Abstract

SANCHEZ ALDANA, Natalia; VELASQUEZ GOMEZ, Juliana; VILLA BEDOYA, Juliana  and  MARIN CORREA, Juan Manuel. SPEEDMED: DEVICE FOR MEASURING VELOCITY IN TRACK SPORTS. Rev. ing. biomed. [online]. 2007, vol.1, n.1, pp.33-37. ISSN 1909-9762.

Everyday, industries make use of economic resources to carry on research studies of products to improve the athletic performance of people. This is the main reason why it is believed that the development of an inexpensive and portable device capable of measuring times and speeds in track sports in general will provide useful information to study the performance of not only sportsmen, but also of ordinary people under stress situations allowing them to determine their weaknesses. In this project, two very simple sensors (photocells) are used to develop a device capable of measuring speed. A microcontroller was programmed to measure the time between the interruptions of two laser beams which lighten the surfaces of photocells, and it was also programmed to calculate velocity for a given distance. These values are sent to a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) where they can be visualized and interpreted.

Keywords : Laser; Photocell; Portable device; Track sports; Training.

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