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Advice Please: LCD Timer Project

I need what will basically be a digital stopwatch. It will need to be an accurate LCD timer/clock that can record a huge number of splits to

1/60th of a second, and since nothing like what I need is on the market I'll obviously have to build one for myself, if this is possible.

This may be a simple project, or a really complex one. But I was hoping to get ideas on where/how to start.

Outisde of it's foot-print not being more than about 2 or 3 inches wide, the following is what I'm after...

1) Two digital displays: A) One for the main timer, which can be reset to zero at the press of a button. B) One that will show the latest split time, at the press of a button.

2) The ability to record/recall *at least* 256 splits.

Any advice on what parts and where to get them would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris Staten Island, New York.

Reply to
Darren Harris
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I think I'd look into whatever stopwatch programs are available for handheld PDA's. There are some good deals out there for monochrome Palm OS devices. (In fact, I'd unload one of mine to the right buyer.) It seems that I've seen programs which might do what you desire. Certainly there are stopwatch programs out there. Do a Google search....

Much easier to program a computer (PDA) to do the above, than to build a dedicated hardware solution....

jak

Reply to
jakdedert

I bet the 1/60th probably came from the power line and they'd actually prefer

1/100th accuracy!

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Reply to
Sam Goldwasser

I'll second the PDA platform. Monochrome Palm devices have recently been available for $30US at Fry's, Sears, Ebay, computergeeks.com, surpluscomputers.net, and others.

Most of these devices have a hardware clock with 100 clock ticks/second, so you can can get fractional seconds - however, 1/60 second doesn't divide well with 1/100 second pulses ;-)

Reply to
John

Not sure how many 'huge' is, but an old Model 100 Radio Shack computer will do it. There's a M/L program you can download to give you several splits.

N
Reply to
NSM

I know nothing at all about PDAs or programming. But from what I can tell, it wouldn't suit my purpose anyway. I was visualizing two displays(like the big red numbers on those easy to read digital clocks). For power consumption reasons I assumed that this timer would have to be something I'd plug into an outlet. I could settle for a timer that would increment at 1/100th of a second instead of 1/60th. So I guess that would mean that I'd need 8 decimal places for the display that would show the split times.

Anyway, from what I gather, what I want to do is too complicated, going by the recommdations so far.

Or perhaps there is a way to use a PDA hidden in a specially built box where it would output to the kind of displays I need. Is this plausible?

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris Staten Island, New York.

Reply to
Darren Harris

will

A model 100 (I remember mine fondly...) doesn't really fit his size criterea...PDA's much more available, with current program development. My guess is that the program is available in shareware. There's an immense amount of resources available. If an available program doesn't exactly fit his needs, he could either modify the criterea, or possibly convince the programmer to develop a modification.

jak

Reply to
jakdedert

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