laptimer origins

The idea

the idea of this project is quite easy. For any carrera track you have a laptimer and you can buy them easily almost everywhere in a toyshop.
So, what could be the idea to do it on my own? The answer is very easy: I want it to have more features. I really enjoy racing like Formula 1, GT3 and DTM really much.
The most interesting part in any qualifying is, where you are better? In which sector are you better and what can i do to get better there?
This is what racing is about, doing you laps better and better on every round.
The other thing is, that my father in law have tribune and a TV cube in front. So my first idea was, to have a LCD display power by a small RaspberryPi zero to have a real output of your laps on this cube.
In my mind this looks really exciting, imagine you do a race and you can see your result on TV cube.

So what do i need for this?

• i need 3 laptimer arc (like the one you can see on the top of this post) for 3 sectors.
• i need als a TV Cube to have a display where i can show the results.

How i started

I started with the prototyping of an laptimer. i ordered a visual light barrier, which will send a impulse when something have passed through.
After that i ordered all electronic parts i need as far as i know for know.

• 2x Arduino Nano
• Lightbarrierers
• LCD Display
• LED Red (12x) and Green (2x)

Result of the first prototyping

In this picture you can see, that i put all the electronic stuff on a breadboard and started development. it looks like a small project for know. But it getting bigger i think.
The first milestone will be a laptimer arc (as you can see on the top of this post) which will count any round. For now there will be no sector times, no tv cube. These features will be included in Mark2 and Mark3