AMB's update of decoder .. MRT transponders will not work
 

:flaming::flaming::flaming:Info.. when u update the decoder for the New transponders ur MRT(clones) will no longer work.. That's why MyLaps has a $38 special upgrade for ur MRT's to amb's..:flaming::D:flaming:

Lets see who's mouth runs on this..see how many r wrong..LOL:lol::lol::lol::lol:

Do you have any links to verify this? I haven't seen anything besides an offer for 25% off for trading in any old transponder on Mylaps' site. I didn't see where they mentioned any compatibility issues...

dont buy mrt's then? mylaps isnt really obligated to support clones in any way. id be upset if they stopped working with older amb's though. but.. i like racing. would just buy replacements i guess.
i spent more on just foam tires last year than all my ambs. dont see the big deal.

if its true it would a calculated move to drive out mrt. personally i find that distastefull.

but what are you gonna do with a company that truly is a monopoly.

Is it just the stock 20 numbers or is the 21 number no good either? Or does it just not work at all?

Ive spent alot of time on the phone with MyLaps USA.

Our club just upgraded to the new RC4 Box, and the MRT's do work, but dont count every lap. Ill get 4-5 laps in, then a miss of a couple, then hit a couple..
Fortunately we have 20 rechargeable house transponders that do work (already tried them).

RC4 was designed to stop cloning, and they have accomplished it. From my understanding, the new box filters out the signal alot better than rc2 or rc3. So if it is filtering the signal better, that means the MRT is not a exact copy of the amb signal or MRT got it as close as they could to the original.

The new RC4 Transponders are due out soon (not the hybrid) and RC2 and RC3 versions 1,2,3, and some 4's will not pick up the new transponders. So clubs are forced to upgrade for 330 bucks right now, or wait it out and spend over 3000 dollars after they discontinue the deal.
I have 2 MRT's and will trade them in asap before that deal goes away (its 40 bucks for trade in on pt's and clones), and get new rc4 pt.

So it's kind of what I was speculating a couple of years back then, with a few strange twists I'm struggling to get my head around.

I'm finding it odd they were advertising the RC4 hybrid as supporting all the new features, and now I think they are saying only the new RC4 transponders will do any of that.

The need for a new decoder or the new RC4 won't work seems a little like a slap in the face, talk about a forced upgrade to what could be many struggling RC clubs.

I struggled to get any information out of the Australian MyLaps rep, but to be fair I just don't think MyLaps passed on any information to them allowing them to answer any of the questions I had.

Kind of hoping they keep support their own old products though, my biggest worry is they would start to filter out their own old gear to force even more sales of the new gear.

I can see that those tracks or clubs buying a new decoder would be affected, but what's to keep the tracks and clubs that have existing decoders from using them and selling only the MRT transponders in the future?

It seems to me that MRT could be the big winner in all of this, since nobody would have to upgrade anything, and the MRT transponders are less expensive. It sounds like AMB are shooting themselves in the foot.

There are no features on the new AMB transponders or decoder that I consider to be useful.

It might be best to not buy any of the new AMB transponders, or buy or "upgrade" to the new AMB decoders, until things settle down a bit.

This whole situation is repeating itself from 2000 when AMB announced new DP transponders and new decoder (RC2). They were discontinuing the AMB 20 for the newer AMBRC.

2012/13 Now we have the same situation. Tracks will upgrade because people will buy the new rc4 transponder, and the tracks that are no able to have house transponders will not be able to help those people. You tell the people to comply with you? and buy an MRT?? I dont see it happening. Right now a decoder trade in is $330 bucks, thats cheap, and every track needs to look at this seriously. We spent nearly a month talking about it before we took action, pros, cons, and if we waited, and if the price would go back up to $3000, we would simply close up. We cant afford it. Also, if your rc2/rc3 decoder dies/breaks, guess what, your buying an rc4 because they wont fix it, Ive already went threw that scenario.

I think we did take the right course because we have house transponders. If your mrt doesnt work, we have a alternative.

Like others have said this is what happens when you have a monopoly. I realize you can get IR lap counters and they work ok but not as well as AMB usually. Until another company releases something similar at a lower price point AMB will continues this.

If MRT can make cloned transponers I wonder if they could make a cheaper decoder?

Im surprised, some company from china hasnt hacked and copied the decoder box already. They need to be what..10-15 percent different to avoid copy right laws??
If that were to happen, Im sure they would sell like hotcakes!!!!

