Cars also belong to a miniature world, preferably also while driving. There are now several manufacturers who provide solutions for this.
In most cases, the speed control is limited to two speeds, driving and stationary, which causes cars to tear around the corner at about 70 km / h and stop so that the passengers are launched from their seats. Normal lighting, such as headlights, tail lights, brake lights and turn signals are missing in most cases.
Dinamo / MCC is a method for driving model cars in terms of speed and lighting very faithfully. With Dinamo / MCC every car is equipped with an addressable decoder. The decoder controls the engine, lights and other functions of the car. The cars are under full control of a computer (PC). The PC receives position reports and controls the cars accordingly.
Dinamo / MCC can be used to convert existing / driving vehicles into a true-to-life digital version, or to make vehicles with separate parts moving and equipped with advanced steering.
Steering the car (ie determining the direction) is done with a guide wire in the road followed by a magnet in the steering system of the car. The guide wire can consist of steel wire or magnetic strip. In both cases, the guide wire is invisible, hidden under the surface of the road.
Since cars are equipped with (rubber) tires, there is no electrical contact between the car and the road. This has two consequences. On the one hand, this means that the car must bring its own fuel. They are therefore equipped with batteries. On the other hand, there is no way to send commands from the computer to the cars via a conductive connection. The communication must therefore be wireless.
The road surface is equipped with a transmission system. This transmission system, like the guide wire, lies below the surface of the road surface and is therefore completely invisible. The transmission system is very simple and cheap to make yourself: it consists of only two copper wires that are milled in the road surface or, if the road is thin enough, can be placed under the road.
The decoder is equipped with a receiver that receives and processes the signals from the road surface. MCC therefore does NOT work with infrared and is therefore insensitive to infrared interference signals, light influences or blockages of the line of sight.
The road is also equipped with position sensors. These are basically reed contacts that, when correctly positioned, are activated by the standard steering magnet. Based on these messages, the PC can track and accurately control any car.
For the digital control, only two additional components are required in the car: the MCC decoder and a receiver coil. The decoder provides everything the car needs to be able to drive digitally. At this moment you can choose from two decoders . Both are now the third generation, making the functionality very complete. Since the decoder is software-adjustable, the models are suitable for all imaginable vehicles. The dimensions of the smallest decoder are such that it fits even in an H0 passenger car and is very applicable in scale N.
In addition to the decoders in the cars, you need something else to be able to generate the signals that have to be emitted from the road to the cars, to read the position reports that register the movements of the cars and to be able to detect traffic lights and "switches". control. There are roughly two options for this.
The first option is primarily intended for "the miniature world at home". The UCCI controller provides communication with the PC, control of the transmission loops in the road, reading in reed contacts and controlling OC32 controllers. With the OC32 controllers 'switches', traffic lights and various other things can be controlled. The capacity of one UCCI is sufficient for a medium-sized layout. You can use this to drive approximately 40 meters in length and up to 64 cars (simultaneously). This setup then looks like this:
The second option is to include UCCI in a Dinamo or Dinamo P&P system. This is possible up to a maximum of 16 units per system. In that case you can control up to 650 meters of road length. This solution is therefore intended when the former option is or becomes too limited for the size of the street plan or if you want to be able to drive both trains and cars with one system. For the record: if you want to do the latter (driving trains and cars with one Dinamo system) you have to make sure that your software also supports that.
