Scalextric > Reviews > Scalextric Sports Digital Lane Change

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	up to 6 people racing, lane change at will, connects to PC
Disadvantages:	difficult to get accessories

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I bought this at Christmas 2004 'for my 31/2 year old son'; honestly I did :).

'Look', I said to my wife, 'you want the best for your son don't you?'
'Besides', I said, 'it will help him later on in life by teaching him about cars….'

So that's how I justified the expense. ;)

And so on Boxing Day we opened up my new (sorry my sons) new toy :)

First impressions were 'blimey this looks a bit complicated' but when you start putting it together you realise it's not that disimilar to the other scalextric sets and the instructions are dead easy to follow. The main difference is internal and allows you to change lanes at will which I'll come to in a moment.

Set Contents:
The set itself consists of a load of track (straights and curves) which covers an area of about 4sq meters. In terms of total length it's about 61/2 meters. This is plenty to get you started and obviously you can add more tracks later.

In addition to the track it also comes with a couple of Porsche Boxters (one red and one yellow) along with a controller for each car.

There are a few special pieces of track which you will not find in any of the other sets. One is where the power unit is connected via a supplied transformer and there are also 2 special curved tracks that allow the cars to move from one lane to the other and these work in a very similar way to a railway track where part of the metal on the track shifts from one lane to the other and back again. There are also 2 'sensor tracks' that need to be placed immediately before the lane changing curved tracks and it is these sensors that tell the system when to move the metal track to allow a car to change lane.

There is also a section of elevated track which once assembled with the rest allows you to construct a rough figure of 8 circuit with a bridge.

Finally there are some borders with red and white markings on which connect to the track to which are connected plastic fencing which act as crash barriers but these only cover a small part of the track. Additional borders can be purchased separately.

Technical stuff:
Okay so once the circuit has been assembled you plug the connectors in, switch on and away you go. There's no more setting up required you simply start racing. The controllers are analogue. There more you press the trigger button the faster the cars go. Obviously you don't want to go around corners at top speed so it takes a while to get used to the exact pressure required to complete a lap without leaving the track. My now 4 year old son had it figured out fairly quickly. It took me a little more time.

In addition to the trigger button on each controller there are also two buttons at the top which can be reached using your thumb. The default configuration is to have the cars stop when you release the trigger but for advanced drivers you can configure the upper button to be the brake. For intermediate drivers the braking can be achieved by either releasing the trigger or by pressing the upper button.
Just below the brake button is another button. It is this button which along with the lane changing track makes this scalextric set so special. This button when pressed sends a signal to the track telling it that the car being controlled by the controller wishes to change lane. The idea is that you time the pressing of this button to coincide with you car approaching one of the two tracks that have a sensor and if you time it right, the sensor will detect that YOUR car is passing and shift the metal part of the track so that you change lane. Once you pass the lane change section of track, the metal bit moves back to the normal position. This allows for genuine over-taking. This scalextic set is also digital. This means that each car is given a unique ID (1-6) and each controller is configured to work with one car and one car only. This also means that the track can sense which car is passing a given sensor and take action with regards to changing lane only when the car that wishes to change lane approaches the special curved track.

The cars themselves are essentially the same as standard cars and are compatible with other scalextric sets. However they have a special chip inside and some kind of light emitter underneath which communicates with the track. It is this that enables the communication between the car and track.

The power controller connects to the mains via a transformer. A single transformer is capable of providing enough power to control 3 cars. In order have the full set of 6 cars racing around the track you need to purchase a second transformer. This costs about £25. Each additonal car costs around £30 which is about £10 more than a normal car. For £30 you also get a controller. I now have 3 cars as I recently bought an Audi TT so now my wife, son and I can race simultaneously around the track, each changing lane at will. Obviously they would lose interest if I kept winning all the time so I often go round corners at an inappropriate speed and crash my car deliberately to allow them to catch up with me and then beat me….Honest its deliberate.

Racing:
Races are configurable in terms of number of laps, number of cars racing, false starts, Power can be cut automatically when the first car crosses the finishing line. You can have grand prix, endurance, nascar events. You can even set up the cars to behave differently depending on the ability of each driver. E.g. the brake button can be enabled for the experienced driver and disabled for the novice.

Advanced racing:
The scalextric set can optionally be connected to a 'Race Management System' (RMS) which normally costs about £40 but I got mine for £10. This is an extra piece of track with sensors that can be connected to a PC or laptop via a standard serial cable. The software provided with this allows you to design tracks on your PC, it allows you to set up races and the best part is that it allows you to monitor the race from you PC instead of having to look at the rather small LCD screen supplied as standard in the set. On you PC you can download pictures of the people racing, give them proper names (instead of Player 1, 2 etc) and it will store statistics like best lap time and even allow racing championships by heats and keep track of who is yet to race who. You can even setup up pitstops.
Race information is displayed graphically and as new cars are released you can connect to the scalextric web site and download images of them.

Spares:
The thing most likely to break on this is your cars, simply because it is these that are the 'moving' parts. Cars crash, they get mishandled, they leave the track. All this takes it toll on them and it wasn't surprising that after 6 months, one of my Porches stopped working. When I opened it up it turned out it was due to a small wire simply breaking. This is a design flaw in that when you look inside a car, it's actually very simply constructed and the wires are just too thin. A simple soldering job fixed my problem and I ensured that a thicker wire was used to replace the existing one but this simplicity is also an advantage because all the bits that make up the inside of a car can be purchased separately and they are really simple to put back in so long as you have experience in soldering. You don't really need to know any electronics. The insides are not like the inside of a PC or anything like that. You can figure out how it all works quite easily and therefore figure out what isn't working quite easily too. Its worth opening up the cars anyway on a regular basis in order to remove bits of hair and dust that build up in the axles and around the motor.

The Future:
A new module will be released soon for digital sets that allow you to race people over the internet. This module will allow you set up virtual races with people over the internet that have the same track configuration as yourself and again like the RMS will keep track of lap times etc.

Total costs:
Well it depends on how much you want to get into this. I've spent the following:
Scalextric Sports Digital - £150
RMS - £10 (normally £40)
Audi TT - £30

Its good fun during parties and get-togethers and I'd recommend any Dad to 'buy this for their son' :)