Our AMBrc's were wired to the batteries rather than the PCB. The transponders worked consistently for us, but would stop counting while the car still had plenty of juice left so you had to pay careful attention to the beeps during longer races.
We did have a few cases of transponders going bad and failing outright.
Later, most of us switched to the PTX which is a much smaller and less power hunger transponder. They also cost considerably less: http://www.rclaps.com/
These worked fantastic! The low power use meant we didn't miss laps unless someone pushed their car to near empty during a stint, and the small size (we got the smallest 'shrink wrap' version) allowed it to fit just about anywhere.
However, for some reason we've never been able to determine, our AMB's and PTX's began to gradually fail one by one. A transponder would miss a few laps, then more and more each race day. And at first it was just one transponder, then more and more until we couldn't reliably run a race.
So we finally gave in and switched to Giro-Z. This has also proved highly reliable. The transponders are about as small as a PTX, though must be mounted under the window since they are IR. Their power drain is negligible. We tested by running cars until they no longer had enough power to move, and the transponder still counted! You can't beat that for reliability. (These are also wired to the battery terminals).
(Note: My PTX also worked fine in my 1:10 scale TC-4).
got it off a japanese site. it shows cars using the ics socket and a plug to power an arc type transponder on an ad band car (top) and an improvised diy - using a rx crystal on an asf car (bottom)... i suspect they use an arc lapcounter (which i bellieve is quite popular over there)
the arc system picks up your laptime via the 27mhz am frequency which is or rather was the standard when mini-z's first came out... since ad band and 2.4ghz cars operate on a different frequency, they need to transmit 27mhz am for the arc system to read their laptime... thus their tranponders transmit the 27mhz frequency...
thing is you have to know which is the (+) & (-)...
what's the (+) and (-) on the asf board? would appreciate it if anybody can post the (+) & (-) orientation on the ad and asf cars...
fabu...and how would you rate the robitronic lapcounter sytem? what software are you using? does the robitronic transponder drain the batteries, and do you experience any missed laps? sorry for kinda being off topic...
After doing some research and getting some GREAT advice from http://www.rclapcounter.com I wired the last 2 pins (from rear of car) of my ICS port to my transponder using the plugs from the site. I use i-Lap transponders (the black wire on the rear most pin and the red wire to the second last pin) and it works flawlessly. I've always wanted to get the cleanest connection possible to my transponders without hardwiring it to the battery terminals and now I've got it. I can also move the transponder to either of the 3 cars I own. BTW they sell the 4 pin ICS plugs also. The folks at i-Lap rock! Seriously.
After doing some research and getting some GREAT advice from http://www.rclapcounter.com I wired the last 2 pins (from rear of car) of my ICS port to my transponder using the plugs from the site. I use i-Lap transponders (the black wire on the rear most pin and the red wire to the second last pin) and it works flawlessly. I've always wanted to get the cleanest connection possible to my transponders without hardwiring it to the battery terminals and now I've got it. I can also move the transponder to either of the 3 cars I own. BTW they sell the 4 pin ICS plugs also. The folks at i-Lap rock! Seriously.
so i figure the black wire is (-)neg and the red wire is (+)? the pic i posted (from a japanese site) also shows the black wire of the transponder on the rearmost pin and a white wire connected to the second to the rearmost pin... just need somebody to confirm this... thanks
You are correct, the rear most pin is negative and the second pin moving from rear to front is positive. We run our Robitronics transponders this way and it works great.
are there any issues with the robitronics lapcounting system i.e. missing a counted lap? or any notice of faster battery drain? what software do you use with it? thanks in advance...
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