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MITTENTITEL |
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Powerbase Finally a different design. Nincos powerbase uses three processors. A H8 derivative, a Mega16 and a Mega8. Simply put the H8 handles LCD, keys, sound, force feedback and general tasks, the Mega16 reads the values from thorttle and buttons of the hand controllers and the Mega 8 is responsible for watching the dead strips. The power stage is not made from discrete fets as with the other designs, but uses a L6203 motor driver ic, just the one I use with my SlotMini project. But while I use them as a full bridge, Ninco uses them as two parallel connected half bridges. Each have bridge is rated with 4A. The output driver stage has a lower than average resistance of 0.71Ω. The Powerbase has two channels for commumnication with external "devices". The one marked "In" uses a 3.5mm headphone jack. It is used to connect the pit stop lane and multi lane extension. It carries only two signals, one is connected to a dead strip reading circuit and the other one is a serial channel connected to the Mega 8. The pit stop lane uses only the dead strip connector. The multi lane extension sends a data packet of three bytes whenever a car passes one of its dead strips. The data packet forms the string PX<CR>. The X is the cars id ored with $20. The string is send as a serial data word using 1200 baud, 7 bits, no parity one stopbit. The other on is marked "Out" is a 6-pin MiniDin connector and its signals are connected to the serial interface of the H8. There are also two pins connected to the power supply and one connected to the same pin on the Mega 8 as the In connector. The Out-connector seems to be used exclusively for outputting some race information. You will find more about that here. The wires. Did I mention the wires ? That's what I call wires, thick and sturdy.
Without any question the most complicated of all control units. Power supply The powerbase can be connected to up to two power supplys. The Ninco digital power supply is rated 14V, 3A. As usual it is a switching power supply and therfor stabilized. You can also use the ordinary Ninco power supply, but without load it will get up to 20 V. With voltages so high the cars are very difficult to control and raceing is no fun. |
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For ordinary and progressive guys: |
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Hand controller N - Digtal offers two kinds of controllers the ordinary and one labeled "Progressive". The controllers are connected using 4 wires. First ther is ground, second a signal which is shut short with ground when the lane change bustton is pressed, third the wire for the throttle setting build as resistor chain connected to ground and last not least the wire to control a small motor. The motor has an unsymetrical weight on its axle. So the whole controller vibrates when the motor is activated. Force feedback meets slot car racing. The choice of a chain of resistors (0-12 kΩ) is very disapointing, because regradless of decoder, powerbase and protocol the number of seperate speeds is limited to 11 inclusive standstill. In the "Progressive" controller the first resistor in the chain is replaced by an variable resistor. So you can change all values except speed 0 by the same amount. The change in the lowest speed level reaches from -9% to + 270% but in the fastest level the difference is only -0.4% to +6%. The speedvalues send to the car in amateur-mode with the handcontroller I had were 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 12. Note the gap at the upper end. The values from the "Progressive" controller with the variable resistor set to the maximum were send as speed values 0, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 12 using a centre setting they were 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 12 and in the lowest setting they were not surprisingly identical to the values send by the ordinary controller. In professional-mode the values send for the ordinary controller and the "Progressive" controller on its minimum seting are 0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14. The values from the "Progressive" controller with the variable resistor set to the maximum were send as speed values 0, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14. The connector seems to be an ordinary type RJ14 phone connector. |
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Number 8 alive. |
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Cars and dead strips Data transmission to the cars is over the track, just as usual. But the cars do not send their ids by IR light, but also over the track similar to SCX. But while SCX works like data bus, Ninco uses a simpler way. Ninco uses so called dead strips, which has nothing to do with naked zombies. A deadstrip is a small piece of track electrically separated from the rest of the track. Instead of being connected to the ordinary track signal, the deadstrips are connected to a voltage level half that of the rest of the track. This voltage level is generated by voltage divider build from two resistors. A car reaching the dead strip recognizes this lower voltage and starts short circuiting the dead strip track with ground in a certain rhythm. The rhythm determines the cars id and whether the lane change button is pressed or not. The low phase (short circuit) tells you whether the button is pressed. The duration of the low phase is nominally 0.5 ms when the button is not pressed. The duraition has a nominal length of 1 ms when the button is pressed. The high phase (no short circuit) gives the cars id. It's duration is nominally 0.5 ms for car 1, 1 ms for car 2 and so on. The car decoders a relatively small, despite haveing a big capacitor to provide energy while on a dead strip. One reason is the use of an ic holding both power stage fets. The driveing fet is rates 3,4 A and the brakeing fet with 4.1 A at 70°C. The rateing does not mean that the fets will be able to deliver a current so high. A thermal overload may destroy the fets much earlier. This depends on the design and frequencies used not only on the current draw. For that reason I can not specify a real maximom current. The PWM frequency is 122 Hz. That's very low. The controllers I have show front and rear lights support, but no break lights support. The lights can be switched on and off from the black box, but only for all cars at once. |
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Cross change from below. |
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Lane changer Cars transmit their id and whether the lane change button is pressed on dead strips as decribed above. The harware conditioning of the signal is more complicated than the consecutive interpretation in software. And so we will find electronics with a number of resistors, diodes, capacitors and operational amplifiers but only a little processor with the fitting name Tiny. The tongues of the lane changer will be set as soon as a correct signal is received and they will be reset after a very short time without any further feedback. Pit stop lane The pit stop lane constists of 4 parts:
So the question is: What's so special ?. And that's simple to answer: Nothing. All the work is done by the blackbox. The pit stop track is connected via seperate cable with the blackbox which holds all the electronics and does all to do. In contrast to the other solutions the fuel is consumed all the time and is not dependend on the throttle setting. When you select a number of oblige stops the powerbas calculates a consumption and decrements the fuel level at fixed intervals accordingly. Fuel consumption is alway the same regardless of speed, even when standing still. Lap counter with and without tower The powerbas measure time and counts laps. That's it. There is an additional tower track, which is a tower and a track piece to mount it on. All the tower does is displaying information it reads from the data strem off the track. The tower adds no options or functionality it just displays data. The end There can only be one, and that's the powerbase, no argueing here. Even the pit stop lane is nothing more than a subject to his majesty the powerbase. The most positive aspects are that you get a complete system just by buying the powerbase and that cars are easily converted to digital, because of the small decoders and because there is no need to drill a hole into the car for any IR led.
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