I'm looking for some instructions or a guide in building some starting grid lights like you see at F1 circuits. Anybody ever come across such an animal on the net?

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That’s a pretty old article on Daniels website. There’s a detailed break down on my track site in the “HO Tech” section (http://www.supervipersystems.com/VargoSpeedway/HO_Tech/LEDTower/ledtower.html) and that explains how the timing tower came about. There are also basic electronic schematics to show how to build the control board for the LEDs.

The tower was fun to build and the electronics were a real challenge. By far the most complicated and cool electronic thing I’ve ever built. Not only does the tower include infra-red LED light senders for the sensors in the track below, but it also contains 24 LED’s for the starting lights. Making it removable was another big challenge but it works. There was a topic here talking about that wacky “gravity timer” (http://www.supervipersystems.com/VargoSpeedway/HO_Tech/gravitytimer/gravitytimer.html) that I built and that was the real basis for what Ligier wants to do. Before I found Daniel at TrakMate (http://www.infoserve.net/oss/slotcar) about 7 years ago, I wanted starting lights for my track and that was one of the first experiments. Once I purchased TrakMate and saw it started races with the sequential speaker beeps, I had an idea that if TrakMate could output audio signals, the signals could also drive LEDs through transistors. Daniel and I worked together for a couple of months and came up with a really cool system. It is a one off custom deal though written specifically for my track. I think he charged me @ $100 additional to my original purchase of TrakMate, which included building the custom parallel port plug and wiring harness. Daniel and I talked about creating this version and possibly offering the plans for the electronics but never did. He sent me schematics for the extra 8 wire computer lead to drive the transistors and LED’s and then apparently lost his copy of the wire color codes and transistor arrangement. I have recently found all these old notes when I moved last summer and have been meaning to contact Daniel again.

You could build your own Formula One sequential lights very similar to my arrangement without a track timing program. It could be built with IC timer circuits fairly easily. Radio Shack sells a great electronics beginner book where I learned a lot about IC timer circuits. Being a hot rodder, my starting lights are more like a drag strip, but you could do it with the red lights like F1. If you wanted a system that is also connected to your track timing, you could contact Daniel at TrakMate and ask him if he would be interested in selling another version of his software like the one he wrote for me years ago. He probably still has the code. The only drawback to my software was it was never included in software updates. It is a very old version of TrakMate called “Vargo16.exe” and operates in DOS.

If you were serious about doing the F1 lights I could probably help you. Doing this with a stand alone IC circuit arrangement might be fun! :thumbsup:

-Scott

Thanks so much for that! *tips his hat*

I don't know that I wanted to go that "deep" and extensive with my lights but that is fascinating and quite unique for sure. I will most certainly and gratefully use what knowledge you have shared to do something of my own.