Stewart Raceway III – Page 24

SR3 Construction Update: March 3, 2022

Driver selectable lane voltage and individual lane power control for Yellow, Blue, and Orange lanes.

Finally making some good progress on SR3. Pretty much have completed all wiring, power control, timing system components, gantries, and all driver’s stations.

Today I actually connected SlotTrak and Race Coordinator to the track and, after some tweaking and configuration changes, everything worked!

I don’t have the track sections connected to each other yet but I tested the gantries and all the power control logic by hand and with a test car on one section. Both seemed to work as expected and nothing caught fire.

All that is left to do is connect all the track sections to each other, clean all the damn sawdust off the table and track, run some laps on each lane to make sure all the rails and sections are in good shape. Once that’s done, it’ll be time to install the crash barriers and get things ready for a track day to fully flush things out.

Before I get to the above, I’m going to lift the track to the ceiling and clean out the entire garage. Need to blow and vacuum the whole place out due to all the damn sawdust, wire insulation, tie-wrap debris, etc. Also need to get rid of a bunch of bikes and bike parts. This track takes up a bit more space and will force me to get rid of stuff that has been hanging on the walls or just laying around forever. I also need to wash my motorcycles before the sawdust becomes permanent.

Anyway, I’m getting close. Still haven’t chosen a new laptop for SR3 yet. I think I’ll flush it out with an old and slow one just to make sure the design works and all the components that are tied together with the one USB hub will work. USB is fast but having nine devices going through one PC USB port could present some problems, we’ll see.

The very cool thing about this hardware setup is that Race Coordinator and SlotTrak seem to work well with the hardware. I don’t have to flip any switches, reboot, or anything, just fire up the RMS and go. I’m digging that.

There is one technical hurdle to get over at some point. Right now, the driver can easily change the lane voltage to eight different presets, and any arbitrary setting. However, the software I currently have does not allow the Race Director to quickly switch the lane voltages back to a common track-wide setting. For now, I’ll have to connect to each lane, check the voltage, and set, if necessary the proper voltage for racing. I’m working on some code to make that process much quicker.

One other possible issue is that I’m testing Brad Bowman’s opinion that I could get away with just one power tap for the whole track. I actually installed three but two are powering the oval. The third connects to just about the middle of the road course, which means the whole 75-feet of road course only has two power taps. SR2 has eight!

So, when is SR3 going to be ready to go for a Track Day? I’m shooting for March 19 and maybe starting a new series on March 26. Stay tuned for the plan but it depends on whether or not we’ll need more power taps. We can always start the new series on SR2, if necessary.

SR3 Construction Update: March 1, 2022

Progress continues on Stewart Raceway III but it has been slowed by all those pesky things that seem more important at the time.

So, where are things? Well, the table and track roadway placement has been completed. The track power distribution system is complete and tested. While there are still technical hurdles to overcome, the goal of supporting different voltage levels for each lane–by the driver–has been achieved. It’s not completely ready, but drivers can select any voltage they’d like to run when testing or practicing. This means you can practice/test any car, at any voltage, at any time racing is not underway. Think about that…you no longer have to restrict yourself to 15v, 12v, 20v, or whatever. You can go to any open lane, set the “lane” voltage (at the driver station), and run your car.

This is significant and very important for maximizing track/testing time. You no longer have to find out what the track voltage is set at to decide what car you're going to run. You simply set the lane voltage to whatever you want.

Other than six lanes, and a much larger layout, SR3 is expected to support the same racing features that SR2 supports. One small difference will be a slight increase in pit spacing. SR3’s dual gantries will be spread slightly further apart to compensate for the higher pit entry speeds.

Lots of work remains but mostly tedious wiring, track section power connections, crash barriers, etc. After that, it’s all about software configuration and testing.

Power distribution under the main straight timing/pit gantries.

One huge difference between SR3 and SR2 is power taps. Brad Bowman insists that I can run just one power tap, at most two (SR2 has eight power taps). I’m not convinced just yet but I’ll start testing with just two to validate that. The track design of being able to convert sections and convert to an oval makes the usual power tap calculations more difficult. No biggy though, adding more power taps just costs more time and money.

So, SR3 is coming along nicely. My garage is a complete disaster but the new track is going to be quite cool. Yea, lots more work to do, but it’s getting close. Really only need to wire the gantries up and I can start testing things. The 6-lane, dual gantry setup adds some complexity and delay. I had planned to just use the usual RJ-45 twisted-pair cable to handle that but RJ-45 only provides 4-pair, which doesn’t quite handle a 6-lane dual gantry setup (need 6-pair x2). Yea, yea, I could make it work but decided to find some 6-pair cable to handle this. Sadly, it’ll take a week or so to arrive.

Then the challenge will be shielding the cable. Shielded 12-conductor cable is extremely expensive. In fact, way too expensive. Yes, some of the noisier cars can trigger false laps if the gantry wires are overly exposed to RF/EMI frequencies.

Can’t wait to get all the infrastructure completed and start running some laps on this beast.

SR3 Construction Update – February 16, 2022

Finally able to get back to work on the new track this week. Not a lot of progress but I was able to wire up one driver’s station and test the individual lane voltage control hardware.

