Mag racing. Has anyone tried this system?

I have been following this tread with great interest. It's good to see new developments and other ways to enjoy the hobby. I don't think you can compare it with the analog lane changing systems that were for sale in the 70's and 80's, f.e. Carrera Servo. The big difference is that with the Servo system you could change lanes at any place on the track, not at certain points only. Even the current digital system don't offer this possibility.

However, a car following an, invisible, metal line in the track is not really new. The Faller Car system uses more or less the same idea, also using a magnet in front of the car to stay on track. Of course the Faller system is not meant for racing and the cars (truck and busses mostly) run around independently (more or less, I don't know all the option you can get nowadays) since is was used as an addition to the scenery for a rail road track. So Mag racing can not be seen as something completely new but more as an evaluation from systems already on the market giving the opportunity to actually race the cars against each other. I do wonder if this system is not breaking any patents owned by Faller

Here a small video, regretfully the comment is in German but still it give a good insight in the system:

Faller Car System

QUOTE (slotticar @ 6 Mar 2013, 11:30) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>What is the advantage of this plate and why is there a 5 mm gap between the plate and the baseline? I just don't get it.
Is this plate mandatory or is it just a fast way to joint 2 wires on a lanechange?

I don't use the plates, I tested and found out that if I use a unbroken wire to the turning direction and a new wire for the straight connection the cars can still find there way.

On my track I can pass the lanechange with full speed and with very low speed, doing nothing the car will go straight over, or using the steering wheel te car will turn.

here a video to illustrate with low speed (using only 2 hands to hold the camera and drive the car + steering)

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/DCpn2caf_bY?rel=0

the only issue is that the wires has to be in the same level.

@Bigtone:
The track can be made sectional, I do that, and the best part is that I can put up the track in less than 5 min. and the 'slots' don't has to be 100% in front of each other like in slotcar, because the magnet wont hit the other plate, it just drive over and if the plates is within 3 mm. to one side the magnet will keep following the wire. I found out one day where the 2 section test track was just dropped on the floor and one of the drivers accidentally kick to one plate, we had a gap of 5 mm between the plates and 3 mm. to one side, but the cars keep going

The feeling driving these cars is just like keeping the car in the slot, but yes the speed is slower, but I think its feel right. most slotracers in our club started out with your feeling, but changed after testing it.

Disappointed by the heat under collars evident in this thread.

For goodness' sake chaps, they're all only toy cars!

Whether it's fabulously detailed scale models, devices that go so fast a normal person can't see them,or fancy digital jiggery-pokery, we are all different in what floats our particular boat.

MAGracing looks like something new and ingenious that,let us hope, is here to stay.

I have helped to build a small test track. We did it in two days.It wasn't expensive because it didn't involve heavy-gauge MDF.No routing was necessary.A shallow groove for the wire was cut using a modified Dremel saw attachment(no more than £30 - even in B&Q).

Even with only one car,it was satisfying to learn how to make lane changes - but whilst it's quick to learn the basics of control,enough mastery to win a tactical race with up to 16(!) other cars would take much longer.

It's obviously not the same as slot racing, and for many won't replace it.It will probably never be a "bought-on-a-whim"present from Santa.
But for many motor racing enthusiasts it will provide a challenging and satisfying alternative.

To see how good it can be,take a look at Oldslotracer's site, and see what he has to say about it; also,look at Magracing on You-tube.

. . . and relax and have fun !

Speaking only for myself, I've been racing model cars (slot cars on wood tracks) for 40+ years and the MagRacing system is something I've dreamed about for about 39 years.
I followed Wes' progress as much as possible and when he finally made the system available, I jumped on it. I started with 2 cars and built a little test track and soon realized it had more potential than I had hoped.
I now have 10 cars and a bigger test track, and we've been running on it for the past 5 weeks. I've learned a lot from this and a new and bigger track is in the works.

