Carrera Digital Chip Thread- Home for Discussion of OEM & aftermarket D132-D124 chips

[edmagner]

This is a thread for FAQ's and discussion on chips for Carrera Digital. This includes original Carrera chips plus the growing aftermarket of compatible chips including the Carson DPR, Frankenslot, Slot-It/Oxigen, FT Slottechnik and others.

[edmagner]

Placeholder message for Carrera OEM chip comparison - details to follow

[edmagner]

Frankenslot D328 Digital decoder

Frankenslot is a brand name used by Slotcar-Factory from Germany. The owner is Michael Kastner and they are located in Cadolzburg Germany near Nuremburg. They specialize in very high quality parts and accessories for Carrera and other cars. They manufacturer a Digital Wireless with adjustable throttle gain curves as well as an excellent range of replacement guide flags for Carrera, including a kit that has a custom deep guide. for Scalextric cars - hands down the best guide you can put on Scaley DPR car

They have also entered the aftermarket digital decoder chip market with their D328 decoder. It's a little bit unique in that s designed as a replacement for a D124 chip and has 2 detachable wings that can be remove to fit in a smaller space. The LED is shipped loose and needs to be soldered in place. There is a fixed pad if you are using it as a D124 chip or it can be remote mounted for smaller space if you remove the wings . There are light pads to support Carrera lights. There is a reprogramming port on one of the wings for updating firmware. There have been a couple updates and it now supports ghost cars, Soldering is required

The most unique thing about the D328 is that it has 7 programmable throttle curves and 6 programmable braking curves so you can get the performance benefits of a high end adjustable controller with a standard Carrera controller

Here is a link to the website - in German - Google Translate with Chrome works great

https://www.slotcar-factory.de/shop/...ion::6203.html

Here is there wiki page with detailed D328 Instructions - in German - Google Translate with Chrome works great

https://www.wiki.frankenslot.de/anleitung/decoder/d328

And here is a PDF of an English translation of the wiki that I uploaded

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v6ge8gjel46m5o5/instructions_%20decoder_%20d328%20%5BFrankenslot%20Wiki%5D.pdf?dl=0

Pics of the chip installed in D1214 Ford GT

[Scatman]

Do the chips come with the wires?

[Slotspeed]

On the Frankenslot D328... Removable "winglets" for mounting in D124 cars, or can be removed to fit in smaller spaces. Reprogramming port is on one of the winglets so if you remove it updating firmware is a little trickier. The D328 started out as a collaborative project of a few Freeslotter members. Then it was taken offline and developed further in private, since there were only a few people actively collaborating, according to the development thread on Freeslotter. Later released as a commercial product. Essentially a product developed by hobbyists for hobbyists.

[edmagner]

On the Frankenslot D328... Removable "winglets" for mounting in D124 cars, or can be removed to fit in smaller spaces. Reprogramming port is on one of the winglets so if you remove it updating firmware is a little trickier. The D328 started out as a collaborative project of a few Freeslotter members. Then it was taken offline and developed further in private, since there were only a few people actively collaborating, according to the development thread on Freeslotter. Later released as a commercial product. Essentially a product developed by hobbyists for hobbyists.

Steve

Thanks for that background info and clarifications- Lot's of great Carrera energy with the Freeslotter members in Germany...

Somehow when I was posting this, a big piece of what I had written didn't get saved. I guess it timed out because I was taking too long. Anyway, I added the info back into the post above, including an English PDF of the detailed instructions. My thought is to do a post like this for each of the aftermarket chips.

Cheers

Ed

[Vigster]

Hi, I'm very new to the digital slot car world. I purchased a Scalextric Audi R8 equipped with a Carson chip to run on our Carrea 132 track. This car came with two leads to allow the cars lights to run " always on". Carrera says to wire these directly to the lights which I did, but all that works is the brake light function. I'm sure its something I didn't do correctly. However, I cannot find anywhere how to wire these correctly. Can anyone help with info, pictures?

[R/TRandy]

Check out this post by edmanger to check your wiring. The front and rear lights are separated and plugged into different places.
https://www.hrwforum.com/forum/hrw-a...=5755#post5755

Randy

[Vigster]

Thank you Randy. It seems I wired it correctly after all. When I place the car on track to check the connection the front and rear lights will flash once very quickly and the brake lights will work normally. Truly confusing.

[JTK]

A few folks have mentioned some differences with recent production runs of Carrera decoder chips. Myself included. Specifically, I noticed right away that my most recently chipped cars were much faster when the CU is set at Speed 1 as compared to my older cars. I pick up on this stuff because I have a 5 year old and an 8 year old and they still need me to lower the speed so they can keep the cars in the slot. Regardless, my discovery sent me on a bit of a snipe hunt. For longer than I care to admit, I thought the motors in my cars were different. So much so that I bought a digital tachometer and compared all my motors. While that was fun and I did get a new tool out of the investigation, all the motors were pretty darn close to being equal. The mystery remained. As dumb luck would have it, this was right about the time when I tried my first Carson chip. Interestingly, that car ran much slower with the Carson chip when set to Speed 1 than it did with the Carrera chip installed. Shortly after that, I got my hands on a Slot.It Oxygen Type C decoder. Running that in Carrera mode, I noticed it ran even slower than the Carson chip. And then I realized. The chips are different. And I don't mean Carrera, Carson, and Oxyigen are different. That is no surprise. Meanwhile, I've got Carrera chips that run slower on Speed 1 than other Carrera chips. It was time for an experiment.

