Hardware and Software Design of a Wireless Electronic Controller for Digital Slot Car Applications

摘要

The main objectives of this Master of Science Thesis project are the design, development and implementation of an innovative wireless electronic controller for digital slot car applications. A slot vehicle is an electrical powered model that is guided by a groove or slot in the track on which it runs. The slot controller designed allows an accurate control of the change lane, brake and throttle actions in slot vehicles and it resolves the present problems of commercial slot car controllers. This project focuses on the complete development of the electronic hardware interface dedicated to control digital slot vehicles. The development was performed using an elec-tronic platform that combines a low cost and high performance microcontroller, which is equipped with conditioning electronics necessary to achieve the adjustment of slot vehi-cles parameters. The control interface, conditioning electronics and the necessary elec-tronics for wireless communication are topics to considerer.The development of the system software is also broached in this project, which is re-sponsible for providing different driving modes possibilities for users depending on the performance required by the characteristics of each slot racing circuit. For this develop-ment, the main slot car controllers on the market have been analysed and the most com-mon components in the multifunction control units of the circuits to perform a design that implements a microcontroller, which gives intelligence and enables to have an ad-vanced control in digital slot car systems.The complexity of the project carried out is clear because it involves starting from scratch in research and the use of a large number of knowledge of different subjects and the real demonstration of proper operation. It is noteworthy that despite develop a good theoretical basis of the problem to be solved, its proper functioning in practise presents additional difficulties with respect to the theoretical model developed. The results have been satisfactory to achieve the proposed tasks from the beginning. The slot controller has a colour screen that provides an intuitive interface with the placement of the push buttons. The wireless communication allows more independence and differ-ent driving modes give to the controller new features never seen in previous slot car sys-tems. The best reward is the development of a Master’s Thesis project that has interest to the people.