LapX Slot Car Lap Counter

About

LapX is a lap counter program for slot car racing. LapX aupports Scalextric RMS sensor track (C8143) as well as parallel and serial port sensors.

• 1 to 6 Lanes depending on sensor.
• Typical accuracy under 5ms for parallel port sensors.
• Supports Scalextric RMS sensor track (C8143)
• Supports parallel port sensors using optional inpout32.dll
• A choice of themes
• Practice, Race (lap limited) and Endurance (time limited) modes

Downloads

LapX.zip, 291 KB, 6 January 2012

Download the LapX lap counter executable here.

LapX_source.zip, 316 KB, 6 January 2012

The full source code of LapX avaiable for non commercial use.

Installation Instructions

Extract lapx.zip to any folder and click on LapX.exe to start. LapX requires .Net framework 3.5 or higher to be installed.

The inpout32.dll library is required to use LapX and is included in the Zip archive. This library will only run on 32-bit versions of Windows and is used to read the state of the serial and parallel IO ports directly, bypassing OS protections.

Inpout32.dll can be run from the LapX directory or placed in c:/windows/system32. UAC may need to be disabled on some versions of Windows when using inpout32.dll as it works by loading a custom device driver into the kernel.

Main Window

Start/Stop Button

Starts and stops a race.

Race Mode Combo Box.

Choose the type of race from Practice, Race (lap limited) or Endurance (time limited).

Options Button

Change the configuration options of the lap counter.

Exit Button

Exits the LapX application.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Space

Starts and stops a race.

1 to 6 Keys at top of keyboard

Increment lap count of a lane. Useful for incrementing missed laps though they can only be triggered after a chosen time since the last lap was detected.

Up/Down Cursor Keys

Change the value of the Race Mode Combo Box.

Options Dialog box

General Tab

Lanes

Number of lanes the track has (1-6)

Minimum Lap Time

The minimum time that must elapse before a lane's lap counter can be triggered again. Used to avoid detecting false laps. This should be smaller than the fastest lap time of any car. Value is in seconds and the precision is 1 millsecond, e.g. 3.142.

Pre Race Delay

The length of time before the red start lights go on. Allows users to get ready for the race. Value is in seconds and the precision is 1 millsecond, e.g. 7.536.

Jump Start

Choose whether to count a lap or ignore a lap before the red start lights go out.

Sample Interval

The time in milliseconds between each read of the lane sensors. Increasing this setting will reduce CPU load but will also reduce lap time accuracy and also reduce the chance of a car being detected.

Show Statistics

Shows how many times the sensors are being sampled every second.

Sensors Tab

Select sensor to use from the list on the left hand side.

RMS

Serial Port Name

Choose the serial port to use

Use Fast IO

Reads lane data directly from serial port registers and increases precision. Works only with onboard serial ports COM1 and COM2. Left unticked any serial port should work (including USB adaptors) but the precision can vary..

Parallel

Lane Pins (Lanes 1 to 5)

Choose the parallel port status pin to use for each lane.

Invert Parallel Port Inputs

If a 5v signal (logic high) applied to a status pin indicates the presence of a car then this option should be left unchecked. If a 0v (logic low) signal is used to indicate the presence of a car then this option should be checked.

Serial

Lane Pins (Lanes 1 to 4)

Choose the serial port pin to use for each lane (Pin numbers based on 9-pin serial port).

Invert Serial Port Inputs

Inverts the serial port inputs

Sounds Tab

Enable the type of sounds to play whenever a car crosses the sensor. Sounds must be in .wav format.

Display Tab

Lane Colors (Lanes 1 to 6)

Choose the color to represent a lane

Lane Style

Choose the style of graphics to be used to display the lap counter data.

Changes

• 06 Jan 12: Changed start light sequence so that the lights come on one at a time. Altered task priorities which should improve accuracy. Modified themes and added more sound effects.
• 31 Jul 11: Updated Options dialog box. Placed all types of sensor on a single tab to make it easier to expand the number of sensor types. Added using serial port pins 1, 6, 8 and 9 as lane sensors and added 'Fast IO' option to read directly from the serial port using inpout32 to increase precision.
• 10 Jul 11: Added Statistics display to show how many times the sensors are read per second, the largest time between sensor readings and how often the time between readings has taken longer than 10ms and 20ms.
• 23 Jun 11: Added 'Sample Interval' slider to options to control how often the sensors are read. Range is from 1ms to 10ms. Added bouncing animations for fastest laps to Twilight theme.

Miscellaneous

LapX uses the following sounds from Freesound:

• tada1.wav by by Jobro
  http://www.freesound.org/people/jobro/
  Modified to create racefinished.wav