I'm including all the chip types just because I tested them all. Meanwhile, the difference between 2 Carrera chips was what I was after. And quite surprising too.

My test method was to pop the body off the car, pop the wheels off the car, place it on the track, set speed 1, and measure the voltage while my apprentice held down full throttle.

Here goes:

Slot.It chip sends 3.12 volts to the motor at full throttle on speed 1.


Carrera F1 chip sends 5.09 volts to the motor at full throttle on speed 1.


Carson chip sends 5.43 volts to the motor at full throttle on speed 1.


Carrera D132 chip A sends 6.71 volts to the motor at full throttle on speed 1.


And finally, Carrera D132 chip B sends 9.51 volts to the motor at full throttle on speed 1.


Never minding the rest, I expect the 2 D132 decoders to be much closer than that. One of them is sending roughly 50% more power than the other. What is up with the difference, Carrera?

And just to be comprehensive, I've measured them all at speed 10 as well. See below. Hint, at speed 10 they are all much much closer.

Carson chip sends 13.65 volts to the motor at full throttle on speed 10.


Carrera D132 chip A sends 13.98 volts to the motor at full throttle on speed 10.


Carrera D132 chip B sends 14.00 volts to the motor at full throttle on speed 10.


Slot.It chip sends 14.10 volts to the motor at full throttle on speed 10.


That was fun. 😎

JTK

[JTK]

PS - I forgot to add the Carrera chip versions. Too tired now. Goodnight.

[b.yingling]

JTK: This is a well known problem. The newest Carrera chips (German users first discovered the problem sometime last fall) use a different MOSFET on the throttle circuit of the chip. As a result, the 10 speed settings almost turn in to 2-1/2 speed settings. German Carrera users have been sending their chips and cars back to Carrera, and Carrera has flashed new firmware to the chips that restores some of the 10 speed functionality. However, Carrera still has not officially acknowledged the problem. If you want more information, there is a thread at Slotroum International under their Carrera digital sub-forum. If you don't mind reading a Google translation of German- there is a very long, very detailed sticky thread on freeslotter.de (a German slot car forum) in their Carrera section which includes links to technical investigations that explain what's going on.

[dw5555]

German Carrera users have been sending their chips and cars back to Carrera, and Carrera has flashed new firmware to the chips that restores some of the 10 speed functionality. .

And to think we have problems just getting parts..

[Slotspeed]

JTK, thank you for posting your measurements and results. They are interesting and a nice simple way to quantify the differences, you can't argue with numbers (well some people can but I'll keep to topic)

What Bruce said. Its best to refer the the mentioned threads since its already been shaken out in the mentioned forums.

There is quite a bit of information on the Freeslotter thread, performance curve test results and even a table of cars that have been affected by the new throttle MOSFET. But I would use it as a guide as to which cars are potentially affected rather than an absolute authority. Note that you need to be a member of Freeslotter to be able to see or download the attachments in the threads.

Some forum members of Freeslotter have reported good results from taking on the repair themselves, having acquired their own Alpha Omega D417 MOSFETS and replacing the NCE throttle FET that has a different performance characteristic. (on the 26732 decoder, this is located on the bottom, the switch side) I haven't done this myself so cannot give first hand information on whether this is the only difference in the affected decoders. There may have been members of Slotforum that did the same mod, I can't remember right now and would have to check on that.

[b.yingling]

JTK: While users have described what happens when you set the max speed down on cars with the new chip in them, something I haven't seen discussed is how those cars behave when the max speed is set to the maximum. Looking at your testing above, it seems like the top speed of the car is very similar with new or old chip.

But my question is: how does the car *drive*. Do you still have a fairly full response throughout the controller travel? Or does the new chip cause the car to react almost as if it were controlled by an on/off switch? Can you still make the car crawl around the track with your controller, or is it always near full blast or off?

[Proxie Ken]

Does anyone know if the Carson chip can handle 18 or more volts to run with the D124 cars? I am working on 3D printing a chassis with a DPR door for use as a model car conversion tool. But the Carson chips reads as if max voltage is 14.8. I was asking before I tried it in case it will fry things.

[Bluevista]

It says max 14.8. The new MPL chip has all the Carrera digital chip functions and will do 12-18 volts. I haven't tried one yet but planning on it when I run out of Carrera chips. I keep robbing them from my shelf queens. I guess you could print a door with the hole for the diode or just lose it and print a hole in the chassis.