Month or two max, I get the feeling MyLaps have been doing the hard sell to get them out there, sucks for the tracks.

I think this is more of a compatibility issue more than a price issue. Although its the gripe you hear most, this will cause a hugy issue with which transponder to run where???? This is 100% economically driven... Has nothing to do with technology.

Just wanna be sure here. With the new rc4 decoder box if I have the older ambrc pts and go to a track with the new box my pt will still count correct?

wow..

There is a closed thread at the top of the "radio and electronics" section that says...
amb clarification
read it...

that was a very informative thread which answered some questions

it would be logical that when a track buy a lapcounting system it would be
for whatever a transponder. i suppose it was not told when decoders where bought by tracks, that it was intended for only mylaps transponders. I wouldn`t have bought a MRT if i knew.
Now with the tracks not all having upgraded to RC4 the clones maybe don`t work and transponder you need is a RC4 Hybrid when you need one. The discount trade off is only for RC4 wich can`t be used now. So i am buying the hybrid wich will count on all the tracks with the upcoming nationals from april.

Sucks that the MRT is worthless.

Better yet, you could be an active member of a very small club, and find out the idiot club secretary took it upon himself to spend $1200 of the club's money for the unheeded RC4. decoder - just because he had a beef with a couple of guys that used MRTs. He didn't even have the stones.to mention anything until after a month of miscounting thee guy"s laps.
Pretty lame waste of money if you ask me!

But someone else,above, mentioned that ultimately it's mylaps/amb's way of increasing revenue, by eventually phasing out the earlier transponders with software changes, and forcing everyone to buy new rc4 transponders, just like phased out handout transponders.
"Planned Obsolescence" my friends.

How/why did he spend $1200, the upgrade is like $330 IIRC.

I think he exaggerated, who knows.

Went to race at another track today, much larger club, and since the haven't upgraded my new shiney 3-wire mylaps I got this week don't work there either.

Now I'm doubly pissed.

I'm surprised MRT has not come out with a decoder box themselves.

If we had three or four companies to choose from for decoders I'm guessing the prices would fall. The problem would be having to buy transponders for every track you went to so you could use their scoring system. I do not think the MRT, MYlaps ect. would agree to a universal system to allow cross use of equipment. In the end the tracks and racers would lose.

Instead of pushing MRT out with this upgrade Mylaps should have tried to make a better transponder worthy of the $100 instead of trying to get rid of the superior and cheaper product from MRT.

In the end tracks have to decide to support MRT or the NEW RC4.

Seems to have worked fine for the personal computer industry.

I still have my $2500 desktop from 15 years ago kicking around out in the garage somewhere, that has 25% of the memory, power, and disk space as my current $400 laptop.

We all benefit with competition; the only one that benefits from a monopoly is mylaps/ambush.

Mind if I load up windows 8 and install a new ssd in that machine. ;). My point is competition might cause more issues with compatibility that would negate the lower cost to the consumer.

If you don't mind it self-combusting in front of you... :D

:lol:

MRT has been selling transponders for about 5 years to my knowledge with no compatibility problems.
MyLaps only did this to force a monopoly on us, and to continue with their ongoing planned obsolescence of their earlier products (including earlier decoders that worked just fine) to keep gouging the RC market - by introduce ing a new decoder and transponder that doesn't do anything (really) the old one didn't do.
Just like their discontinued support of handout transponders, which was done to increase revenue from the sale of personal teansponders - how long do you think you current transpondsr will be good, until their lastest software upgrade makes it obsolete as well?

Lots of complaining about a company that wants to protect their product, R&D and investment. I'm surprised it took them this long to take a stand. Probably had the interest of their customers in mind!

Not many blaming the reversed engineered, copyright violating clones for causing this so called problem!:eek:


Bottom line is the RC4 decoder will work with any AMB/MyLaps transponders.


I have one of the very first AMB PT's sold in the US! Been in a 20+ different cars never missed a lap!:nod:

Huh! So "the interest of their customers" is to come out with a new decoder ((that costs clubs money) and a new transponder that isn't compatible with there older decoders.

So what brand of revered engineered/cloned ESC - since while you're being high and mighty, you also need to point out that every ESC on the market today can trace their cloning back to the original Novak - do you use? :sneaky:

Novak didn't invent the esc.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:)

Amb didn't invent that computerized lapcountong system either.

Who did?

Not really, the large bulk of MyLaps is purposed to things like full scale racing, and athletics etc, our decoders are the same decoder they use for everything, and I'd also guess a lot of the transponder specs are common within MyLaps.

And the 'clones' were actually good because they offered things the MyLaps gear did not, which was a good thing, good enough for MyLaps to then steal at least one or two ideas off MRT in return.

It was an overreaction by MyLaps, and the way they rolled it out in some places was questionable, they really did not have customers in mind with it all, more locking their market back up, and coming up with ways to make people buy more new product again at their inflated prices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-f...identification
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transponder_timing

Hard to say, but it's all RFID, and re-purposing of that technology, which is partly why it seems strange that we can pay $150 for a transponder, because the envisioned future of all RFID products was 10 cents tags.

Admittedly for the sake of the speeds used in motor sports, we do need a powered tag in substitute of a very high powered loop, but even so, finding powered tags being used by other companies still brings up products that are a fraction of the cost of what we pay in RC.

Ever since I looked at the timing in RC, I have thought somewhere along the line, RC got screwed, we got locked in by one company, who charges what they want, and did a whole lot to keep other companies out.

