reading car IR signal for homemade lane change, ssd electronics specs question Options

[moonlock]

Hi All,

I'm embarking on building a wooden track and it's time to sort out the lane changes.

I'm a total electronics newb, but making good headway with understanding what is needed to make it work, 3 main steps.

1) read the car!
2) figure out what to do (lane change yes/no)
3) do it

Steps 2 and 3 are cake (once you've got the bits from step 1) and I've got them sorted. It's the IR that's got me a bit stuck. All I need is a bitstream!!

To get started I got a very simple little IR breakout board. I've been able to read my TV remote, but that's all real easy to figure 'cause it's documented like nuts all over the place. Not a hint of life from the cars, tried ID's 1-4. From what I understand the cars send PWM at different Freqs depending on ID? Generic IR module picks up only on ~36Khz (3.6?)?

Long story short: Anybody built a reader for the cars?

From the post about extending the IR pickup for corners I found the part that works with the existing scaley circuit and grabbed a few. Examining the board in the LC track, it looks like a sensor (photodiode in backwards?) with a resistor (to set it's sensitivity?), and a transistor (to make ttl?). The LC pickup mod seems to use photodiodes, but the two sensors on the track pcb are labelled 't' (t5 and t6?) something... I've managed to get the photodiodes I've got to emit some signal (responding to cars!) but as I can't afford a scope for another month or two it's fricken' hard to nail it down. I've got a buddy that is an electronics whiz, so I can get some help, but any pointers, ideas or previous experience with this would be greatly appreciated!

p.s. Thanks so much to slotforum and it's members for all of the amazing info I've been able to find here!