Car ID/programming during track call

[MrFlippant]

It's not uncommon for a car to fail for some reason. Sometimes it's mechanical or chip-related, but being able to program a car during a track call would be SUPER handy. Not all of us have spare power bases to program cars on when a race is already running, so being able to program a car on the track, during a track call, would be a valuable feature to add, I think.

[GRUNZ]

I agree with you on this one. It has happened to me while racing with others that one of the chip went rouge and needed to be changed while we were through half of the race. The only solution was to stop the race. 

[martin]

Today the APB makes it almost not posible to make this feture, because the timer starts when race starts, Then I got a timestap with a car number and the current time. then I make calculation for laptimes, last laptime minus current laptime. To programcars I have to go into default mode in the APB, and then the Timer reset, so all timing will be lost. BUT I have made a tempoary timer record, I use if the APB at some reason would give a timeout(Powerloss or other tings). When reconnect again it add the temp value, This works. So maybe in the future I will try add programming cars in the trackcall. I lije the Idea, then you dont need an extra powerbase while racing..
I will remember as a future feature..

Martin

[MrFlippant]

If you pop up a warning like "Reprogramming cars may cause some lap timing irregularities" when you click "Program cars" in the Track Call window, that should be good enough. If you already have a system in place for when the base disconnects, and that can be used for this, then I don't see why not.

That said, usually when my APB loses connection, it will keep losing connection after trying to reconnect, and I usually end up aborting the race. I'm happy to help debug that, if it could lead to programming cars during a track call.

[martin]

I know this issue, but I think I have solved it in the next version. I will also test more my self..

[GRUNZ]

Since posting my reply here, it has happened twice that a car has lost its id. And I think it will happen more often over these holidays as I intend to use the track quite a lot. Fortunately, I had another DPR chip with the correct id laying around but I think this feature should be there. We know that Scaley chips with the standard firmware are not reliable at all.