Ok the Lane Brain has four outputs for the solenoid drivers and another 2 for liven flipper, thats 6 so far. Then we have four drivers for the LED beacons. Plenty of outputs and 1 wireless input.
Wireless comms from Scorpius RMS to LB tio trigger start lights. Power off rails. Problem is another dongle would be needed as currently we dont need to send anything currently from PC to LB. And the LB doesnt have any USB inputs
False start detection is by Scorpius RMS. We have throttle data on each car now so if car transmits PWM over 0 before the stsart a penalty is awarded. These will be stop/go or timed penalties in the pit bay. You will have 3 laps to serve your penalty or you get disqualied. So once a penalty is set the rule the car should come in to pit. So the rule will be the system must detect say LB ID #17 followed by a 0 throttle value for say 10 m/s minimum. Once that happens the penalty is removed.
However to achieve cars throttle data we are now asking car to send and receive simultaneously. Something we havent done before. A specially written program shows the data coming in through the dongle including brake PWM, lane 1 or lane 2 ID, LB ID, change or no change command. Initial testing with 2 or 3 cars still gives perfect resolution to cars (ie control). Although I have no idea with 24 cars. The maths show data collisions are rare and retransmitted immediately regardless.
LB has 4 LEDS for 4 lanes lapcounting too. So that will cover a typical 2 lane track with pit lane and pit bays, (4 lanes).
Because there is a beacon for each pit bay, these can be used for segmental speed traps through pit lane. You would enter the physical distance between beacons and nominate the LB ID. So the system says if a car goes under x amount of seconds between say LB 7 and LB 8 then a penalty is issued to that car ID. Basically with our new channel 25 program we know exactly what every car is doing, which LB it last passed and when, which lane it is in, if it to change lanes or not, throttlevand brake data. Theres not much we wont be able to do. The issue here is lapcounting is currently on its own deicated channel to keep it clean. If I want to keep this luxury and run any program that needs channel 25 (ie real fuel, sector timing, calibrated pre recorded ghost cars) then another dongle is required
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Everything can be jammed on 2 0r 3 channels, but sacrifices, albeit small would have to be made. This decision is still to be made. Its a trade off between accutracy and the price of an extra dongle. In any case 2 lots of car chip firmware could be available, one for home use, another for competitions, ie, receive only. If receive only fuel could still be on the RMS, but just not related to actual energy use.
We have 2 more channels left, channel 26 and 27...... 27 will be for ghost cars and safety car.
Rick