Ya the systems and PT's are spendy. But I can't hate on MyLaps because they make the best mouse trap and nobody else is willing to compete with them. I'm guessing that the return on investment to bring a truly competitive, quality system to market simply isn't there. Why else hasn't someone done it already? A company big enough to go mass market with a system isn't going to see enough money from the R/C market alone to make it worth while. They would need to look at tapping into all the markets that Mylaps is in. Not easy if you ask me.

I give kudos to the couple guys on here that are looking into it and trying to get something going but they're a LOOONG way away from going toe to toe with Mylaps.

I agree. It's quite likely that most of the price of the decoders goes towards recovering the amount spent for development, testing, and support. Many people don't realize that creating something like this can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to get to the point where they are ready for production. And the RC racing market just isn't that big.

Whats the difference between the RC4 and the Hybrid?

Hybrid was designed to work with older decoders, and new rc4 decoder. Pure RC4 transponders will not work with older decoders except rc3 version 5... A test on mylaps website will tell you if your decoder will work with Pure RC4. Pure RC4 has new features. These features required new language protocol for the transponder and decoder...

We will need new transponders this year. Now I'm wondering: how can I be sure to have a transponder that will work with all decoders now and in a near future?

If losing sales to clones was one reason for RC4 why not just make cheaper PT's rather than penalize the end users ? oh boy, the new system tells the ambient temperature thats nice I'll just chuck all my old stuff in the trash.

Call Mylaps for those kind of answers. To be honest, they have a right to protect their product like everybody else.

Maybe we should go back to hand counting. Then nobody needs a over priced transponder.

I was just wondering what it costs to AMB to produce one transponder. 5$? 10$? :lol:

I don't understand how another company hasn't developed something either. The tech behind it all is stupid easy, the most complicated part is the software, which would be a walk in the park for someone experienced in developing scoring systems. He'll, it could be done open source for free if enough people got involved.

Features that should already be implemented in the my laps software:
Real time updates over wifi, accessible through any wireless device, complete with data logging for individual users. Some of us wouldn't mind tracking our progress and plotting the numbers to see which changes helped the most.

Better voices for the updates. Anyone else get annoyed with the "one minute left" grumpy sounding guy :lol:

Auto posting of race results to a specific location on the Internet.

Strain relief on the transponder wires. Currently they can break off where they enter the potting compound way too easily, especially if you move yours from car to car.

That's just off the top of my head. For their prices, they really should have a much nicer system. I get why no one has offered an alternative though, it would be a huge gamble to convince everyone to change over. The development costs would be pretty high too. That's never stopped companies before though, I think eventually someone will make something superior, for cheaper, and my laps will disappear.

Alycat does this already. You just need the hardware to make it happen.

There are plenty of voices available. Just search the internet.

How can you tell the difference between an rc4 hybrid transponder, and the new rc4 transponder??... pictures look the same. :eek:

The new ones are going to have some sort of three digit security ID for ordering of extra transponders, also I'm guessing they will have the the sub number on them, so maybe a 00-06 or whatever.

But yeah for anyone who does not know, it could end up confusing.

Actually something I noticed in the CAD type pics seems to be a good giveaway as to what version RC4 you have...

http://www.rcmart.com/mylaps-transpo...l-p-35954.html

Looks like the new RC4 has 3 wires, but I'm kind of mystified as to why it would need a hookup to your RX signal, unless there is more planned that has yet to be mentioned.

It appears you are correct.

We are a small non profit club and have the old AMB 20 system (doesn't accept personals). If this quits, we cannot afford anything new or even the trade in. If we cannot buy or repair the decoder, we will go back to IR system. We used one before but got rid of it to eliminate the scoring bridge. Oh well. If that is how My Laps wants to operate, so be it.

For those interested, I contacted Mylaps about what MRTs would work for the trade in offer, and this is the reply I received.

Hello,

Any MRT qualifies. Just note: The $35.98 trade in offer will get you the new RC4 transponder; however, these are not available until February. they are on backorder currently, but if you want one, go ahead and put your order in now! And send us your MRT's as soon as you can. Or you can place an order for the MRT to RC4 Hybrid trade in for $80+ and you can receive a transponder within the next 2 weeks.

Either way, please make sure you send in the MRT first before we will ship out the new Mylaps transponder.

