Compatibility of oXigen and Carrera D132 Options

[Slot.it]

Hi all.
I am Maurizio Ferrari of Slot.it and I'm posting to this group for the first time. Actually I should have probably done it before.
I just realized that the following information is of interest for all Carrera D132 users, not only oXigen customers.

As some of you you may know, since a few months ago it was already possible to use oXigen chipped cars on Carrera D132 as well as Scalextric SSD. 'Use' means racing an oXigen chipped car driven by an oXigen controller, together with Carrera chipped cars, lap counting and lane changing included, on a complete Carrera D132 system. To find out how this could be made without any use of Carrera technology, please read page 17 of the the oXigen manual:
http://www.slot.it/Download/oXigen/Manuals...iptionO2.en.pdf

I am very pleased to inform you that compatibility between Carrera D132 and oXigen (Slot.it digital), and Scalextric Sport Digital, has leaped forward.

So far, to run on Carrera D132 (or Hornby SSD) the chip had to be programmed to work in either oXigen, SSD or D132 using a PC, and the dongle. In other words, this required a complete oXigen system, dongle included, and access to the PC.

From now on, switching between systems becomes as easy as pressing a button. A combination of button press on the SCP-1 controller during ID setup, and you can switch your car between oXigen, SSD, and D132. Absolutely no other system in the world can do this: the same chip can run on D132, SSD and oXigen as well, and you can change system on the fly.

For example: do you already have a Slot.it SCP with a digital cartridge and use it on SSD or Carrera? With the oXigen cartridge you can use any oXigen chipped cars on the same track, together with SSD or D132 cars, and race them all together. Wireless, if you wish. No dongle or other oXigen software needed.

Note that as the oXigen chip knows nothing about the Carrera or SSD rail protocol, O2 cars don't react to start/stop/fuel changes. But for lap counting and lane changing, it works very well.

Regards
Maurizio Ferrari

[Jono]

I think this is a great advance.

For me one of the biggest hurdles in moving to digitial was deciding which of the non-compatible proprietary systems to choose. If all the suppliers could agree to standardise protocols the market would surely open up. At least there should be the possibility of adding vendor-neutral inter-operability.

Look at how the www took off once browser vendors agreed to implement vendor-neutral specifications.

Closed-proprietary systems will become obsolete.

Jono