Parts are taking longer than expected to arrive... So far, I have received the microchips from Howard, I have my PCB Boards and one part that was from Digikey. I'm waiting for all the other parts from mouser electronics, but they have a few backorder, and some that, from what I understand, will not become available soon.. so I'll have to find some alternatives on a few of them.

UPDATE (FEB 6, 2015): I have received the parts yesterday. Will start building soon. Only thing, 3 little parts are backorder and will only be in stock by mid-May.
Unless someone would have alternatives on those parts, I'll only be able to post results by then. Here are the parts that I need (from Mouser Electronics)
-C5 Capacitor (Mouser stock number: 810-FK14X7R1H105K)
-R2 Resistor (Mouser stock number: 270-100-RC)
-R1 Resistor (Mouser stock number: 270-75-RC)

And for Loop Amp
-C7 Capacitor (Mouser stock number: 140-50N2-820J-RC)

You can use Mouser's search function to find functionally equivalent parts. Most of the specs and data sheets are on the web site. (This is also true for many other distributors.)

Here are some I located:

C5: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/...D5En8Gfw%3d%3d

R2: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/...KKw5tKQVBeM%3d

R1: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/...TGJwQzbOheg%3d

C7: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/...w3TlrUEbbog%3d

Thanks Howard! I tried with the search, but, as I explained, i'm not electronic engineer, so wasn't sure if they would be compatible! Thanks again!!!

hello all .. who is also from Germany here in the round ? who can give me help? thank

(hallo ihr.. ist auch wer aus deutschland hier in der runde? der mir hilfe geben kann? danke euch!!!)

Quote:
Originally Posted by garycapetown View Post
Thanks for your reply maeg,
I know that the transponders work with AMB as well.
How long have you made your loop?
Our track is 10m wide, so the loop wire will have to be 20m long.
Howard, Would the amplifier and decoder be able to work on such a long loop?
Is anyone already using the system sucsessfully with such a long loop?

No, it's too long. Our is 7.5m wide and we have problems without changing amplifier capacity.
maeg is offline Report Post

Hi... it has been a long time since I posted the above.... and would like to know if a new loop amplifier has been designed for a 10m loop.
Or if anyone knows of an amplifier that can do a 10m loop, that can basically stretch across a 10m wide tar road.

Decoder is completed
 

We finally have our decoder built. Next step is to build the loop amp and we will run a test

Hope everything will work as its supposed to!!

That looks great! Who manufactured the PC board?

Had them made by Osh Park. They are a community PCB board order. 2 layer boards are 5$ per square inches, and 4 layer are 10$ per square inch, and you get 3 copies of your board (no extra charge) plus, its free shipping!

Need to wait approx 5-6 weeks to get them, but for the price, can't complain!

Hello,

I was thinking to try to use this project to make an lap timing system for motocross.
We have a small structure with a track, actualy all is made by hand.

Does you thinks that the signal will be ok, with a bigger loop ( track is 4m large ) and in the terrain, the distance to the transponder will be 1m at maximum.

I must add and accu to the transponder as we do not have battery on MX bike.

Yves

Achieving operation at 1m separation between the loop and transponder would require at least a new loop amplifier design.

Also, the system is limited to 10 transponders running simultaneously. I believe most motocross races have far more competitors on track at the same time.

Yes, we have more competitors, normally the gate is for a max a 40 riders.

I have some old ATiny chip that are sleeping in a bag... I will try ton make a transponder to test. Some friend are Harm Radio amatory, this will be good for the amplifier of the loop.

the big part will be the decoder to build and transpose the software to CPU board like an ArduinoYun or a PCduino witch have Ethernet on board.

I use, for an humidity sensor i have developed last year witch make a mesure every ms in the die casting vacuum pipe, a PCDuino3 and have display, measurement, mysql database for the saving of the sample on a ssd and emulation of the Siemens Profinet protocol.

I have access on the track and the loop so, the job is staring.

Yves

Well... we finally have our system built. PC reads the decoder, and we get a constant 1.21 volts at the loop wire. However we are not able to pick up the transponder (tried with a mylap hybrid)

We think that, problem could be at the loop wire itself. Wire we used has some sort of shielding in it. we will have to try it again this weekend.

Any advise here Howard? anything else we should test/check ?

Thanks

The loop wire should not be shielded. I recommend normal 18AWG stranded wire.

Use an oscilloscope to trace the signal through the loop amplifier. It's a simple circuit, so that shouldn't take long to do.

We have changed the wire, and IT WORKS !!!

I never got it to work and need to try again.

can you post a picture of your wire and loop? Perhaps this is my issue!

Yes, I will try to take pictures of it as soon as I can. The only thing we did was follow the part list, place all components at its place, make sure all errata items were coverred and thats it.

