by BARC 1 » Wed Dec 07, 2016 1:13 pm
Thanks for the feedback guys. To have onboard sound for every car for most of us would be both an unreasonable amount of time an money.
Personally I am going to have a couple of 132 cars with onboard sound and also have a central system that is tied into each lane. I think the onboard sound will follow the car around the track, and at the same time have good quality sound coming from a 4" mounted speaker in the layout that will be playing the exact same sound synched up to the onboard sound to really provide a nice sounding effect.
The sound board has the ability to have other sound files loaded into it. It is a simple matter of hooking it up to a USD port on the computer and then using the aviailable software to download other sounds into it. So your can Have Porsche, Ferrari, Big Block V8 or whatever. I have built the Porsche file which I used in the Demo and am building a Ferrari file now. Big Block V8 will be on the list as well. My intertest is in Late 60 GT cars so those motors will be the first I do.
The good thing is this is not vaporware. The hardware and the Software already exist and I have used them extensively in RC tanks. I just needed one component built to bring all of this to the slotcar world. This has been designed and built with the prototype heading to me. So this will happen.
Now I told myself I would not yet again make a hobby a business so I am not sure which way to go. I could build and produce a plug and play system, or just do up a DIY Youtube video showing what you need and how to do it. It is simple enough. I could then just provide people with sound files to use at a nominal cost. The cost of each system will not be cheap, and will set you back as much as car would cost, so the reality of having this in every car would be a big commitment of dollars. The trackside option though makes it more palatable, where I guy would buy two or three and call it good.
Another thing I am looking at is bluetooth. So in each car all you would do is mount a bluetooth receiver and small speaker. A bluetooth transmitter could be hooked up to the trackside unit and the sound would be broadcast out to the car. This is much cheaper, as the car only need the bluetooth speaker. This option would only cost about $10/car, and could be just a plug in unit. Basic low power blue tooth has a transmitter range of about 10 metres which is enough to adequately cover most tracks.
Again all this technology and equipment exists. It just needs to be put together by someone, and I have decided that someone might as well be me.
Cheers
Dan