Disturbing consequence upgrading to V5.40

I've been running 5.39 for about 6 months with a few minor niggles, the main one being that PcLapCounter will occasionally freeze when receiving commands via the comm port (Arduino protocol).

So today I downloaded and installed v5.40 and started a 66 lap race.
This was one Oxigen pace car and one controlled car.
About 10 laps into the race the pace car while travelling down one of my straights suddenly without any external intervention ramped up to full speed and shot off the end of the track at the end of the straight at full speed. Luckily it landed clean into the lap of one of my daughters giant teddys so was undamaged. Now I put this down to coincidence but I was just passing the pace car when this happened.

I attempted to place the car on the track but did not let it go as it was still being instructed to run at full speed.
I paused the race then resumed, and it made no difference. I then brought the speed down (Ctrl+G) from my preset of 39 down to 14 and the car did then slow down. I continued the race but the pace car then continued to slow down until it stalled. I brought the speed back up to 39 with the pace car dialog and continued to race.

Got about another 20 laps in and then my car ramped up to full speed. Pressing and releasing the trigger on the Oxigen controller made no difference. I think I managed to fix it by hitting the break button. After that the race continued to the end without any further issues.

Now this has really affected my confidence with PcLapCounter & Oxigen. As I'm sure you are aware once you factor in the cost of a car, tuning up parts and the Oxigen B chip & lighting controller we are talking upwards of £150 invested in each car.

Has anyone experienced this happening and if so how can I prevent this from happening again.

Cheers

-s

Hello,

I suppose you have activate the pace car/Ghost car feature by using this tips, right ?
If yes then i suggest you to deactivate the pace car feature because there is a risk of having cars that run full speed.
In fact, since version 5.30c,  i have detected a unknown communication problem between the dongle and Pc Lap Counter that cause the send of bad minimum speed , that's the reason i have disable the pace car feature in Pc Lap Counter for Slot.it oXigen since version 5.30c (if you disable the pace car feature then the minimum speed is not send and so the full speed problem disappear).
On my side i still search for a solution to fix that problem.

Hope this will bring back your confidence in Pc Lap Counter & oXigen.

Hello Guy,

Thanks for getting back on this.
Yes I enabled Pace car in O2.ini. I never noticed this happen in the previous version which is why I decided to post now.
I have now disabled this feature and gone back to setting Pace car on the SCP-2 controllers instead.
I have run 2 x 100 lap races since and so far it seems fine. Are you working with Slot.it to find a solution as Pace car is very handy when practicing?

Only other comment I would make is that since updating to 5.40, when starting a race the pace car will jump forward then stop when the race is started. This happens before the start lights come up. This did not happen before. This is using the SCP in Pace car mode. PCLapCounter turns the race power on momentarily. It is related to track power control as even a non pace car will hop forward if the trigger is held down.
I'm therefor going to drop back to 5.39.

Cheers

Gary