I'll admit RFID readers are likely worth a bit (depending), but the tags/transponders should not be worth as much as companies like MyLaps sell them for (I see something worth about $20-$30 when I look at one).

Like I posted in the MRT thread, get this in check or it's done.

pablo040, my warning to you in the other thread is the only one you will get.

MyLaps decoders/transponders are not RFID. In fact they are Magnetic Induction. They developed this technology for R/C racing in the 80's and it transitioned into any kind of racing there is. It is an incredibly accurate technology. I have used dual MyLaps systems at big races with up 500 entries. Two computers, decoders, coaxial and loops. About 75% of the times were exact the other 25% off by no more than plus or minus 1000th of a second!

The cloned transponder did offer some things the MyLaps didn't like having 20 different numbers to choose from. I guess this was because other racers might have same numbers at sign up and they would have to resolve conflicts.

MyLaps only had the one unique number no one else had!:eek:

After reading up a bit I find that RFID uses electromagnetic induction. So I learned something today!:D

I think it's called resonant inductive coupling in this case?, but yeah, for whatever reason, they avoid calling it what I have always thought it was, which was a form of RFID.

Yeah if your into tech and how things work, it's actually worth while looking at some of the technical docs on MyLaps (most date back a fair way), but it's got some interesting things about how it actually registers a passing time...

As your car approaches, then passes the loop, the decoder actually picks your car up as far back as a meter or more, then measures your fall off in signal once passed, calculates your peak, then time stamps your passing at the calculated peak (I think much of that is so regardless of how well placed your transponder is, or how strong a signal it puts out, all cars will be timed equally with that system).

Really it is an interesting use of the technology in general, I find it funny it has Russian origins (there is likely a good joke in there somewhere).

Bingo Mr. Malphurs. Alfonsus Maria Bervoets (see the acronym? And brother of Serpent's Pieter who saw the need) and Frans Hin produced the AMB8300 system somewhere around 1983. If someone is aware of an earlier automated transponder lap counting system I would greatly appreciate the information.

As Bishop suggests, it is true that virtually all inventions are based on and build on the work of others and use existing components and materials. Same for RFID, the R goes back to Marconi and others, the F to Hertz and others, ad infinitum.

+1:nod:

:nod:
+1

If RFID is so inexpensive, then I guess MRT has followed in the same boat of charging too much for a simple transponder. I can understand why MyLaps does (research, development, marketing, etc) but MRT doesnt make a decoder either...

There pricing is easy to rationalize if you consider the fewer numbers they sell, which thus brings to mind yet another reason the mylaps transponders should be cheaper.
Thanks for bringing it up. ;)

sorry is this has been covered already but i'm alittle confused on what transponders will work and what ones won't. i have 2 older amb transponders,the ones with the 3 tabs and i have 1 mylaps that i have had for about 2 yrs. my track says that they will use the new system starting in july. if i exchange my current trans ponders will they work with the old system? and which one or all of my current transponders will need to be updated?

Green means they work, red means they do not

so the older mylaps will work with the new system? seems like only the mrt transponders will be a problem.

not exactly, each of their systems is proprietary, like Spektrum vs. Futaba 2.4ghz systems. You couldn't take one of our R/C PT's to a Go Kart track that uses Mylaps and have it work.

Yes.

So if one tire manufacturer is more popular, and sells more, they should price them lower? Your logic make no sense to me.

Do I like paying $100+ for a new PT, no. Can I understand why I have to, yes.

Do I blame Mylaps for not having any competition, no. Why would I?

If I'm selling a unique product that everyone wants (to say we need to use Mylaps would be incorrect) why should I sell my product for less than the market will bare? Should I cut my profits simply to be a "nice guy"? From a business stand point that would simply be stupid.

Actually I believe at one point AMB were selling the club rechargeable transponders to indoor kart tracks and the like, so same exact everything being used for RC and indoor kart tracks.

Even though they have a more upscale kart transponder now, basically it's still the same exact decoder used for everything they time, they just alter the firmware to tell it what to pickup or not, likewise you can signal test most every transponder they make with the same bit of equipment, it's just some number coding etc they change from one sport to another.

Somewhat proof of this is they just rewrote code to make the latest firmware drop passings from MRT transponders, nothing changed in the RC3 decoders, they just tweaked the firmware.
If they wanted to, they could modify firmware that would then recognize every transponder from every sport they time, but it's of not interest to them, they can make more money creating perceived unique transponders for each sport.

To be fair, different sports have often a somewhat different requirement for transponder design, but that would be for the most part say the internal antenna size for say full sized cars where it needs a further read range, but really there is no reason for any model they make to operate differently.

understand and can agree. My main point would be that they don't work together, unless Mylaps wants them to. If they did the 1:1 guys wouldn't be paying 4+ times what we do, they would simply find a way to use our cheaper R/C PT's...right

The point I am making is MyLaps announced last year, the new system was made to stop cloning. Well it worked. Now people who have purchased a MRT are now blaming MyLaps??? Why?? Everybody who purchased a MRT needs to back to MRT and say fix this.. MyLaps is not responsible for MRT's not working. Every one of the AMB/MyLaps PT works with the new system. Now people are saying they are going to have all the old stuff stop working.. I dont think so (plus I have talked to MyLaps on the phone) If they did that, then they would be shooting themselves in the foot.

Poeple need to stop all the whining and complaining. You purchased the MRT's knowing its a copy of the original.