At Interscale in Nijmegen, I discussed with some friends the idea about building a counter for a winder.
It took nearly one year to build the prototype
The counter should be universal. Which means, it can be attached to any winder you like as long as you can attach a small neodym magnet to the axel of your winder. A hall-sensor will detect the neodym magnet everytime it comes by and will increase the counter.
On the prototype,the holder is a bit rudimentary, but it works quite nicely.
The basic idea was just a counter. If someone starts to talk to you while winding, you will not have to start again due to the distraction.
While working on the counter, I came up with some more ideas. The present model works this way:
You start to wind. The winds will be shown on the display.
If you cranked your winds in, you press the green button, take your model and walk to the starting position.
The counter is now ready for its function as a stop watch. If you press the green button again, the stopwatch will start and the time is shown on the display. If the model lands, you can stop the watch witch the green button and you will see the result. On the display you see what flight time you got with the winds cranked in.
In a future version, I want to store the data. This way, you can check later, what number of winds will give you the biggest flight time.
It would also be nice to choose the model at the beginning, since you might have more than one model with you at the field. This way, the data wont be mixed up at the end of the day. It would also be possible to choose a multi engine plane, where you can see the winds cranked in into the different engines...
Not sure if this makes sense for you, or if I was able to explain it with my poor english....
Maybe the pics help you to understand my idea...
Best regards Roman
