Carrera 26732 Digital w/NCE Chip

[ronbok]

I. among what appears to be many folks. have recently encountered some challenges with Carrera. The initial victims of this appear to be people who recently purchased the DTM Furore set. The two cars [ Audi RS 5 DTM R.Frijns #4 and BMW M4 DTM M.Wittman #11 ] that came with the set have a newer NCE MOFSET than any other cars shipped previously by Carrera that used the Alpha Omega chip.

The results of which, that these two cars and probably any new Carrera cars being released are incompatible with the older cars with respect to throttle response when reduced below 100%.

There is a LONG thread on this here: https://www.slotforum.com/forums/ind...3025&p=2291055

This is also a discussion of the details here: http://slotbaer.de/carrera-digital-1...7-blaudek.html

Yet, Carrera is ignoring this issue thus far....and its really disappointing.

I have been in touch with CarreraSlots who have been immensely helpful and put me on a path to be in direct communication with the Sales Manager North America w/Carrera. However, even after lengthy phone discussion with him and several emails, the response from Carrera has been far less than stellar:

"Due to tolerances in electronic components, motors, but also due to mechanical conditions such as different wheel diameters, different speeds can also occur in the same vehicle series. The Digital 124/132 system therefore offers the option of setting each vehicle individually in terms of speed, braking behavior and tank. The 10 levels in each case result in a total of 1000 settings for a single vehicle. This means that vehicles with different speeds or with different driving and braking behavior / petrol consumption can be adapted to one another. You can find details on the settings in the corresponding operating instructions for the system or vehicle."

Anyone else dealing with this issue or have some thoughts on this topic?

[JTK]

I posted about this recently too. I'm pretty pissed. Carrera really dropped the ball on supporting us this time. For now, I've stopped buying their chips or cars and have switched over to Carson chips for my Scalextric cars and Slot.It Oxygen Type C chips for the rest.

[ronbok]

I posted about this recently too. I'm pretty pissed. Carrera really dropped the ball on supporting us this time. For now, I've stopped buying their chips or cars and have switched over to Carson chips for my Scalextric cars and Slot.It Oxygen Type C chips for the rest.

Agreed. I was just explaining this same point to the Carrera Sales Manager myself. If they won't acknowledge nor fix the issue then this was my first and last Carrera purchase. I also explained to him that the response above was no better than one coming from a Tier 1 CSR, let alone his supposed contacts overseas.

The fact that Carrera via CarreraSlots sent me "replacement" cars...the exact same ones for free was a nice gesture, but when I tested them...same exact issue. Same chip NCE chip as well.

I'm off to Scalextric cars and Carson chips for plug & play and I'll keep a few of the older cars around for pace/anonymous usage.

[JTK]

Yep. And I'm super stacked with track pieces, so the cars and decoders were really all I was planning to buy from Carrera in the near future. No big deal. So many other car and chip makers out there.

[b.yingling]

Wow! That response was boilerplate nonsense. They essentially ignored your complaint. Was that email from Carrera Germany, or from Carrera North America?

I am also curious, as I haven't ever seen an answer to this question. While I know the speed settings are nearly worthless on chips with the NCE FET, I am curious how cars with that chip drive? If you set the speed to 10, do you still have good throttle response throughout the range of the controller's travel, or does it drive more like an on/off switch is controlling it? Can you still make the car crawl around the track by applying very light throttle?

[JTK]

Bruce, You've asked me to test that once already. Sorry for the delay. Writing it down this time. I'll try to get to it tonight after my minions are asleep.

[Slotspeed]

Was about to ask the same kind of question, look forward to hearing the response. Very sad to hear as I am fairly loyal to the Carrera brand. I'd offer to fix your decoders but I am in Australia so the postage kills it.

[JTK]

Ok, I ran the test at speed 10. The throttle comes on really strong in the first 16th inch of the range. It was a struggle to give it a small enough smidge of throttle to get through the hard sections of my track without falling off. It was possible, but very difficult.

[ronbok]

Wow! That response was boilerplate nonsense. They essentially ignored your complaint. Was that email from Carrera Germany, or from Carrera North America?

I am also curious, as I haven't ever seen an answer to this question. While I know the speed settings are nearly worthless on chips with the NCE FET, I am curious how cars with that chip drive? If you set the speed to 10, do you still have good throttle response throughout the range of the controller's travel, or does it drive more like an on/off switch is controlling it? Can you still make the car crawl around the track by applying very light throttle?

