As shown below, the ROMDAS Manual Roughness Counter (MRC) is a box with five LCD displays. With inputs from an odometer sensor and up to two bump integrators, the MRC will display the roughness, speed and distance travelled. Two buttons are used to control the MRC.

The MRC has a row of four connections on the bottom:

· BI-1 and BI-2: These are connected to the ROMDAS Bump Integrator(s) to record the roughness.
· Odometer: This is connected to the odometer sensor to record the distance travelled.
· Reverse. This is optionally connected to the reverse light so that the distance measurement can decrement when the vehicle reverses.

On the side there is a connection and a switch for power.

The top of the unit has an opening above 5 dial switches which are numbered from 0 to 9. These switches are used to set the odometer calibration factor. This converts the odometer pulses to a distance measurement.

The MRC has five LCD displays. These are:

• Speed (km/h): This is the speed over the sampling interval
• Total Distance (km): This is the distance travelled since the start of the survey in km.
• Elapsed Distance (km): The distance travelled in the sampling interval.
• Bump Integrator 1: The raw roughness count from Bump Integrator 1.
• Bump Integrator 2: The raw roughness count from Bump Integrator 2.

There are two buttons on the front of the MRC:

• Hold. This freezes the displays of the two bump integrators and the elapsed distance. While frozen, the counters continue to record in the background.
• Release. This releases the bump integrator and elapsed distance readings to display the counts which have been accumulating in the background while the hold button was pressed.

Pressing the Hold and Release buttons for 3 seconds resets the unit to 0 for the total and elapsed distances.

Return to Manual Roughness Counter Technical Notes