Janco Toys Forum

managed to get an Arduino to talk to the digital base unit today, has taken a bit of mucking about. Main bit of this thats useful is the ability to get at the controller input and replace it.

Quite apart from what this could obviously do to Reece it allows integration with the lap counter/timing thing I've been working on (e.g. either highlighting jump starts, or simply outright not allowing them), it also would allow alternative controllers to be used, going to have a go at making something thats wireless

can't use the scalextric wireless ones though as they haven't published ho they communicate, but may be able to do something else.

this allows the sorts of things you can do with a laptop - stuff like fuel burn, tyre wear and similar to come in if anyone wants it - may also be able to get some nicer bits working in the analogue mode

have had the chance to play a bit more with this, this pic is a bit messy but then its all on prototyping breadboard with jumper wires etc.



starting from the top, top left with the ribbon cable is a chip thats measuring and calculating the speeds as cars pass over a detector, works out for digital which car it is, in analogue which lane it it, it then stores for each car the most recent speed reading and the fastest speed reading.

this of course is just a pure bit of fun, unless you want some sort of award of points for the highest speed through a speed trap. good for calibrating stuff if you are turning though.

below that is another chip, this one is controlling the digital power to the track via the scalextric base thing, its got a knob to twiddle, as you do, which drives car #1. cars 2-5 driven by the handsets as normal. the little display shows the throttle setting, and the speed which it gets over a wireless radio link from the first one.

currently both of these are drawing power from the track (which works in digital but not analogue), needs a bit of a power ring for this ("power".. its 5 volts...)

below that is the larger display, currently a bit corrupted but fixed since I took this picture, also wireless, here listening and showing the speed of car 1, but able to show whatever speeds the speed trap captures - wireless so you can put the speed trap somewhere and have a display somewhere a bit easier to read.


has been quite fun sticking all this together, makes having automated pace cars very easy to do if desired, either to race or to use as 'traffic' - say when the police Capri is released having that chasing another car trying to get in front while three or four other cars just circulate

When is it planning on becoming sentient?

Baldie wrote: ↑

Wed May 06, 2020 8:15 pm

When is it planning on becoming sentient?

given the run and games getting the Arduino to talk to the Scalextric powerbase I suspect it already is.

didn't know electronics stuff could look smug but this stuff did, could almost here the thing going "nope"

nice when people provide a specification, it would be even nicer if they provided a complete one

aim is to avoid having to lug a laptop about when a small chip that costs about £3.50 for the Nano board and probably about a tenners worth of bits in total can replace it