Total newbie here. I'm following several tutorials trying to learn the basics.
So my end goal is to design an input record and playback system for my Carrera Digital 132 slot car track. If any of you are familiar with digital slot cars than you'll know about the ghost car function which supplies constant power to the car all the time. Well it gets pretty boring racing against a car that only goes one speed. My hope to come up with something that is a bit more dynamic.
As I said my goal is to design a system that will record my controller inputs then send those inputs to the Carrera Control Unit on command (button press) so that I can race against myself.
I'm a long way away from having the skills and knowledge right now to make this happen. Basically what I wish to know at this point is if this is even feasible, how monumental of an undertaking will this project be, and what are the biggest hurdles that I will most likely face?
Sounds like a great project. Not terribly ambitious, but it will drag you over most of the issues that come up with these endeavors.
I wonder aloud if simply replaying a recording input will work, as it does not keep track of where the ghost car is… so I anticipate a point at which you will be asking about how to do that.
The only advice at this time is to take it in very small steps. If you are totally new to Arduino programming, I suggest finding an online course of study. There are many freely available, if you give a handful of them 5 or ten minutes each you may find one you can tolerate or even enjoy. And you will no,doubt learn something from every one of those. Spend an hour or two.
Also, the IDE has examples on offer starting from the very basics. These are worth recreating and studying. Many can be done with just a few common parts you'll need anyway.
If you want to go quite a distance spending zero money, this:
can let you play with all kindsa parts. It is quite easy to use, mostly the same struggle (or not) you might have had already with the IDE and a real Arduino.
Interfacing to the existing track controller will be a largish task, but again is well-trod territory, there are ppl here who can in their sleep already looking forward to helping if you need it.
Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—I did the constant speed trick by using a rubber band on the other controller. It was as you say not so exciting, rather frustrating because alla time the constant car was extremely hard to beat… slow and steady wins the race. The harder I tried, the worse it was.
Thank you very much for your response and the info you provided. I will definitely be checking out the Arduoino simulator.
So I have 2 basic concepts that I have come up to achieve a dynamic autonomous slot car.
The first being the controller input and playback concept.
The second would be the use of sensors (either photo, or magnetic) to mark location of the track and change the speed of the slot car to 1 of 3 variables (0% throttle, 50% throttle, 100% throttle).
The more simplistic of the two concepts -- making it the easier goal to achieve -- would be the input record and playback concept. However, the more I think about it, the more i believe that it is a flawewd concept. There are just too many variables that would throw off the timing. Making this concept ultimately doomed to fail.
The sensor concept while being far more elaborated and therefore more difficult to achieve is the concept that I think has the better chance to succeed. Fortunately, my job has given me a lot of experience with 5v sensor circuits, PWM circuits, and whatnot. So I a strong grasp on electronics, and how the hardware works. It is the coding that is a totally new, and foriegn concept to me. I know absolutely nothing about computer coding.
One thing I forgot to mention is that the one rule I have about this project is that I do not want to modify my track in any way. So whatever system I come up with has to be completely independent and self contained
I'm not clear how you are going to avoid both electrical and mechanical changes.
You'll have to mount sensors, whatever they are, near where the sensing is being done.
And you'll have to inject the ghost car speed into the track electronics somehow. I suppose using a servo or other actuator to move the throttle would be the least invasive.
Although these days, someone might suggest using a camera with a view of the entire track that could see and track the yellow car... not me, that's way beyond both my experience and pay grade.
Ppl make that kind of thing sound easy.
In this "expand and explore" phase, no ideas should be left unevaluated.
My plan for the sensors is to mount the sensors remotely in some pieces of PVC pipe and placing them adjacent to the track -- like the guy in this video has done
As far as controlling the throttle input to the car, I believe it will be a relitively straight forward task. My track is a Carrera digital track. Which means that Control Unit for the track receives digital input from the controller via the RJ11 connectors which are use'd for the controller port connectors. So >>IN THEORY<< all I should need to do is wire an RJ11 phone cable to the output pins of the Arduino then plug the phone cable into one of the controller port connectors on the Carrera Control Unit. At this point it should just be a matter of propely programming the the Arduino to send the correct outputs based on the sensor inputs it recieves.
The pins on the Arduoino are going work something like this:
Sensor input recieved on input pin1 = 0v on output pin -- i.e. 0% throttle
Sensor input received on input pin2 = 2.5v on output pin -- i.e. 50% throttle
Sensor input received on input pin3 = 5v on ouput pin -- i.e. 100% throttle
If my understanding of all of this is correct -- which is a mighty BIG if -- I should be able achieve my goal without any modification to the track. The sensors will be mounted remotely in the PVC piping, and the controller throttle input to the Carrera Control Unit will be handled through one of the controller ports on the Control Unit itself -- the same as if it was a real person using the controller.
I'll have do a slight mod to one of the cars to add either a magnet, or I.R. transmitter depending on which style sensor I decide to use in order to trip the sensors as the car passes.
Yes. I see what you will and won't tolerate as far as the necessary mechanical intervention.
But I am curious about the control signal you need to synthesize. I assumed it would be digital, your recipe seems to say it is an analog control voltage.
But... does that potentiometer wire directly, or in an analog way, to the cable you hook to the base system?
Many control systems in digital equipment have analog input devices. It is usually very soon circuit-wise that those analog signals (potentiometers, sensors and so forth, even buttons, technically) are translated however they must be and then participate in the process in the digital realm.
I would have thought happy to be wrong that a digital slot car controller would have a serial or other digital interafce to any base station it was communicating with.
I’m not an engineer. But my tiny tiny company manufactures various components for a digital slot car system using all wireless 2.4Ghz (proprietary).
One of the products we’re working on now is a wireless car decoder. It can transceive our 2.4Ghz protocol while simultaneously using a second radio chip to transceive all BT messages.
The chip has back EMF detection, an accelerometer/gyro and a host of other goodies. It can run on 4 different systems, performs DFU updates from phone, configure settings and send 25 lots of telemetry back to laptop.
We have a record/playback system with calibration at every lane changer, and the worlds first AI slot car that can analyse traffic ahead and change lanes accordingly, overtake if possible, then swap back to the best line.
Sorry I’ve never used an Arduino but my engineer has😊
I have spent the last 5 years developing a fully computerized Carrera Slot car system
It is now working well
Go to YouTube and search for either
Carrera Slots Automation
Or
Autonomous Carrera Slot cars
There are 4 videos showing this working and a small write up of the system
It uses Arduino Nanos and and very extensive PC program