Carrera North America, Sales Manager North America. He was kind enough and pleasant enough on the phone, but has not gotten back to me after my last reply stating that Tier 1 CSR read off a teleprompter response was useless.

As far as how the NCE chips perform. It's nearly like an On / Off switch by comparison to the AO chipset. You can hardly push the throttle down or you'd be launching the car into next month. 🤣 There's likely a balance I haven't found yet though between leaving the AO chips set around 7-8 or if you're using Smartrace you can get even more granular and putting the NCE chips down around 1-3. Smartrace provides some fine grained % values over the simple CU's 1-10 values. As you can see we're not talking about simple so-called tolerances. 🙄

[Slotspeed]

If anyone wants to send me a faulty chip I will repair it and publish a video or instructions on how to fix it (in the hardware realm) so that those who want to, can deal with it themselves. We've waited long enough for Carrera to do something. All they need to do is release the corrected firmware and the users could have udpated it themselves with a $5 USB ASP programmer! Releasing the firmware is not going to cost them any chip sales as there are already about 4 or 5 commercial aftermarket decoders on the market. It would only save them from lost sales!

[Eric P]

I was hoping this topic would come back around. I've recently bought two cars, Porsche RSR and 917K, they were a disappointment, at least now I know why. Bad characteristics show really quickly on my wood track. A while back, I did some testing. Initially, I thought it was just the cars, but I just checked, they both have the "NEC" chip. Here's a quote from my earlier response on a different thread.

"Some interesting discoveries were made. My test mule was my new Carrera Porsche 917K. Out of the box, in digital with standard wired controllers, it was horrible. Truing the tires helped, but not much. Most of the power seemed to come on by half plunge, making the car hop, chatter and skip all over. Yes, I can turn the power down through the chip, but that limits top speed and will "use more fuel" in the CU fuel mode. A switch to my TrueSpeed controller allowed me to dial out a lot of the power till later, when the car was more up to speed. So, that was an improvement.
Then I ran the car with the Parma. CHEAP controller, way better than the standard Carrera controller. More control down low where an evil handling car needs the most help. It was by feel, about like the True Speed."

At least when using the car in analog, you bypass the chip and the car runs better.

It would be nice if Carrera would do a even swap for correct performing chips.

[b.yingling]

As far as how the NCE chips perform. It's nearly like an On / Off switch by comparison to the AO chipset. You can hardly push the throttle down or you'd be launching the car into next month.

I was fairly certain that would be the case. Thanks for confirming it. The car chip's max speed setting and the CU throttle both have 16 values available. Those two values (the max speed and the throttle) are used to control the motor with a PWM signal.

Rough description: the PWM signal simulates lower voltage by turning the voltage off and on very rapidly. Basically, the chips with the NCE MOSFET don't respond quickly enough, so the voltage gets turned back on before it has had a chance to really turn off. So when the PWM attempts to simulate lower voltage with an NCE chip, it still behaves very much like full voltage.

[DRW-FJ40]

A lot of the technical aspects of this conversation are over my head but I get the gist of it. That said, I just purchased two 26732 chips & put one in a Revoslot and one in a Slot it. I can control the speed in the slot it as I would expect, similar to my older Carrera and Pioneer cars using Carson plug but the Revo is just a rocket even on the absolute lowest speed setting. However, I failed to insulate the Revo's chassis and although it worked after I did, I wonder if my chip was fine and I damaged it although everything works as it should except the speed settings. How can I tell the difference between the two chip sets in question? Since I purchase both at the same time, it seems unlikely but not impossible that the two would be from different batches.

[Eric P]

I just picked up the RS Toyota GT One. How did you mount the chip? Velcro-double stick-physical fastener?

[DRW-FJ40]

Sorry, didn't see this until now. I ended up just using shoe-goo & which is what I now use in RC applications over double sided servo tape. It's just easy...

[ronbok]

As I keep plucking away at this here's what I've found:

1. Forget using the stock Carrera rubber tires, though, truing these will help a tiny bit, but not enough to matter.
2. I ordered some Paul Gage Urethane Tires for each of the cars I own. Trued and installed them.

