Well, sometimes you just have to throw in the towel and move on to other things…
After figuring out a way to help Phidget cards detect fast cars breaking IR beams using an Arduino microcontroller, I discovered that Phidget cards are also terrible at suppressing EMI spikes.
Seems the Phidget 0/0/4 relay cards that SlotTrak supports for individual lane power are horribly noisy when they all switch on or off at the same time. This issue is exacerbated when you multiply things by six (6-lanes).
Yes, so after hours and hours of hacking software to get the 0/16/16 card, used for Pit-Out (in this case) to detect fast cars, I discover that the 0/0/4 relay EMI pulses cause false triggers on the Arduino card the software is running on. Basically, when one or more cars run out of fuel and begin pulsing the relays, the Arduino card either triggers the Pit-Out sensors when you’ve actually stopped in the pits, or it misses the Pit-Out trigger and thinks you are in the pits when you’ve blown through the pits.
So, back to the drawing board on fuel racing for SR3. There are a couple of possible solutions left to try but I’m taking a break to reset, regroup, and reassess things. Oh, and tend to some other stuff that people tell me is more important than slot car racing. Yea, some people are into “other” things it seems.
I know a few guys are anxious to get back to racing again regularly, sorry for interrupting the momentum we had going there. Unfortunately, SR2 also had problems with intermittent missed pit entries, which is very frustrating and has cost several of us dearly. I don’t want to continue racing until I’m confident that the problem is behind us. I’ve upgraded the track’s Trackmate SCL3 card’s firmware and gone to the latest SlotTrak version, which seems to have resolved this problem (in my testing anyway).
In other news, SlotTrak has indicated that they “may” introduce some new hardware in future releases of their software soon. From what I know, the new hardware is cheaper, faster, and is expected to solve some of these crazy Phidget issues I’m experiencing on SR3.
So, for now, I’ll take a little break and get away from this problem for a spell and hope SlotTrak can integrate and test the new hardware and software quickly. In the meantime, I’ll try a couple more things with what I have to work with and see where that goes.
If all the above fails, there is one more possibility: Race Coordinator (RC) and I have been working on some mods to that RMS to support “out of fuel” power pulsing, which SlotTrak does very well. Dave at RC is doing this out of the kindness of his heart and with any spare time he may have. It’s not a trivial project but we’ve made some progress that looks promising. SlotTrak is still my preference for race days due to their superior reporting capabilities but if I can’t get fuel racing to work, I’ll switch to whatever system that can support it–with power pulsing.
And now for the good news…
It looks like Sac is heating up as the NorCal hotspot for H.O. Racing. Ted Essy just held his second event in Loomis, at Thunder Road Raceway, that single event attracted 16 drivers!
Okay, shut up and drive!
