[BAracer]

Hi Jeremy
I know Ed P is thinking of attending so there may be a potential team mate / travel partner. There's a thread on SlotForum if you'd like to register your interest.

Rockingham SCC Digital Saturday and New digital system test Saturday August 24th

Cheers
Gary

Daughter's birthday bash that day...

[Dr_C]

   

Image showing the Wireless hub and Sensor hub of the new system. Both hubs a have High Speed USB connection to the race management computer.

c

[Dr_C]

The new system aspires to be state of the art - the above ‘car’ clip art certainly is not.

c

[Dr_C]

   

Something a little closer to what we are hoping to test at Rockingham on 24th August. Many thanks to all who are assisting with preparations and of course the volunteer drivers.

c

[KensRedZed]

The new system aspires to be state of the art - the above ‘car’ clip art certainly is not.

c

These must be old Volvo's like in the movie "Crazy People" with Dudley Moore. Boxy, but good. 

   

[Kevan]

Nowt wrong with Volvos

[KensRedZed]

I agree. I like them. But the example in the movie was that they were "boxy, but good". They used to be more boxy many years ago. You'll need to watch the movie. It's kind of funny. I would be censored if I repeated what they said about Jaguars.  

[Dr_C]

   

So hopefully this diagram describes the new digital system we will be testing at Rockingham in August.

There will be five key components under test:

1/ The new wireless in-car decoders which use IR strobing for lap counting and signalling of lane change requests. These decoders will be fitted into 12 NSR GT cars.

2/ Under-track sensors will be used to detect these 12 cars. The system is designed for detection of IDs up to 36 and has been extensively tested to date - so this part should be straight forward. That said, the tests will involve use of a new dual lane sensor board which has been designed to fit the lane pitch of Ninco track.

3/ The sensor hub and link to PC Lapcounter has been under test for many months and the version used for these trials will include anti-static/over-voltage protection on each of the eight sensor input channels and it will be packaged in a neat blue enclosure.

4/ On the wireless side, a key component is the wireless hub which receives signals from the 12 throttle controllers and onward broadcasts this information to the 12 in-car decoders. Here we will be exploring the minimum power levels required for 100% robust communications.

5/ and finally, the most important part of all, the interface between driver and the digital control system - i.e. the throttle controllers. This is under wraps at present but we have some very nice plans shaping up for August 24.

More details to follow…

c

[Dr_C]

A tiny little detail…

On August 24 we will be testing a 12 car setup. If that goes well, the approach will be scaled up to 36 cars and this will not require any hardware changes  to the throttle controllers or the in-car decoders. The part that will need to change is the Wireless Hub. This is designed to accommodate 1,2 or 3 communications modules. Each module can handle up to 12 cars. They are designed to be synchronised together so all three modules will either transmit or receive at any moment in time. This synchronisation piece is straight forward but not yet tested.

The design concept throughout this development exercise is to eliminate any potential communications bottlenecks as car numbers increase. Every car has a clear set of hop channels (known as frequency division multiplexing) and pre-allocated timeslots (known as time division multiplexing).

Next let’s see whether practice matches theory ;)

c

[Dr_C]

This week we validated the new wireless throttle design. This involved testing separately the trigger read, all knobs and buttons and of course the transmit/received circuit. It all checked out correctly so we then proceeded to integrate into the system. It’s all functioning perfectly correctly! as far as I can tell so far…

We have tried to balance ‘easy access’ to the controls the driver needs to adjust while racing (perhaps in the dark) - with additional more advanced functionality which will be accessed by the PC link to the Wireless Hub.

Status of preparations for August 24th at Rockingham.

(Stress testing of a prototype digital wireless system)

1/ Decoder hardware/firmware ready (enough for 12 NSR GT cars).

2/ Dual lane IR sensor boards built up (Ninco pitch) and ready for installation. The design is already proven and endurance tested.

3/ Sensor Hub - Design (hardware and firmware) already proven to function - new hardware layout in assembly for fitment into a new blue enclosure.

4/ Wireless Hub - Design (hardware and firmware) already proven to function with a power adjustable variant in assembly. This is for fitment into a new white enclosure. At maximum power (the UK/EU band limit is 100mW) the line-of-sight range is expected to be circa 1km - i.e. plenty for our purposes.

5/ Throttle controllers are in assembly phase x12 following the design validation exercise I mentioned above.

The team has plenty to keep us busy over the next five weeks :)

c