Hey folks, my friend has a pretty nice slot car track that me and some friend race on once a week, but the last couple of months, we've been having some some issues.
The basic set up is as follows:
4 lanes, each measuring about 96', all powered by a common power source running at about 12 or 13vdc . They run with custom software in conjunction with a chip in each car to control the motor and (I think) an RFID chip that allows us to change lanes in multiple places, keep track of us at multiple points along the way, and know when the car is on the track or off so the computer can call yellow flags if you de-slot. There is more, but lets start with that. There is 2 way comms via some dongles to facilitate all this.
The issue we're having is that some of the cars will lose comms with the computer which results in the car going along un-commanded at a slow, but steady pace for a certain amount of time and the computer thinking that the car has de-slotted and calling of a yellow flag. This quite disruptive to say the least. The owner thinks that it might be old and "noisy" motors causing interference. He has tried adding capacitors to the cars on both sides of their power wires to clean up the noise and is also in the process of upgrading the power strips on either side of the slot. (it used to be a steel wire with copper tape over that because they used to race with magnets, but that got boring so he removed them and now we race without them to keep things "more realistic") We are using tinned, braided copper wire and that has improved things quite a bit. The problems do tend to center around the bit of track that is still copper tape, but there is one braided section that will cause them to do it too. Due to time constraints (he doesn't like missing race night due to the track being down) the braid is not continuous. Most stretches are about 12-15'. They are connected under the track though.
The most recent car that he has worked on did seem to respond well to adding caps to act as noise filters, but still goes constant throttle and causes yellow flags on occasion. We are also suspicious that the chips may be losing power (or it drops just enough to reset them) and that's why the computer thinks the car is off. I suggested that we crank up the power to like 16v to try and effect some change (good or bad) and he could just change the throttle curve so we can still drive the car with plenty of control. Has anyone seen anything like this before? Do any of you guys have any ideas? Would adding caps to the main power supply help? Is it possible for the chips to have degraded enough to cause these random issues? One thing that I'm going to do this week is bring my lab scope over and see what there is for noise on the track, is there something else that I can look for while I'm there?
I'm sure that I've left out something, but thanks for any input that you're able to give!
The basic set up is as follows:
4 lanes, each measuring about 96', all powered by a common power source running at about 12 or 13vdc . They run with custom software in conjunction with a chip in each car to control the motor and (I think) an RFID chip that allows us to change lanes in multiple places, keep track of us at multiple points along the way, and know when the car is on the track or off so the computer can call yellow flags if you de-slot. There is more, but lets start with that. There is 2 way comms via some dongles to facilitate all this.
The issue we're having is that some of the cars will lose comms with the computer which results in the car going along un-commanded at a slow, but steady pace for a certain amount of time and the computer thinking that the car has de-slotted and calling of a yellow flag. This quite disruptive to say the least. The owner thinks that it might be old and "noisy" motors causing interference. He has tried adding capacitors to the cars on both sides of their power wires to clean up the noise and is also in the process of upgrading the power strips on either side of the slot. (it used to be a steel wire with copper tape over that because they used to race with magnets, but that got boring so he removed them and now we race without them to keep things "more realistic") We are using tinned, braided copper wire and that has improved things quite a bit. The problems do tend to center around the bit of track that is still copper tape, but there is one braided section that will cause them to do it too. Due to time constraints (he doesn't like missing race night due to the track being down) the braid is not continuous. Most stretches are about 12-15'. They are connected under the track though.
The most recent car that he has worked on did seem to respond well to adding caps to act as noise filters, but still goes constant throttle and causes yellow flags on occasion. We are also suspicious that the chips may be losing power (or it drops just enough to reset them) and that's why the computer thinks the car is off. I suggested that we crank up the power to like 16v to try and effect some change (good or bad) and he could just change the throttle curve so we can still drive the car with plenty of control. Has anyone seen anything like this before? Do any of you guys have any ideas? Would adding caps to the main power supply help? Is it possible for the chips to have degraded enough to cause these random issues? One thing that I'm going to do this week is bring my lab scope over and see what there is for noise on the track, is there something else that I can look for while I'm there?
I'm sure that I've left out something, but thanks for any input that you're able to give!
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