Category: Stewart Raceway III

I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with a problem so simple yet so difficult to solve. Last week I had finally gotten the Pit-In gantry to detect the fastest pit entries I could produce. That was cause for celebration, which I did, of course.

Right after my celebration, I simulated a race situation and discovered that SlotTrak was not counting the lap after a refuel. Apparently, the configuration I was employing was not adequately tested by SlotTrak.

I reported this issue to Slottrak and they could not duplicate the problem. Not sure why they couldn’t duplicate it but there was clearly no solution coming from SlotTrak to fix things.

So, I then decided to switch the gantry positions (SlotTrak’s suggestion). The normal position is to have the Pit-In gantry positioned ahead of the Pit-Exit/Lap Counting gantry (Start/Finish). This is how SR2 is configured.

It’s not a trivial thing to swap the positions of the gantries but it was worth a try to see if SlotTrak would work at all. Turns out, it did work and did count the lap after a pit stop. Another major celebration!

However, the original Phidget sensor detection problem reared its ugly head yet again. I thought I had this problem solved but because swapping the gantries meant that the speed through the Pit-Out gantry was a whole lot faster, the setup I had developed no longer worked.

It’s complicated but essentially, if you weren’t pitting and blazed through the two gantries, the pit exit was not detected by the slug Phidget card (in spite of my previous hardware and software mods) and SlotTrak would think you had stopped in the pits even though you had no intention of doing so.

At this point, I’m about to abandon slot car racing and move along to shuffleboard and backgammon. But no, I keep at it while my wife is about to commit me for being way too obsessed with toy cars and ignoring all my other interests and responsibilities. Stupid me, I stayed focused on the problem and kept trying everything I could think of to solve it.

I have no idea why SlotTrak ever decided that Phidget cards are useful for anything and SlotTrak does not support using two Trackmate SCL3 cards for fuel management, which would be awesome. Instead, I’m stuck with this incredibly expensive but ridiculously slow Phidget I/O card. I had gotten it to work as a Pit-In gantry but the speeds coming into the pits are much slower than the speed going through the pits. Again, the Pit-exit gantry has to detect a car coming out of the pits as well as a car going through the pits—at a much higher rate of speed.

In the end, I was able to get the Phidget card to detect both Pit-exit and Pit-through at L4 car speeds. This was accomplished with both pull-down resistors on the IR sensors as well as using a much faster Arduino Mega microcontroller card to capture the IR sensor signals and then send them to the Phidget card slow enough for the slug card to detect and report to the SlotTrak software.  Yea, believe it or not, I used a $35 microcontroller card to help a $110 I/O card capture an infrared beam breaking–crazy!

Okay, so my testing shows that my fix works for every scenario except three cars leaving the pits at the same exact time in consecutively numbered lanes. Since I used hardware and software to come up with this solution, I should be able to make it work perfectly but I just don’t think we’ll ever see that particular scenario play out very often, if ever. So, in the interest of staying married to my wonderful wife, I’m done with this project for a while.

I know Ted has a race scheduled at Thunder Road Raceway on April 23.  I’d like to get at least six drivers over the following Saturday (April 30) to test the SR3 road course prior to beginning a new racing series.

Please email me at slotn77@gmail.com and let me know if you can make it. No “official” series racing at Stewart Raceway until the tracks are bulletproof.

FYI: The intermittent Pit-In detection problem with SlotTrak on SR2 is not yet fixed. I’ll work on that problem ASAP but it works flawlessly using an Arduino card and Race Coordinator so it is a Trackmate or SlotTrak issue and probably something I can’t fix.

Okay, shut up and drive!

 

 

 

Well, the saga continues. After three weeks of chasing the pit detection issue, that problem actually turned out to be solvable by something I had already tried. In the end, the IR sensors had to have pull-down resistors to work properly with a Phidget card. Apparently, the Trackmate SCL3 card has built-in pull-down resistors, which is why it works flawlessly.

So, after several weeks of trying just about everything else possible, I went full circle back to IR sensor terminations to ground. Yes, I tested that early on but only on one lane, which apparently had a bad sensor to begin with (CCP junk!).

So, after a nice celebration of finally finding a solution to the pit-in detection issues, I then discovered that SlotTrak was failing to count the lap every time a car exited the pits. You could hear the lap trigger audio and see the lap time change, but the software does not add that lap. Seems to be an obvious software problem. I’m waiting on Michael to do some further testing on his end to confirm. This issue is also puzzling since I should have noticed this all along but didn’t.

Anyway, SR3 is pretty much only straight-up racing until the fuel feature problems are sort it out. RC is not an option because it doesn’t support Phidget cards for fuel racing, only Arduino, which SlotTrak doesn’t support at all.

As for the frustrating missed Pit-In problem we see on SR2, that problem has been very elusive and I don’t have a solution yet. As some of you have personaly experienced, we still see missed pit entries occasionally and I have been able to duplicate it on every lane when testing manually, but not when actually driving. Obviously don’t want to do fuel racing on either track until these issues are fixed.

So there is some good news, it seems that G-Man has his track up and running, he shot me a video of a car cutting laps. Maybe he’ll start racing soon and you guys can dust off your cars and have some fun on his track. I don’t think he’ll have a dual gantry system going anytime soon but he should be able to race and/or test.

