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!
A lot of work on that. Excited to see how it works 🙂
Yea, more to do but so far it seems it’ll work fine. The only downside is that it adds a whole lot more points of failure in a track. But not terribly difficult to resolve fairly quickly.