Can you provide any links to these projects?Hi Scott,
There are many projects using line following cars, where you can find lots of information. Using this type of solution, but with the line across the track, so that the car knows where it is, might work.
Camerart.
Definitely not stupid questionsJust to clarify my understanding:
1) The ghost cars already receive digitally encoded instructions from the controller, to set the speed. This signal is delivered via the electrical track that also supplies power.
Correct
2) This communication is one-way - no information is returned from the car to the controller.
Correct
3) The current challenge is how to vary the car's speed depending on it's position on the track. Full variable control would be great but having even 3 speed levels would be a big improvement.
Correct
It seems to me that the car itself must do the translation from the combined position information and controller signal - which will not be changing - into motor speed.
I agree.
Do we know how the digital code from the controller gets translated into the speed setting?
All I know is that there is a digital chip inside each car which receives power and data packets from the track rails via the braids and outputs light control including brake lights and motor speed via variable voltage output.
I guess what I'm asking is, suppose you have solved the position information problem, what then? How would you use this information inside the car?
Sorry if these are overly stupid questions.
It's possible but you probably won't like it. In order to make this look professional, it will have to be done in the way a professional would do it, which would (in every way that I can conceive) require programming and circuit design beyond your admitted abilities. So you will have to drag yourself through a gauntlet of hard knocks learning (hey, it can be fun!), or settle for something that looks like shit, but is beautifully simplistic, like this:There have been some really good but complicated solutions to this. What I am looking for is something that can be put together as a project by the average punter that can read a diagram, solder and owns a slot car track. Perhaps this is simply not possible but I wanted to give it a chance. Simplicity is the key here.
I wouldn't go much further with the position-sensing part - which I consider relatively easy with lots of options - until this question can be answered. If you can't override the speed control, knowing position isn't going to help.... suppose you have solved the position information problem, what then? How would you use this information inside the car?
Human reaction times are usually quoted in the range 0.5s..2s (depending on age, state of rest, amount of alcohol in the blood etc), whereas the bandwidth of eg. the old(ish) ADXL330 is up to 1600Hz, making it 800 times (or more) faster than even the sharpest human driver.Slot cars need to slow down or brake in readiness to take a corner. If the decision to slow down was left until the car began the turn it would almost certainly deslot.
Power braking is giving controlled bursts of reverse power and it's faster than just shunting the motor terminals (only barrier is skidding).[...] In an analog car breaking is controlled by joining the two motor terminals together through a resistor (fixed breaking effort) or a pot (adjustable breaking effort). This is all taken care of inside the analog controller.
Thanks! Any day you learn something new is a good daySoren I believe the term you were looking for to describe an angled/slanted track is "banked"
by Jake Hertz
by Jake Hertz
by Jake Hertz
by Jake Hertz