Yep, SR3 will support testing pretty much any type of car simultaneously. In the past, most tracks have one or two power supplies and everybody had to test/practice at the same voltage. SR3 was designed to allow any lane to operate at whatever voltage the driver desires.

The initial hardware will support two preset voltage selections and a variable voltage setting. The track will be fed by two 30VDC, 10-amp, regulated power supplies: one for lanes 1, 2, and 3; the other on the opposite side of the track supplying power to lanes 4, 5, and 6.

The key technology that allows the driver to select lane voltage at the driver’s station is programmable DC Voltage Converters at each driver’s station. A small console just below the driver’s station allows the driver to set or adjust the voltage to whatever car or power level they want to test or practice at.

I’ve always hated the fact that we could always only test/practice at a given voltage level, which severely limited track time and testing. This system should alleviate that problem and provide much more flexibility to drivers during practice and testing sessions.

Of course, the race computer can set and lock these devices to a common voltage for racing purposes. But when the track is open for testing or practice, drivers can run any type of car, at any voltage, from 5v to 28v.

That’s the plan anyway. Today, I tested the wiring and hardware on one lane and it worked flawlessly. The next test is with all six driver’s stations–at the same time. Then, of course, it’ll all have to be tested in real race conditions using the track computer to control all stations.

It’s coming along nicely but still a lot of painstaking labor and technical hurdles to overcome.

Okay, shut up and drive!

SR3 Update: Elevations and Banking Set

Yep, the initial setup is done. Of course, all adjustable at any time but this is what we’ll open SR3 with. Pictures don’t really do it justice. You can see it in person at Round 3 of the 2022 Formula “e” Series, January 29.

Right-click and open in a new browser tab for full-size images. The entrance to Turn 1 (oval).

Down-slope, off-camber exit from Turn 4. No slam-dunk getting to the finish line here.

Lower banking on entrance to Turn 1 (oval) and higher banking on Turn 2 exit. A little bump in the middle of the corner to make things more interesting for all types of cars.

No idea how this setup will work with the various cars we run, we’ll sort it out.

Plenty of work left to do, including completely securing each track piece to the table. This becomes more important in the summer season when the heat tends to expand the Sintra roadway material. I’ll likely end up securing each piece every 8″ or so.

Once I get all the pieces secured, it’s time to get going on the wiring, which is always a challenge when you use multiple RMS (timing system) setups. While I was leaning towards abandoning SlotTrak due to their recent crazy mandatory hardware upgrade, I decided to invest in that hardware upgrade for SR3 to try it out.

SR3 also has some new features that require a completely different track wiring design. I won’t go into the details here but the plan is to be able to change the voltage for each lane at the driver’s station (and computer). This supports drivers to test different cars at whatever voltage they like while also permitting the Race Director to reset the lane voltages at race time. It’s complicated but the hope is that it benefits driver/team track time by allowing practice sessions of virtually any type of car on the track at the same time. Yea, a bit sketchy but much more productive track/testing days.

Don’t forget! Round 3 of the Formula “e” Series is Saturday, January 29, 2022. Get registered now!

Okay, shut up and drive!

SR3 Construction Update

Mostly doing research on power solutions and waiting on materials needed for the track elevations and banking. Not sure if you’ve noticed lately but FedEx and UPS really suck when you compare them to Amazon and USPS.

I try not to buy CCP products as much as possible but sadly there are simply too many things that are simply not made anywhere else these

days. That’s another subject entirely of course. But even products that are already in the States seem to take forever when shipped by the major players. And, no, it’s not related to the “supply-chain” hoax. In fact, these days you can expect at least three days where the item(s) just sit in some shipping hub location for a long, long time.

Anyway, waiting on spacers (standoffs), wire, wire sheathing, power components, and other items right now. The track is pretty much secure to the table just need to set the banking and overpass elevations but need the proper spacers and screws to do that. These pictures show the proposed overpass height and shape. I think it’ll be challenging for both L4 magnet cars and our other less stuck platforms.

The banking elevations and shapes will be different on each of the four corners. I’ll decide on that once I get the needed materials and start to shape the oval corners. The banking will likely be less than SR2’s banks but fairly close at the highest points. Of course, I’ll do my best to make each corner as different and challenging as possible.

Once I get this stage completed, it’ll be time to secure each track piece completely to the table and then start the basic track and power tap wiring. I’m planning a “Phase 1” power solution for the track opening, which will be at least the same power control setup we have on the SR2 VSR track. Phase 2 will be driver-selectable voltage levels for each lane, from 3v to ~28v, which will also be programmable from the track computer by the race director.

Two purposes for these features: one is so that we can test/practice different types of cars in the same practice/test session and not have to switch voltage levels; the second purpose is so the race director can reset each lane’s voltage to the proper levels prior to each race.

Don’t forget to register for Round 2 of the Formula “E” Series this coming Saturday, January 15, 2022!

Also, if you know somebody who you think would enjoy racing little cars with us, please invite them along. We always need new drivers to join the group and it’ll benefit all of us when we have a large enough “club” to always have more than enough racers to support our events.

Remember: SR3 is six-lanes! That means we’ll need at least eight (8) participants to have any hope of full utility of the track and enough turn marshals. Yea, we can run just four lanes, but that’s not cool!

Okay, shut up and drive!