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MITTENTITEL |
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On the left is an original Carrera car decoder. The right shows the decoder after removal of all unnecessary cables and the switch (connecting the relevant pins with small wire). Later I also removed the IR Led. This reduces the height of the decoder, so that it fits under the track border. |
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The following tips and tricks were written with greatest care. Nonetheless I will not take any responsibillity or be liable for any damages, including without limitation, special, indirect or consequential damages, or any damages, whatsoever resulting from use this information or rebuilding the described items. This conversion is off the normal limits and the gurantee on the parts will be lost. Important This dual conversion is "different". The stability should be comparable to that of PWM controlled hand throttle controllers. I and at least three other slot racers use it for some time now without any problems. This way or an other This is a special kind of dual or even triple coversion. Triple conversion means that you can use the same track with analog, Digital 132 and ProX cars without replaceing any parts, just by flipping a switch or pressing some buttons. Still it does not allow running different types of cars at the same time. The same conversion is also possible with ProX systems, of course without the D132 functionality. The features of the conversion are:
For anybody, who prefers Parma or other custom controllers, this conversion is not to be recommended. What's usual? The usual way of dual conversion leads the wires for each track seperately to a changeover switch. One side of the switch is connected to the blackbox, the other side with the analog controllers.
What's special ? Special is, that the cars are always controlled by the blackbox, even when running in analog mode. The obvious advantage is that you can use the same hand controllers and use some features of the blackbox in analog mode as well. To achieve this, the cars are still digitally controlled, but the car decoder is not placed inside the car, but into the "power track". Again the wires feom the tracks are connected seperately to a changeover switch. And again one side of the switch is connected to the blackbox. But the other side of the switch is connected to the outputs of car decoders. You will need one car decoder for every lane. The inputs of the car decoders (the wires you would connect with the braids) will be connected wit the output of the blackbox. It is a good idea to connect one of the wires for each decoder over a break contact switch with the blackbox.
When you set the controller id for a car or program a ghostcar or some other features, you have to take the car off the track. In analog mode, the "car" read the decoder is build into the track. This is where the break contact switch comes in. Instead of taking the car off, you press this switch. So to set one controller (read one lane in analog mode) to react to hand controller 1, you press the hand controller's lane change button twice. Press the breack contact switch which belongs to the decoder connected to the respective lane. Release the switch and press the hand controller's lane change button twice agin.
What else ? The observant reader will have recognized, that in the above picture the colors of the wires connected to the switch are inverted on one side. This is because Carrera the polarity on the track is inverted between analog and digital modes What else else?
The lane changes often have a connection between both lanes. This can be cut by filing down the metal of the rails a bit and/or using a piece of tape to isolate the rails from each other. The pitstoplane will not work without modification. There are two ways to do this: You can disconnect the plus wire of the electronics from the rail (the plastic is marked A+ directly besides where the respective wire is connected to the rail) and connect it directly to the plus wire of the blackbox. The other way it to modify the PCB by adding a diode and an resistor. The diode is a Schottky type 1N5822 or similar the resistor is a 820 Ohm resistor. The connections to be made are shown in the photograph to the right. The diode is put "inbetween" the cable comeing from A+. The cathode is connected to the pad, the anode to the cable. The resistor connect the cathode with ground. Luckily ground is available at the pad directly to the left of the pad where the cathode is connected to the PCB. In the picture above you can see a cable with a red connector. It is used to make the original output signal from the blackbox available for the lap counter. This mod has only be tested with D132. Lap counter The D132 lap counter uses two IR receivers for each lane. One in the top of the track to read the car id sent by passing cars using their IR Led. The other is part of a light barrier inside the slot. This will recognize ProX compatible guiding blades and marks the point where the time is really measured. It's quite tempting to modify the sensor, so that it will also work in analog mode.
The lap counter gets it's power from the track. In analog mode this is not possible. So the connection from lap counter to track is cut and the lapcounter is directly connected to the black box. I used a red connector as shown in the above drawing, so I can store blackbox and lapcounter seperately. Next the the two wires from the two sensors to the lapcounter electronics are split and a little microcontroller is put in between. The microcontroller needs power which it gets from the blackbox. It alos needs a connection to the track, to be able to tell whether the system is running in analog or digital mode. When the track is in digital mode the signals from the sensor are passed unmodified to the lap counter electronics. When in analog mode, the controller will recognize any crossing guiding blade. When this happens it will send an impulse pattern which is identical to that of a Pro X blade of a car with the same id as the lane number to the lap counter electronics.
That's what it looks like. As you see the pcb is rather large. That's becaus it is a generic pcb I use for different projects. Controller schematics.
If you have questions regarding the controller, send a mail to brumbaer@brumbaer.de. |
No matter whether you use the common or the special method of dual conversion, you must ensure that both lanes are electrically seperated in all cases.
