Slot car addiction
Slot cars have been around in one form or another for almost as long as the horseless carriage. In all that time, though, the basic concept of an electrically powered model car guided around a track hasn’t changed much. Throw in a speed controller of some kind and you essentially have what is around today, give or take quite a few re nements.
Of course, to have a race, you need another car in its own lane, and the more lanes you have, the more cars can race. Unfortunately, the real cars we are trying to emulate, don’t stick to their own lane. But try and put your slot car in another lane and suddenly it is at the mercy of someone else’s controller. Both of these short comings can now be overcome – thanks to digital control systems.
Digital systems allow each car to make its own electronic signature, so that it can be recognised by a control system no matter what lane it is in. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that the ability to safely divert your car into a different lane, means you can move into the pit lane, and make a virtual pit stop. Taking it a step further, if your lane changers are positioned strategically your car can sweep across the width of the road to take up a faster racing line.
These systems have been developed by most of the major slot manufacturers, but like any developing technology, having a consistent standard across the industry is a major headache. Carrera digital doesn’t talk to Scalextric which doesn’t necessarily talk to anyone else. The cars are not difficult to convert to another system, but it essentially means you have to transplant chips, which is not cheap. Much like choosing iPhone over Android, or for those old enough to remember, VHS versus Beta video tapes, pick wisely or you can end up with an expensive commitment. In addition to the car chips, all of these systems need matched race management software, hand controllers and mechanical lane changers or ‘ ippers.’
Swimming at the deep end of the pool with the main manufacturers, is an Australian enterprise, Scorpius. Developed by Rick Field and the rest of the Scorpius team, this system has been created and re ned over the last ten years. spoke to Rick about the system.
It’s aimed at the grown-up section of the slot hobby - for anyone who wants a better, more powerful, robust system for club and commercial use. In the past the other digital systems have been reliant on cables and electrical connections, whereas Scorpius relies on 2.4GHz wireless signals – there is less to go wrong.
That’s an interesting question. My son had a birthday and someone bought him a digital slot system. We put it together and it didn’t work properly. To try and get it working, I joined an internet slot forum and met people who helped me sort out the problems. More than anything, it
showed me the potential of digital systems.
None! I’m the project manager and ideas man. The rest of the team is John Huberts in Brisbane, he’s the engineer and Dave Aufderheide is the software guy, in Washington USA. We also have a couple of Beta testers in Germany and the US. So it’s a very international team.
The race management system can manage race starts, race nishes by time limit or number of laps, impacts of virtual tyre and fuel consumption. We are also working on simulation of wet weather changes.
The system senses any car in proximity in the adjacent lane, and if that car tries to change into your lane, the anti-collision feature can stop it - if you want.
Unlike conventional digital systems, Scorpius does not use the slot rails to transfer digital information to cars or lane changers. Rather, data is sent wirelessly at 2.4GHz in a digital form directly to car. It also makes customising of your power requirements easy. Power wise, Scorpius can cope with 8 to 18 volts, which is pretty much any demand that is ever likely to occur in any commercial club or home situation. Scorpius can also be programmed to set the lane changers to default to the ideal racing line.
The system has four components: wireless car decoders, wireless throttle controllers, wireless lane changer electronics and a wireless USB dongle. Together these form a LAN (local area network) where any component can send or receive data to any other components if and when required. It can cope with up to 24 cars racing simultaneously.
Well, we rst took a prototype to the Nurnberg Toy Fair in Germany in 2009. But we went into the marketplace in July 2011.
Yep, de nitely! But, a lot of people were amazed with what we had achieved. We had distributors and manufacturers very interested in what it could do.
It sure has changed. As an example, we are about to upgrade the system to incorporate a new chip, the Nordic nRF52832, which is also be Bluetooth compatible. It can talk to two different wireless platforms, including your mobile phone devices, so phone and tablet Apps are something we have under development.
De nitely. Commercial-style multi-lane tracks tend to be too big for the home environment or garage. With Scorpius, a bunch of club members can have a race meeting on a home track. Typically in Sydney for example, clubs might use tracks belonging to six members and rotate race meetings amongst them.
Well, the obvious starting point is to have a track with lane changers – either pre-existing systems like Carrera or Scalextric, or routed wooden tracks with ippers. If people don’t have any, I can custom make them. They also need a PC or laptop, to install the software and run the USB dongle device. The electronics I can then send to them. Just contact me at the Scorpius website - www.scorpiuswireless.com.