http://www.slotcarlight.com/en

The story behind the SLC

The idea of slotcar lighting has occupied my mind since the mid-eighties. Even my very first racetrack, the “Police Pursuit” by TCR, did have illuminated cars. The miniature bulb with one light channel did make the vehicle “glow”, but the roadway in front of the car remained in darkness.

At the beginning of the millenium a typical “attic find” rekindled my interest. I still remember my first car with “real” lighting, a Ford Capri by Fly. Due to LEDs I was now able to see the roadway for the first time during a “night race”. Also, the Goldcap made it possible to find the car when it had careened off the racetrack. But what really enthralled me was the brake light.

Since that day I routinely modified my vehicles myself. I started to combine the brake lights with the—nowadays widespread—exhaust pipe flames. Later I added underbody lighting and multi-colored dashboard lighting. I tried out many of the known lighting sets and recreated small wirings the plans of which I had found on message boards like http://www.freeslotter.de/, yet time and again I still encountered the same problems:

  • The power supply was difficult - many LEDs need a lot of power.
  • Blinking effects interfered with the LEDs that were responsible for the permanent light.
  • Each feature needed additional space/weight/parts and thus increased the overall costs. 

“At the beginning I looked around and could not find quite the car I dreamt of, so I decided to build it myself.” Ferry Porsche

My situation was similar to that of Ferry Porsche. I already had my car, but the right lighting was lacking. Through my many modifications over the years I was quite familiar with all the options for lighting that didn’t meet my requirements.

The idea

When it comes to the basic idea for the SLC, I am indebted to Eric Deisen of http://www.eifel-modellbau.de/. The two of us met serendipitously at the „Spielwarenmesse 2016“ in Nuremberg. His approach was as easy as it was ingenious: instead of building the desired features analogously into one circuitry we started to use a flexible hardware controller and operated the LEDs via software, the SLC Manager.

The way the SLC is constructed it is now possible to create and implement almost any lighting without changing the hardware. Owing to the SLC Manager the user can freely decide in which way to configure the lighting.