Regards,
Kelly Chase
Sales Consultant

Sounds like a catch 22 to me send me the cash and ur old mrt and maybe in 2 weeks we will send u a new hybrid..LOL..so now ur paying the full price for a AMB transponder..wow what a saving..glade I went with a AMB RC3..spent a entire $52 gotta love me..

Glade we had useless posts in this as this was for INFORMATION purposes ONLY..

Just a heads-up... there was already a whole thread on this earlier this year when the change was announced, and a guy on RCtech is working on homebrewing a solution ( he even replied here)....

http://www.rctech.net/forum/radio-el...p-madness.html

http://www.rctech.net/forum/radio-el...er-design.html

The MyLaps RC4 Hybrid will work with both the existing and new systems (hence the 'hybrid' name).

Our club have an old AMB RC2 decoder and we will send it to Mylaps to be upgraded to the new Mylaps RC4 decoder. We did notice on the New Mylaps transponder we are having issues with the transponder not getting picked up and sometimes it shows different transponder#... I called Mylaps today they basically told me that we have to upgrade the old AMBRC2 decoder to the newest Mylaps RC4 decoder for us to continue racing without conflicts reading the transponder. For $350 its not bad but with sofware they are developing the old PT will no longer work so everyone will be force to use the new Mylaps RC4 transponder talking about monopoly.... A lot of us still use the old AMBRC PT and all of the new guys have the newest Mylaps transponder so it will suck to all that have the old AMBRC PT....

In case anyone is curious, You can upgrade from your older systems to the new system for $330. You could probably get a few racers to pitch in for it.

http://www.mylaps.com/index.php/us_e...2_rc3v3_to_rc4

At the outset, battery voltage during run time and ambient temperature will be transmitted by the new "purcy" transponder. Additional telemetry type data is planned for the future. That's the reason for the hookup.

I also have a thread on a decoder design to be compatible with existing AMB and MRT transponders:

http://www.rctech.net/forum/radio-el...g-decoder.html

It's not as far along as the transponder design, and of course is a much greater challenge. But I'm still interested in it.

You can trade in the amb pt and $36, for an rc4.

BBK is advertising that all legacy AMB/my laps transponders will work with the new decoder....

http://www.bbksoftware.com/pricelist...nent-sales.htm

I have to say, with a few places now advertising the new RC4 transponders, it's not looking so great, mainly because thus far the new transponders are being listed as more expensive than the current Hybrids by re-sellers.

My worst fear in all of this, is MyLaps locking up their systems, and then ass reaming racers for the privilege, part of this is like looking at some things on their site, like I just noticed they now want something like $50 to re-register a Hybrid with a new user.
People come and go in RC, many people will always be using used transponders, MyLaps asking $50 just to transfer a transponder to a new user is absurd (It will all but kill off anyone using their online services).

As it's looking right now anyway, I'm not sure we have seen anything all that good from MyLaps, there was a move towards making transponders cheaper when the Hybrid came out, that seems to have crept up, also they are all but locking out re-sellers as well, barely any can match their online pricing, end result, they want all the sales obviously, and I'd not be surprised if prices crept up now, with a even bigger jump when and if they faze out the hybrids.

We have the RC4 Decoder, and does pick up ALL amb transponders, even the rechargeable AMBRC transponders without a hiccup.

What I did notice is, whoever makes software, must make it compliant with the new features in the new transponders, otherwise you wont get the extra benefits of RC4 transponders.

The hybrid transponders do send info on voltage and temp.. not unique car ID.

I did have our new RC4 Decoder hooked up with the serial port, using Alycat software, and it worked perfectly picking up every transponder we had that was AMB. However, MRT transponders were at a 25 to 50 percent loss in lap counts. Some MRT that were tried were a 100% loss.

The bottom line is, if you like to race, and want to have laps counted, you need to upgrade your transponders, and right now is probably the only time it will ever be this cheap. As tracks upgrade to RC4, you will need to upgrade or be left out.

I asked My-Laps how this all works, this is their answer.

The older transponders are compatible with the new RC4 decoder. However, the new RC4 Transponders (non-hybrid) are NOT backwards compatible--therefore, the new RC4's will only work on the RC4 decoder. All existing transponders will work on the RC4 decoder.

I do not need the transponder info that bad, I will keep my original AMB transponders. As far as upgrading the decoder we are working at that.

Tom