In other news, Race Coordinator (RC) and I are actually working on a feature enhancement for RC that supports cycling the power when you run out of fuel. This is a nice feature that SlotTrak has supported for quite some time. I’ve been bugging Dave (RC developer) to add this feature but he’s always claimed nobody but me wants it, which is strange.

Anyway, if Dave can find a way to support that feature, we can use RC on both tracks and shelve SlotTrak until they decide to support Arduino hardware instead of all these other proprietary hardware devices. I love SlotTrak but this is getting frustrating, to say the least.

Steve, why do you want to run both? Well, this is a perfect example of why right now. We could have had two race days by now if either or both of the RMS systems supported the same hardware.

So, for now, I’m going to keep working on the intermittent pit-in detection problem with SlotTrak on SR2. No idea what is going on there, sounds like it could be a sensor termination issue but SR2 uses a Trackmate card to run SlotTrak, which has built-in sensor terminations. RC uses an Arduino card and does not have the intermittent pit-in detection problem, works 100 times out of 100 entries.

So, at the moment, we can run fuel races using RC on SR2 and/or run regular lap or timed races on SR3.  I’m opening up both tracks this Sunday to flush out any unknown issues and get some feedback on things.

Please let me know if you’re interested in cutting some laps Sunday, April 10, 2022. Gates open at 10:00 AM, usual lunch routine, and gates close at 7:00 PM.

Oh, if you have any L10 cars, please bring them. I’d like to see if the SR3 Phidget card can handle the pit-entry speeds of the faster cars.

Okay, shut-up and drive!

 

Sorry for not spamming you all for so long. I’ve been slammed with this SR3 project, among other things…

Anyway, yesterday I abandoned my hardware/software solution after not being able to fix one of the two problems I’m encountering with the use of Phidget cards for primary lap counting.

Instead, I installed a Trackmate SCL3 USB card for the primary lap counting gantry (finish line/lap trigger). I’m not a big fan of this card but it does the job and seems to detect my fastest cars both individually and simultaneously, where the 0/16/16 Phidget card clearly did not.

And, Race Coordinator (RC) also supports this card. Because SlotTrak doesn’t support the much more desirable Arduino cards, I’m using the 0/16/16 Phidget card to handle the pit-in gantry sensors (much slower car speeds there), and two Phidget 0/0/4 cards to handle individual lane power.

I’m going to do more testing today and will begin to prepare for a coming track day to really flush things out. I’m going to need five drivers and the fastest, noisiest cars we have to run things through the paces and make sure everything works properly with SlotTrak. I’ll configure and test RC once I have SlotTrak rock solid.

If you have T-Jets and/or L10 cars, please let me know. I’d like to test a few this coming week and maybe do a track day on SR3 next Saturday. T-Jets and most “pancake” cars are very noisy electrically, which can generate phantom laps if track circuitry is not adequately shielded.

Okay, shut-up and drive!

 

Well, I was on target to have SR3 ready to go last Sunday but unfortunately ran into an interesting technical issue. It’s a much longer story but essentially the timing hardware I decided to go with doesn’t detect faster cars due to SR3’s gantry position and the speed the cars are getting to as they pass under the lap sensors.

“Steve, just change hardware and open the damn track!” Easier said than done. The issue is dual gantry, six-lane tracks, require a timing card that can sense up to 12 lane sensors: six for counting laps and pit exits, and six for pit-entry.  Not to mention two more 4-relay cards to handle individual lane power control.

This limits the number of options out there. I’ve been able to get everything to work with Race Coordinator using an Arduino Mega card but SlotTrak does not support Arduino cards and the prolific Trackmate SCL3 card can’t support six-lane dual gantry tracks.

So, I’m stuck with the Phidget 0/16/16 card, which SlotTrak supports but does not detect fast cars on SR3. Further, this card also does not detect two cars passing under the gantry sensors at the same time. Yea, big issues. I guess most tracks use Trackmate, Arduino, or do not employ dual gantries.

I’ve sorted out a solution to this problem courtesy of “Madman” Steve Medanic. Steve was an engineer and has built numerous slot car tracks. He ran into this problem on his last track build, which was only a three-lane track but quite a nice build and circuit.

Steve may not have seen the single-car detection issue I’m seeing because his lap timing gantry is only 18 inches from the final corner (SR3’s final corner is nearly six feet from the lap timing gantry). However, he did encounter the simultaneous car detection problem, which I duplicated on my track tonight.

Steve’s fix was building three “signal pulse delay” circuits to install between the gantry IR sensors and the Phidget card. These circuits basically keep each lane trigger signal active long enough for the Phidget card to register it.  Problem solved!

SR3 has twice the lane count and will require six of these circuits instead of three. I’m thinking the pit-entry sensors won’t need this logic since the speeds going into the pits are way, way slower.

Another option for solving this would be to add a 1.5-in long piece of black tape to the back of each car. Not sure if everyone would go for that but it is way cheaper and quicker. And, just think…you could paint or otherwise detail the tape for concourse consideration!

Anyway, that’s the current situation.  I’m trying to find a “canned”(integrated) time delay circuit that could be used instead of discrete components. There are plenty of cards out there for timed relay control that may work. If not, I’ll have to source the individual parts required to build six of these little devices and then wire them up and test them.

So, as I wait for parts–again, I’ll stay busy installing the crash barriers, display monitors, speakers, etc. No idea yet when I’ll complete this beast but not likely to start a new series for at least two more weeks.