Start Setting Stair Climbing Records

Taking the stairs is always good exercise. But you still avoid them, admit it! We aren't judging, because we know the real problem: a lack of gamification. If there isn't a score attached, then exercise is pointless. The solution is to quantify your efforts with metrics and to do that, you need a way to measure the time it takes to ascend your stairs. Jared Dilley designed a stairway timer system that can do exactly that and he released the files so you can build your own.

Dilley built this timer so that he and his roommates could compete to set the record, but it should work just as well if you're only competing against yourself. The important thing is that you get cold, hard numbers that you can use to track your progress. This system gives you those numbers by using two ultrasonic "gates." It simply counts the time that elapses between triggering the first and the second. One goes at the top of the stairs and the other goes at the bottom. Racers can start at either end, so this works for both ascension and descension competitions.

Each gate has an Arduino Nano board that monitors its ultrasonic sensor. A button tells the Arduino to prepare, after which point it will register any detected movement and start the timer. The two Arduino boards communicate with each other through HC-12 433MHz radio transceiver modules. The specifications say that those have a range of 1000 meters, which is very optimistic. But even so, they have more than enough range for indoor races.

Dilley designed 3D-printable enclosures for both gates. The primary unit is larger, because it contains two screens that the secondary unit doesn't. An LCD character display shows status information and the record time, while a LED matrix panel displays the time of the current run. Both require power via a USB cable, so they need to be mounted on a wall near a power outlet.

All of the schematics, code, and 3D files are available on Dilley's GitHub page. But a word of warning: running up and down stairs as fast as you can is dangerous. About a million people injure themselves on stairs every year in the United States alone. So, you know, be careful while trying to shave a tenth of a second off of your record.