Digital Slotcars

Since they were first released slotcars have been relatively easy to understand – a number of lanes (usually 2 but can be up to 8 in some cases) run parallel to each other around a circuit with a single car on each lane. Any attempt to run multiple cars on one lane would generally overload the power base and would, at the very least, result in the cars running slowly.

 

The technology used is relatively simple, resulting in a wide range of 1/32 scale car makes that can be used on any of the 4 main brands of track.

 

Digital slotcars do not rely on physical separation to control individual cars – a signal is sent out on the track and decoded by the car with the matching ID. Each car has a unique ID and will only decode signals intended for that ID. Depending on the manufacturer anything between 4 and 8 cars can now be run on a 2 lane track. As control of the cars is no longer reliant on physical separation they can also swap from lane to lane (using appropriate lane changers) under control of the driver allowing more realistic racing.

 

However, each car needs a digital decoder chip fitted and these chips have to be appropriate to the digital system in use – some of the simple compatibility has been lost – a car that has a decoder for one digital system will not work with the other systems.

 

Each manufacturer now makes cars that are ready fitted with their digital decoder chip. They also sell the chips separately so that other cars can be converted to run as digital. The complexity of fitting these chips and the ability to fit them to other manufacturers cars varies dramatically.

 

The various digital track pieces all work in differing ways and are not compatible.

 

The four current types of digital slotcar system are: