John writes:

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 12:52:32 -0500, "jakdedert"
wrote:

Darren Harris wrote:
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.

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


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 ;-)

I bet the 1/60th probably came from the power line and they'd actually prefer
1/100th accuracy!

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