I've tried the digital sets and I thought they were a lot of fun, but it's really a different sort of game than traditional straight-up slot car racing. Digital slot car racing is really a "tweener" between traditional slot car racing and slotless racing, which debuted 30+ years ago. Digital appears to be garnering a better following than slotless, so it may survive where slotless essentially failed. Although the future of digital slot cars looks bright it is not without its problems.
There is nothing technically advanced or sophisticated about digital slot cars. They use the same technology strategy that's been in widespread use for decades in control networks, from home and office automation networks X10 and LonWorks to industrial automation networks like HART and CAN-bus. All of these involve superimposing a control signal on top of or alongside a power bus. Traditional slot cars work just like traditional building or plant automation, to turn something on or off you turn the power going to the device on or off, or vary the voltage or current level between the controller and the device, i.e. analog control. With a control network the power is always on, but there is a separate control signal that is sent from the controller to the device telling it to turn on or off, speed it up, slow it down, or do any number of things. Control networks allow for a lot more intelligence between the controller and the device, and that's where the real power in the system exists. In a digital slot car system the device is of course, the car.
One of the problems faced by digital slot cars is exactly the same problem faced by control networks: a lack of and/or multiple competing standards. Unlike traditional on/off or analog voltage or current control once you place intelligence in the device you need a "language" or "protocol" to allow the controller to talk to the device. Part of this protocol involves the physical attributes of the control strategy, like what voltage and current levels are used for powering the device, the type of wiring layout used, the way the control signal is placed on the wire/bus, and the actual signaling mechanism used to convey the control message between the controller and the car. If all this sounds too complicated, just think about your home touch tone phone which uses the same exact technique in a way that you can actually relate to because you can hear it! When you press the keys on your touch tone phone it is encoding a command, the key press, on top of the line carrier as a pulse at a specific frequency. Each key has a specific frequency and the encoding strategy is called frequency shift keying, or FSK. This is digital control and it works great because every phone made follows the same standard. Part of the standard is the physical things like wires and jacks and what phone keys get mapped to what frequencies, or tones. But there is also another layer of protocol on top of the numbers and tones. The additional protocol specifies things like phone numbers, area codes, and how to embed other data like facsimile or dial-up internet information. The important point is that for the system to work across a broad range of products from multiple vendors everyone has to agree on the standard way to do things and standard protocols. This is where control networks and digital slot car systems fall short. Everyone is doing their own thing and there is not open interoperability between competing systems. The last thing I would want to see is a digital HO system from Tomy AFX that is incompatible with a digital HO system from Life-Like and AutoWorld. The HO market, and I contend the 1:32 market, is not big enough to support multiple competing digital standards. There must be 100% compatibility across all digital tracks, controllers, power units, track extenders, and cars. Anything less is going to further fragment the market and decrease participation. If the 1:32 digital market can get its act together, only then will it serve as a model for what a digital HO system might be.
That being said, there's still a lot of untapped potential in the analog systems. Digital systems are all about putting more intelligence in the system to allow new and exiting race formats to be created. With current digital systems this involves running multiple cars on the same lane and allowing lane changes. However, there are other forms of intelligence that can be pulled into analog systems through the use of smarter race management and race format control using technology already available in analog systems. The greatest opportunity for analog racing exist in the powerful computers that most modern setups have sitting there doing the trivial tasks of counting and timing laps. Using a PC to count laps and time laps is nice, but it can do so much more. Better systems like TrackMate do a pretty good job of local race management, but they are still barely scratching the surface versus what they could be doing.
With no additional hardware needed, a better race management system would not only count & time laps and manage the race day functions, it would also manage the whole race series and coordinate all season statistics and standings across all tracks in all track locations that are part of the series. This information could feed up into state, regional, and national level racing series. If a racer from one series shows up at a race in another series, all of his data should be available and integrate seamlessly into the local racing scene. Yeah, the stats from one series may be somewhat meaningless in another, but having a national database of racer statistics and track statistics and a way to drop any racer into a race anywhere would build a better sense of community and commonality. In other words, help establish a standard and improve interoperability through common data, common formats, and common rules.
With some minor additional hardware, including additional per-lane sensors, per-lane lights, and per-lane power on/off control, an analog system could be setup to enforce a "gas mileage" and "required pit stop" racing format on top of the traditional fixed lap or fixed time formats.
1) Each lane would be equipped with a "pit box" which consists of 2 sensors that are readable by the computer. One sensor detects when the car is in the pit box and the other detect when it leaves the pit box.
2) The race management computer would keep track of the mileage for each car (laps run) and require the car to be in the pit box for a designated time to "refuel."
3) An additional light would be placed at each drivers station and it would flash when a pit stop is required. Once the light starts flashing the race management computer would enforce either a fixed or random number of laps before the car is out of fuel. The race coordinator would decide how the warning light to empty transition occurs.
4) The amount of fuel added would be based on the time the car stays in the pit box, so it's not just a fixed time delay to refuel. If you leave early you get less fuel. This allows a pit strategy to be available to the driver. Once the car is full the light would stop flashing.
5) What happens when a car is out of fuel would be a user defined setting in the software. Several options are likely, but at the very least the computer would kill power to the lane. One option could be to leave power off on the lane for the remainder of the heat. Another option would be to leave it off for a fixed period of time, say 20 seconds to simulate the car rolling around. In the case of the timed delay the lane power would come back on and the car would go around to the pit box. If it missed the pit box again, the subsequent
penalty could also be user defined. Maybe on the second miss it's lights out for that lane until the end of the heat, or maybe an even longer time delay.
I realize this is a pretty elaborate discussion, but it is all very doable using the tools and technology we currently have. I'm simply pointing out that there is a lot of life left in the analog world for improvements, none of which involve redesigning the track, cars, or controllers, or limiting interoperability. We've already injected computers into our systems already, we're just not using them effectively. Also keep in mind that the current forms of analog slot car racing are very exciting as they currently exist. The simplicity and the basic formula for competitive slot car racing is time tested and proven and must still be available as other variations are added. Adding incremental changes to analog would breathe more life into it, but we cannot give up anything in the process. Today, moving to digital involve compromises and I would prefer that these compromises be eliminated before we see digital HO.
Since digital is currently limited to 1:32 and 1:43 I would suggest trying to build consensus in the 1:32 forum for a digital forum or subforum.
