The Digital Conversion Kit (40202) is all you need to convert any NINCO track to N-Digital. It comes with the Control Console, power supply, three controllers and three chips and two lane change sections (R-L and L-R). Everything’s there. You can’t use any other controllers and you’ll have to remove the analog power track, and pop the Digital Console track piece in its place. The lane change sections can be placed wherever you want, and you can add as many as you want as you grow your system.
Almost forgot... racing on N-Digital is always in a clockwise direction, just like Formula-1. Now, here’s how it works...
The Digital Control Console certainly made me “Think Red”. It’s the feature packed control computer that gives racers complete control like never before. There are eight, RJ-11 type jacks on the console, for eight controllers. An accessory socket for a control tower (more about that later), two transformer input jacks and an output port for connection to a PC. The 3-amp transformer that comes with the set or conversion kit is designed for up to four cars, so a second transformer is needed when you’re racing 5-8 cars... or you can use a single transformer of six amps or above that can supply a regulated 14VDC.
I mentioned the PC port. Early next year NINCO will have software available to display info on a monitor and be able to create files from race results.
The Console is really intuitive... four buttons for menu selection and scrolling. The display shows all the information, either for the race selected or for status of each car. There was a choice of Amateur or Pro mode. Naturally, I went for “Pro” mode... but went to Amateur after a few laps. I wasn’t used to the response of the controllers... yet! These modes adjust the sensitivity of the trigger pressure. I
needed more movement of the trigger on the layout I was using... so “Amateur” mode was naturally less sensitive. The selection is universal so it affected all the controllers.
Cars with lights are no problem at all. The Console has a light/no light function. It’s not car specific. A single car cannot be selected If you set the function to “on” and there are cars that have lights installed, then all the cars will run with lights on, providing you connected the lights to the chip as required. Not just NINCO cars with the 80907 light kit, other cars like SCX’s lighted cars will work too, and in the near future, we will be seeing new NINCO cars with lights already on board.
I said that N-Digital is designed to give racers additional pleasure by expanding the type of racing they can do. N-Digital has seven race modes, including a mode for the racer to race against the Console. Races start with a typical “Christmas Tree” countdown, both visually and with sound. One lap to go and final laps, etc have sound signals as well.
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Above written by Ninco Bob.
