Frustrated with TrackMate...

[eAddict]

Mine just starting doing the same thing the last 2 races. In the middle of a heat the timing would jump down to 0 sec and complete the heat. Not sure how to debug it. Guess I will contact TrackMate now too...

[turbokev]

Just as a follow up to this... Dan shipped me a complete new setup with the newer black controller board and the cable that terminates in USB instead of serial..

It'll be here next week and hopefully that will put this issue to bed.

Kudos to Dan at Trackmate for his willingness the replace parts long after the sale to make sure it all works~!

[RichD]

There is now a new version of the Trackmate software, that is 740, it is available from the Trackmate Beta site. There is one glitch that we have seen with Trackmate, if you run with track calls and have one with less than five seconds to go in a heat the rotation can't be advanced to the next heat. At that point you have to restart the heat from the beginning. The problem does not happen every time, but we try to avoid those track calls. With that issue in mind I ran two dummy races using the new version of Trackmate and had track salls with less than five seconds to go. Out of six tries, four being with one second to go, the glitch did not occour. I will be doing a day's worth of racing at my place on Sunday, we shall see what happens then.

[turbokev]

Last update.. Problem is resolved.

Dan sent me a new black board controller, power supply, USB cable, dead strip cable, and the reversible lap timing mini board.. all no charge.

I installed everything and it couldn't find the Com port.. Harry gave me a link to the USB black board drivers that were not on my older CD,
and once installed everything started working perfectly. I've put hundreds of laps on the track using different cars, different voltages, and
different controllers and I've not had one single glitch.. It is so nice to have reliable track timing again..

OUTSTANDING customer service from Dan on this issue.. talked me through different scenarios to try, and when it still wouldn't work, he
sent me all new stuff even though I purchased my setup many months ago.. Great company (guy) to deal with~

Kev

[RichD]

I'm glad that you finally got your problem resolved. During the races that I mentioned we did encounter the glitch when there was a track call just as time ran out. We did figure out a way to avoid losing the heat. We recorded the laps for the racers, aborted the heat and ran it again with no cars moving. At the end of the race we added the missing laps for the racers in the aborted heat. It has been suggested that the glitch is caused by some sort of interference due to the track call button, rather than from the software. If I recall correctly we have seen the glitch when the space bar was used for track calls.
One more issue with Trackmate is the way that it resolves ties if you run timed heats. It seems like Trackmate breaks ties based on who had the lowest lap time for the last completed heat or maybe the lowest lap time for the entire race. In some cases that is not accurate, so we always mark where the cars have finished and double check any ties. The program that we used to use when we raced 1/24th cars had a pop up screen when a racer finished his last heat where the track section could be entered. Dan said some time ago that this feature would be included in a future version of Trackmate. Since cars can finish very close together it is still best to mark your finishing positions.