgBattleStations.htm

Scroll down the page about half-way. A technical article is pending.