Derby Car Tracker
Description
Derby Car Tracker Version 1.0
Derby Car Tracker™ is a tool to help you improve the performance of your cars for Pinewood Derby®, Awana® Grand Prix and other similar races by Royal Rangers, Royal Ambassadors, Lutheran Pioneers, YMCA Adventure Guides, Christian Service Brigade, CRC Cadets, Master Clubs, and other organizations. It will help you document your car's characteristics and collect actual run data to gauge its performance. You can make tweaks to the car, do some more runs and compare the performance change. You can even enter the actual race results and compare them to your test results. Use that knowledge in your next build to make your cars faster. Derby Car Tracker would also be a good tool to use for a kid's science project.
Key Features:
- Flexible and Easy to Use
- Step By Step Use - The steps for using the software are clearly laid out for you.
- Easily Customizable - You can easily tailor the software to only the data that you want to collect. Collect as little or as much data as you prefer.
- Data Entry Made Easy
- Many of the data fields will remember your last entered data and use it as the default for a new record. This saves you time on entering data.
- Create new options for drop-down lists on the fly. You can also edit any of the drop-down lists, to better suit your needs.
- Document Car Setups - Record characteristics of your car setups. Enter as many car setups as you wish.
- Car Configuration - Document the characteristics and notes on a car's configuration.
- Wheel Configuration - Document the characteristics and notes for the type of wheels that you are using.
- Axle Configuration - Document the characteristics and notes for the type of axles that you are using.
- Test Runs
- Run Data - Create a test session to collect run data for your car. Run data can be manually entered or retrieved from a supported timing system.
- Timing Systems - Supports several popular timers, including Derby Timer, Fast Track, NewBold Timers, RaceMaster, SmartLine, The Champ, The Judge, and Timestopper. It can also be configured to work with many other serial timers, even many DIY timers.
- Single or Multiple Timing Sensors - You can use a timer in the traditional way, to collect finish times or you can setup multiple sensors on a single lane. For example, you can take a 4 lane timer and place the finish sensors at different points along the track (e.g. bottom of the slope, right after the curve, middle of the straightaway, and at the finish). Then you can gauge car performance at those different points along the track.
- Number of Lanes - Supports from 1 to 8 lane timers.
- Solenoid Start Gate - Supports triggering a solenoid start gate that connect to a serial port (or USB to Serial Port Adapter).
- Data Analysis
- Summary Data - Run data for a test session is compiled to give you the average, minimum, maximum, and standard deviation values. That data is listed for each test session.
- Run Data Graph - For each test session you can view a graph of the data plotted for each run, as well as the average and standard deviation lines. If you have multiple sensors in a lane, you can select which particular sensor to plot the data for.
- Data Comparisons - Use the Run Data Graph for easy visual comparison of up to 4 test sessions.
- Other Features
- Data Export - You can easily export data from any of the tables to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. You can use a spreadsheet program to further process that data, if you wish. You can also share your configurations with other racers or they can compare your run data to theirs.
- Data Import - You can easily import data into any of the tables from a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. That could be data from other racers or data that you have in a spreadsheet program.
Supported Timers:
Fast Track | NewBold Timers | RaceMaster | SmartLine | The Champ | The Judge |
Note: The manufacturer for RaceMaster timers is no longer in business.
Derby Car Tracker is a trademark of Lisano Enterprises, LLC.
Awana is a registered trademark of Awana Clubs International.
Pinewood Derby, Space Derby and Cub Scouts are registered trademarks of the Boy Scouts of America.
Windows and Internet Explorer are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
Screenshots
Screenshots:
To view the Derby Car Tracker screen shots, click on the images below to enlarge.
Requirements
Minimum Software Requirements:
- 1GHz Pentium processor or equivalent
- Windows® 7, 8/8.1, 10, or 11
- Web Browser to view the Help files (Internet connection is not required)
- Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
- 7 MB of hard drive space
- 256 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended)
- 800x600 screen resolution
Prerequisites:
For Windows 7 Users:
- The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 needs to be turned on in order to run this software. It comes pre-installed with Windows 7 but is not turned on by default. Refer to these instructions on how to turn that feature on.
For Windows 8, 8.1, 10 and 11 Users:
- The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 needs to be turned on in order to run this software. It comes pre-installed with Windows 8/8.1 and 10 but is not turned on by default. Refer to these instructions on how to turn that feature on.