If you use Smartrace then the following settings seem to get you very close performance, throttle response and lap times between the old and new chips.

The cars I tested were the Audi RS 5 DTM R.Frijns #4 and BMW M4 DTM M.Wittman #11 with the NCE chips and the BMW M4 DTM A. Farfus, #15 with the AO chip.

Setting the NCE chips to 47% and the AO chip to 87% gave me very good results on the DTM Furore set default track layout. I may keep tweaking this a bit and the test is rather subjective. Your mileage may vary, but I'd be interested in someone else doing this exact same thing.

It's also likely that Silicone tires would be different, but I don't have any around yet to compare. I know there's lots of debate between Silicone and Urethane. Some folks even have claimed that Urethane are noisy. I can tell you I'm really, really impressed with the Urethane. Urethane are VERY noisy if you don't true them, so that's probably why some folks think that. However, after truing them the cars are smooth and quiet.

In the image below, you'll see the BMW M4 DTM A. Farfus, #15 with the AO chip @ 87%, the Audi RS 5 DTM R.Frijns #4 with the NCE chip @ 47%. Set this way, both cars average 2.5 - 2.6 second laps and when very carefully/precisely driven I can get them both down to 2.2 - 2.3 second laps. They stay on the track very, very well too. BTW, best lap was 2.133 seconds which is a scale 210mph on this track. 😅

I hope this helps!

[b.yingling]

Virtually all D1XX software out there can address all of the 16 different maximum speed steps available. Well, with the possible exception of X-lap.

[ronbok]

The issue, of course, with all of the above is that it CLEARLY shows how much of a difference there is between the NCE and AO chips. Carrera clearly has an issue here that needs to be addressed with a firmware update.

[b.yingling]

Yea, the problem is the 16 speed steps don't actually exist on NCE equipped chips. And this has been known and discussed by hobbyists since last December. But Carrera still hasn't acknowledged a problem.

Unfortunately, Carrera North America is really not much help. They are a very small operation. I believe when Dave K. was there, they had a total of 5 or so employees. So less now, as he wasn't really replaced. And I'm not sure any of the employees there are even aware that each chip has 16 available speed settings, 16 available brake settings, and 16 available tank sizes. They gave you a marketing blurb about 10*10*10 = 1000.

Carrera Germany (the only place a meaningful decision can be made) has not officially acknowledged a problem. So there really is nothing the New Jersey team can do. We can try to make them aware, and hope.

[b.yingling]

...That said, I just purchased two 26732 chips & put one in a Revoslot and one in a Slot it...... How can I tell the difference between the two chip sets in question? Since I purchase both at the same time, it seems unlikely but not impossible that the two would be from different batches.

Turn the chip over (so you are looking at the switch side) and look at the large, flat, black transistor.

When you buy an individual chip- it may have been in the pipeline for a looong time, and still have the 'good' transistor. When you buy a new car- particularly one just added to the line this year or late last year- you are more likely to get a chip with the bad transistor.

[SlotCat]

Great info for those who want to visual check their car's chips on the digital board in car.

[DRW-FJ40]

Turn the chip over (so you are looking at the switch side) and look at the large, flat, black transistor.

When you buy an individual chip- it may have been in the pipeline for a looong time, and still have the 'good' transistor. When you buy a new car- particularly one just added to the line this year or late last year- you are more likely to get a chip with the bad transistor.

Thank you Bruce. I will check and update the thread with my findings. I purchased both of them from LEB at the same time so... I'm thinking they are a fairly high volume Carrera dealer & it's a common chip and it seems odd I would get one good and one bad but... symptoms fit the description. I appreciate everyone's knowledge here. It really is helpful.

[DRW-FJ40]

My Revoslot chip is NCE... I haven't looked at the Slot it yet but I'm guessing at this point I got 1 of each. Very disappointing how Carrera is handling this. I've dealt with them on a warranty replacement of some wireless controllers years ago when Dave Kennedy was working for them and I was very happy with the support.

[edmagner]

Just catching up with this topic...have still been working through all of this until today - now joining the ranks of the furloughed, so more time for slots

Is this comparing a running change they have made on the new smaller 26732 chip or just the difference between the new one and the larger old style chip?

[JTK]

Hi Ed! Sorry about the furlough. We're discussing the latest revisions to the the newer smaller d132 decoder.