We have a very active slot car club, and all of us have invested many dollars and much time in our collections, so we're not going to give up on slot cars. Every Friday night we race on a 3 lane Targa slot track, a single lane Hillclimb and at the end of the night we set up the MagTrack for about a one hour race. The MagTrack sits on top of the Targa track and takes less than 3 minutes to set up.

The scoring on the Targa is according to how you finish in each race (12 races for every driver per night). The Hillclimb is scored by total elapsed time for 4 runs (everyone has to drive the same car) and the MagRacing is scored by your total laps (5 minute heats in each car), so we get a full variety of races in one night.

Only 3 guys at a time can race on the Targa and the single lane Hillclimb is run at the same time, but once we set up the MagTrack, up to 16 guys can race at the same time. If I was new to the hobby, I would go straight into MagRacing.

Here's a video clip of 8 cars on the test track. Did this when most guys were new to MagRacing and they're trying to drive them like slot cars

Very impressive, I really like the idea.

One question though: could it be setup like a digital BLST track so the car automatically follows the ideal racing line and one just has to steer away from it when overtaking

I guess that is what I am looking for right now but I'm not sure if it can be implemented easily.

Hi

This may be a long post, so I hope you take time to read as there are a few of us here thinking along the same lines. (excuse the pun!)

Any ideas I post here will be considered open source, released under the GNU licence and free for anyone to use (as are all my projects on my website). Feel free to comment and pick apart any ideas or any patent pitfalls as I really don't want to step on anyones toes or affect their ability to make an honest buck.

My Helium Frog website details some trials with DCC control of cars which were a bit of a failure, but were good learning for what I propose as the method is very similar in concept. There is a video in the slot car section of DCC control of a 1/43 scale mini. The throttle response was slow, but by using rf data transmission and a microcontroller, this lag would be eliminated.

I have been doing some research into MAGracing and have just bought my first car. I have also been reading the patents that cover the system that Wes has taken out. It appears that the patents only cover the use of a metal plate for lane changing. Keld in a post above has found a way to lane change without this and I have also thought of a few ways to use wire configurations such as "Y" shapes and the use of slightly thinner wire at the junctions to reduce the magnetic attraction a little to enable the cars to switch lanes.

A further idea would be to use three magnets. One either side of the main magnet which can toggle up and down and pull the car to one side using a short parallel wire section at the junction. Two simple solenoids would be used in the car to control this. It may also be possible to control the car without direct steering control, the centre magnet is just used to turn the steering when following the wire, not for driving the car to an alternative route.

There has been a few suggestions to use an arduino microcontroller to make a similar system (I believe MAGRacing uses PIC microcontrollers) and I have also done some work before on this. My suggestion would be to go for the following items to make up a system.

Wired hand controllers to a common base unit similar to scalextric digital. The base unit has an arduino mega controller (£20) and one 433MHz or similar RF transmitter(£2) which transmits to all cars. Each car has a Rf receiver (£2) and a small arduino pro micro (£9) in the car. These are tiny and I am pretty confident they can be made to fit in a 1/32 scale car. Wes has a patent on using magnets to retain a battery, but I have also considered using a 3.8v phone battery (about £5) fitted under the car Tesla style! chassis would be rapid prototyped using DLP printing. I am just gearing up to buy one of these units (£3000 currently but falling in price).

Using a single base station avoids using a decoder as all the cars receive all the data (as NMRA DCC protocol) and software in the car microcontroller filters out the information it needs from the data packet. A single base station also enables the mega to be programmed to simulate fueling, engine problems and handicap racing etc. The beauty of such a system is that both car and base station can be updated with new software as needed via the mini USB port on the microcontroller PCB. The vehicle software could even enable change of car ID using a keypad on the base station. For example each car software has a unique 4 pin code which you type in followed by the car ID. All pretty simple to do in software.

I hope this stimulates discussion.

QUOTE (martinprice2004 @ 23 Oct 2014, 12:05) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hi

This may be a long post, so I hope you take time to read as there are a few of us here thinking along the same lines. (excuse the pun!)

