10th-Feb-22, 07:54 AM
Welcome Dawdawes 
To answer your question… it depends!
If you want a basic circuit to have a blast with, Scalextric ARC Air (analogue) and ARC Pro (analogue & digital) are great out-of-the-box units - as you say, with wireless controllers and lots of features via an app. You’ll be up and running in no time.
However, with your model railroading background, you might be looking at building a magnificent scenic raceway? And you might have lots of experience with building custom electrics - and really enjoy that side of the hobby?
Not that you can’t include an ARC system in a scenic layout (it is possible to remove the big black box from the track piece), but there are more customisable alternatives. One would be using Race Coordinator software on a PC and Arduino board - then building the lap counting hardware yourself. There’s a pdf document in the software package which explains the build for different hardware - apart from a dead strip, which I’ve tried to explain here: https://slotracer.online/community/showt...p?tid=2061
It really depends where you want to go with the slot car track (running cars, racing with mates, organising events) and how much (or little) you want to use and develop your model railroading skills…
I’m certainly very interested in following your progress
To answer your question… it depends!
If you want a basic circuit to have a blast with, Scalextric ARC Air (analogue) and ARC Pro (analogue & digital) are great out-of-the-box units - as you say, with wireless controllers and lots of features via an app. You’ll be up and running in no time.
However, with your model railroading background, you might be looking at building a magnificent scenic raceway? And you might have lots of experience with building custom electrics - and really enjoy that side of the hobby?
Not that you can’t include an ARC system in a scenic layout (it is possible to remove the big black box from the track piece), but there are more customisable alternatives. One would be using Race Coordinator software on a PC and Arduino board - then building the lap counting hardware yourself. There’s a pdf document in the software package which explains the build for different hardware - apart from a dead strip, which I’ve tried to explain here: https://slotracer.online/community/showt...p?tid=2061
It really depends where you want to go with the slot car track (running cars, racing with mates, organising events) and how much (or little) you want to use and develop your model railroading skills…
I’m certainly very interested in following your progress
![[+]](https://slotracer.online/community/images/bootbb/collapse_collapsed.png)