Only testing we did was to make sure we had the same voltage at the loop wire than the schematic. At first our loop wire wasn't good. as soon we changed it, it worked.

thanks that would be great!

I did the same as you many many times, i get the same voltage. So perhaps it is my wire.

if you get 1.20 volts at the loop, it could be the wire itself.

Question for the master itself, Howard.

Have you ever tried your decoder with BBKRc software?

Only FlipSide and ZRound have made the necessary changes to support the Cano decoder. The chance of any other software just by coincidence having the same data format is zero.

Here is the data format for anyone who would like to write PC software to accept the Cano decoder:
http://www.rctech.net/forum/12089668-post201.html

Completed system
 

Here is a picture of our Cano Decoder and Loop Amp, all in their boxes. Ready to start counting laps.

That looks great!

first 6 bytes are transponder id
next 8 bytes are timestamp

are the final two to make it 16 bytes CR-LF ("\r\n")?

That is correct.

The RCM software can read the decoder via a network interface. The P3 protocol I believe. The Cano decoder does not support this, but would it be possible to create a computer program that reads the decoder input from serial and convert it to P3 protocol packages and deliver that to a server, just as you set up an AMB rc3 decoder to do for instance? And to be complete the computer could even duplicate the P3 protocol on serial out as well.

If that is possible then we would have the same R/C software compatibility as the AMB decoder itself.

Possible or not?

Creating a Cano->P3 bridge is possible. But how well it will work with RCM is unknown. Since the Cano protocol is very easy, RCM guys could add support for it directly.

I added Cano support in an evening but I had to refactor my code before that to unmarry my code from p3.

I would guess that RCM would like a physical device in order to test their implementation. How else can they verify and guarantee that RCM will work 100% with the Cano decoder? And to optain or build a device is not that easy...

Btw, anobody that has some printed circuit boards extra?

Someone that has a device can dump data to a file and send to them. They can test their implementation using vspe or something like it.

I don't have a cano device either, but the spec is very straight forward so I just added an implementation that *should* work and released it without guarantees. I posted the C# source code for ourlaps cano plugin, which can be used any way anyone sees fit.

Howard provided me with sample decoder data when I asked him. It may even have been posted in this thread already? idunno.

The decoder data is very simple. This post has a complete description:
http://www.rctech.net/forum/12089668-post201.html

The data below is what I sent to Torg. It is for one transponder, with laps of about 4 seconds.

The first line is a power-up message (which now also says "REV B"). All other lines are as described in the post given above.

COPYRIGHT 2013 HOWARD W. CANO
CA72F2000027CE
CA72F20000683C
CA72F20000A71A
CA72F20000E2C8
CA72F200011F5E
CA72F200015EE1
CA72F200019D62
CA72F20001DCFA

hi guys,
can we use cano loop amp with amb rc4 decoder?
i don't want to buy the most expensive cable in all world :)

No. The loop amp is powered from the main decoder board though the coaxial cable. I'm guessing the AMB cable is unpowered.

You can make your own loop. Just need to add a resistor to the middle (forgot the resistor number).

It works without resistor as well. I've used this stuff for testing above ground.

the official massively overpriced cable refers to a 470 ohm resistor.

why? someone smarter me will hopefully reply.

Hello boys,

I have problem:

1. Putty or other terminal from comport can read clear data only on the 38400 baudrate speed. This is OK? Because Howard in post #251 write:

"PC INTERFACE:

Logic-level RS232, 115200 baud, 8 bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, no handshaking, no flow control."

2. When running Zlaps, and connecting decoder I have alarms: Com port Error: com1

3. This is normal received line from putty:



250000000F6C61
25000000101129
70000000149AB6
7000000014E0F1
7000000015A8D5
70000000161E59
70000000179F47
7000000017D6AA
70000000011710
7000000001BD2F
700000000293F1
7000000002C1DC
7000000002DA2C
7000000002FFFF
?

All logs are from AMB transponder 3444425

Thanks for answers!

Andrius.

There's definitely a problem. Does your com port support 115200 baud? Do you correctly receive the power-up message?

Yes, pc support 115200 baudrate, but at this speed I receive only sequence of symbols. Your startup message I can read and digits I receive only at 38400 baudrate.

Then it sounds like you have an incorrect crystal frequency or a bad divider (U61). The microprocessor must run from a 20 MHz clock.

Have you used a third-overtone crystal? The oscillator requires fundamental-mode. Since your baud rate is 1/3 of the design value, I think this is a likely culprit.

We now have over 100K views of the thread! :)

Awesome post howardcano !!

Can someone send me a quote for a finish (solder, enclousure) cano decoder ready to plug and work??

Thanks!