Any ideas I post here will be considered open source, released under the GNU licence and free for anyone to use (as are all my projects on my website). Feel free to comment and pick apart any ideas or any patent pitfalls as I really don't want to step on anyones toes or affect their ability to make an honest buck.

My Helium Frog website details some trials with DCC control of cars which were a bit of a failure, but were good learning for what I propose as the method is very similar in concept. There is a video in the slot car section of DCC control of a 1/43 scale mini. The throttle response was slow, but by using rf data transmission and a microcontroller, this lag would be eliminated.

I have been doing some research into MAGracing and have just bought my first car. I have also been reading the patents that cover the system that Wes has taken out. It appears that the patents only cover the use of a metal plate for lane changing. Keld in a post above has found a way to lane change without this and I have also thought of a few ways to use wire configurations such as "Y" shapes and the use of slightly thinner wire at the junctions to reduce the magnetic attraction a little to enable the cars to switch lanes.

A further idea would be to use three magnets. One either side of the main magnet which can toggle up and down and pull the car to one side using a short parallel wire section at the junction. Two simple solenoids would be used in the car to control this. It may also be possible to control the car without direct steering control, the centre magnet is just used to turn the steering when following the wire, not for driving the car to an alternative route.

There has been a few suggestions to use an arduino microcontroller to make a similar system (I believe MAGRacing uses PIC microcontrollers) and I have also done some work before on this. My suggestion would be to go for the following items to make up a system.

Wired hand controllers to a common base unit similar to scalextric digital. The base unit has an arduino mega controller (£20) and one 433MHz or similar RF transmitter(£2) which transmits to all cars. Each car has a Rf receiver (£2) and a small arduino pro micro (£9) in the car. These are tiny and I am pretty confident they can be made to fit in a 1/32 scale car. Wes has a patent on using magnets to retain a battery, but I have also considered using a 3.8v phone battery (about £5) fitted under the car Tesla style! chassis would be rapid prototyped using DLP printing. I am just gearing up to buy one of these units (£3000 currently but falling in price).

Using a single base station avoids using a decoder as all the cars receive all the data (as NMRA DCC protocol) and software in the car microcontroller filters out the information it needs from the data packet. A single base station also enables the mega to be programmed to simulate fueling, engine problems and handicap racing etc. The beauty of such a system is that both car and base station can be updated with new software as needed via the mini USB port on the microcontroller PCB. The vehicle software could even enable change of car ID using a keypad on the base station. For example each car software has a unique 4 pin code which you type in followed by the car ID. All pretty simple to do in software.

I hope this stimulates discussion.

You have some interesting ideas there. I think you should start this up as its own topic in this section. I've been reading through your site and some interesting stuff up there. I was looking at using DCC and Arduino to not control cars, but to create an "ID Programing" station for Scaley Digital. You put your car on a special strip, press what ID you want to set the car to, and voila, you are ready to set the car on the track and get racing.

Good luck with the magless system. It sounds really interesting, but unfortunately I already have a good chunk of cash sunk into SSD, so I'm not really looking to make a change at this point.

Heath

That would be great. Looking forward to trying it out.

Chris

Good to find that we now have somewhere on this forum to discuss slotless racing.
Magracing has a small problem at the moment in that the rf modules we use have been replaced. The new ones will need expensive
re-programming unfortunately. Once this has been sorted, we will be back in business. Meanwhile I have been playing with possible
improvements. Whilst the run times with the AAA cells are fine (15 to 20 minutes), I have been looking again at the larger CR123
cells. I originally discounted these as being too large for the short wheelbase cars which we kicked off with but now I think it would
be possible.
The main advantage would be easier availability. These can be purchased in most countries. They are also shorter in length which
means that the chassis could be narrower. We have had problems with AAAs having non magnetic contacts and the new prototype
has spring contacts instead of magnets.
Having 40 minutes run time also can't be bad (although races would have to be even longer if we wanted to have pit stops to change
batteries!)
The car shown has an adjustable chassis which, many will say, is long overdue!