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Race controller for slot car or drone racing with dedicated racer gates. Cheap, portable, accurate, and easy to build.

This is an Arduino based project that implements an inexpensive, reliable, race game controller that can be used for timed racing games. The system consists of a main LCD display, a keypad for user input and menu selection, an 8 digit LED lap count & timer display for each racer, and non-blocking audio for UI feedback and playing a unique victory song for each racer.

In the presented configuration, the lap sensing input is simulated using buttons, but can be adapted to be used with a myriad of simple, circuit completion, or other type sensing methods that can be implemented in the physical lap gate. The working demo of this project uses two paper clips integrated into a mechanical lap counter to create a simple, yet effective lap sensor.

The implementation shown here is immediately useable for 1-4 player racing games. The original application for this controller was slot car racing, as such, the controller was designed expecting a dedicated lane/gate for each racer. The down side of this, if attempting to adapt for drone racing, is that each racer needs a dedicated gate, but in turn, this also means that the racing object is irrelevant and does not need to communicate its identity.”

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