B&B
Electronics Goes CART Racing. CART, Championship Auto Racing Teams, is the premier racing series in the world. Familiar names such as Andretti, Vassar and Fittipaldi pilot open wheeled race cars at over 200 mph at tracks around the USA and in several foreign countries. B&B Electronics of Ottawa is in the middle of the CART racing action, but if they've done their job right, no one will notice them. The unobtrusive gray boxes fastened to the pit wall in each race team's pit area contain electronic circuitry and connections that provide instant access to official CART timing and scoring data and closed circuit TV. The boxes are part of a new custom data network developed and built for CART by B&B Electronics. Each racer's pit area has an access box into which they can plug personal computers and closed circuit TV monitors. CART timing and scoring data is displayed on PC screens and printed out as needed. This official data can be critical to a race team's strategy. Over a mile of cabling connects all the pit locations, the timing stand and the media center. The boxes will be dismounted and moved to each new track as the CART series moves around the country. For the technically minded, the new system is an RS-485 network with multi-drop capabilities. All pit and pressroom nodes are connected on a receive-only basis. A built- in battery and charger provide power. One factor that caused CART to choose B&B Electronics for this project was a very tight time schedule. Omega, the Swiss watch and timing equipment maker, had sponsored and provided equipment for the CART timing operation for several seasons. They decided to drop their sponsorship for 2000, but agreed to cover the first few races of the season, while CART set up its own timing and information distribution system. B&B Electronics was called in to engineer and build the data distribution system. A purchase order was received March 29 for delivery of the system in May. The engineering, printed circuit board design and production, assembly and testing of 55 units were completed in just six weeks! These pictures were taken at the Milwaukee Mile CART race in early June, the first real life test of the CART/B&B timing and data distribution system. According to race crew members at the event, the system was working seamlessly, as un-noticeable as the gray electronic-packed B&B boxes that form the heart of it. To B&B Electronics, this spelled Success! B&B Electronics Mfg. Co. is an engineering and manufacturing company specializing in data communications tools such as network interface converters, dataline boosters, smart switches, surge protectors and dataline test equipment. They also produce the AutoTap® OBD II scanner, a diagnostic tool for home and small shop mechanics. B&B Electronics was founded in 1981 and has 84 employees. A recent building program has more than doubled the space of B&B's engineering, tech support and data processing departments, paving the way for substantial future growth. #########
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