[ScorpiusWireless]

Hi Guys,
    We thought about time someone made a wireless start gantry.
After some thought we ditched multiple 5mm colour LEDs for a nice Nexion 4.3” colour touchscreen.

4 prototypes loaded with components turned up this week as wel as 4 Nexion colour touchscreens.


To make it Scorpius compatible a new board of identical size and bolt hile locations. The Nexion board is bolted above the new Scorpius board.
The Scorpius board will use the Nordic 52810 wireless chip.
It will talk to Race Coordinator and Scorpius RMS initially for both Analogue and Digital.

A variety of start light graphics will be stored onboard and selected by the Scorpius app. Choose BTCC, F1, Nascar and other light setups as required.
The touchscreen function will be used to start and pause races and initiate yellow flags as well as other functions. 

Next stage is firmware development.

       

[ScorpiusWireless]

This project still alive and now part of the MPD project here:
https://slotracer.online/community/showt...p?tid=2244

[Scot Reeves]

Looking smart  , start light gantries a few and far between for serious racers  .

[ScorpiusWireless]

Double post

[ScorpiusWireless]

Time flies. Now we have the final prototype and the hard tasks completed. We left the easier project to towards the end on purpose so the project gets easier, speeds up and is more fun. That took some discipline though. 

The huge board we had before has been replaced with the MPD. The plan is to use one of the data ports with SPI protocol. The nRF52832 can support 4 data ports, we’re using 2 due to board size limitations but if I could have 4 I would. The 52832 supports SPI. 
I can also split protocols. ie SPI on one port and I2C on the other. It’s a brilliant chip to work with.

We’re going to need a library set up. Whether we use an existing one or create a new one is yet to be determined.
The 832 has 512Kb memory. Given half or more will be used for firmware we can work on 150Kb 
Given a simple image on a 4.3” OLED requires 2-5Kb each and quality image around 20Kb we will be able to store around 10 to 50 images. Impressive.
Given a lot of it will be alpha numeric we should in theory have more than enough memory.


I can use 12C protocol for the 0.49” OLED. 
I can use UART Bprotocol  for a 4.3” OLED.
Its UART or SPI for a 7” OLED.
7” will be the limit due to memory.

The gantry is primarily for starting and finishing races, lapcounting, best laps, last lap and yellow/red/black flag notifications for up to 6 people. Anymore than that I’d recommend a PC or laptop.

All driven by this one tiny board, 24.8x20.5