Welcome to a new episode of Gerrit's diary.
This one is about Formula 1.
[music]
A few months ago I showed you how we design the formula 1 cars.
A bit of time has passed now, we have also used it to refine it.
And we now have the first six or seven cars ready
and I will show them to you at Jens' place.
Because I am just as proud of these things as he is.
I once wished that you would build the ferrari
which he then also built,
but he gave it to me like this,
that I cannot remove the cover because he knew ...
Because every time I get the car back,
half of it is missing.
Therefore this one is equipped with a parental lock.
We even drove it already.
It has rotating rear wheels,
which is a real challenge because we have magnetic fields that are completely homogeneous.
and as soon as only one wheel has a little dust and brakes
with magnetic fields there is only air in between
the car could spin and derail.
That's why we are still experimenting very intensively with the spinning wheels,
but this one already has some.
You can say in total the car design -
you're just waiting for us to say, now we finally build them all,
because we still do not know how.
We have problems with the big racetrack,
to build the 21 meters,
and actually we said to ourselves,
only when this is done
and we did our tests there,
because it goes up and down,
there are bumps and so on
so we can decide how to do it with the spinning wheels.
Are they only in the air or can they really spin.
And then Jens can start building 48
formula-1 cars and formula-e cars plus reserve.
How was it like: I wished for this one and one week later it was built.
I thought about doing it and two weeks later I recovered from the shock
and then I started making it.
And many moons later - no -
from start to the final car it took about one month.
Right now we are planning to leave it a bit open
that we might inaugurate monaco
with formula-1 in june next year.
Corona has helped us there on the one hand, but on the other hand, of course,
has thrown a lot more blows between the legs
because we gained some time for software and technical development
but not for the rest of the construction of the track nor for the cars.
Because there is no money for full operation of all departments at the moment.
I hope that in one week or two we will have fixed all problems and flaws
and then suddenly everything comes together, we press a button and - wow - the track works.
It is about the new track, not about this circular track
but for months we are building the big track
and received now the first test parts
and unfortunately they do not work
as we expect them to.
We have worked with several German or European manufacturers
but they could not produce the dimension, the length of the track.
We found a company in China that said that they could do it.
But now they noticed, they don't.
There are problems with the track and as long as we can't fix them.
I don't dare to give Jens half a year of work
and to tell you 48 plus reserve or at least 20.
I think in formula-1 there are 20 vehicles and in formula-e - do you know that? - I think there are 18.
So I would like to have about 60 cars including reserve.
60 times a week per car - No.
Series production is probably faster, right?
Yes, but actually you don't save that much time, so it's still two days per car
because the paint job is complex and each sticker must be put on individually.
This cannot be accelerated.
Even if I do three in a row, I still have to
cut out the stickers individually, glue on individually and let it dry individually.
Now check out these mega cool cars again.
Actually I would like to put the ferrari next to them,
but unfortunately I am not allowed to do that.
No, you are welcome to do that, no problem.
Okay
Next time you get it without a lid, somehow I will organize that I can take it out.
Now I will show you a little bit about  the sound.
Last year I already showed you something about sound and it took a while,
because it was not the most important topic.
Until now.
Today is our big soundcheck.
You have done a lot of preliminary work and built speaker cabinets.
You have ordered different speakers and tested them.
We also heard them here.
Today is the day when everything is installed in the complex for the very first time.
Always with the risk to rip it out again.
But it is the moment X
where we want to test eleven speakers with a moving car
even installed in the section,
that they sound just as good, like one year ago when we put the speakers in.
It is not that simple.
You should stand there at the track
when there are 20 cars driving around and all you hear is noise.
You should hear the individual cars
that they are louder when they are directly in front of you.
and you also should hear the one car driving around the corner.
These are high expectations. But we will not give up.
I am curious:
Gentlemen start your engines, make some noise!
[Engine Sound]
I had the feeling during the tests last week
we already had this high pitched sound at a lower volume
But they have not been put into the section.
Now the only question is: Does the section mute this sound despite the perfect installation
or is it drowned out by the rattle.
I drive very quietly as a test.
If we drive quietly, nothing should rattle.
[Engine sound]
The rattle is gone when we run quietly.
That means it is the complex. We better decouple it.
When the section is finished and Gerd doesn't put in such rickety houses,
then this could work.
Well then. I would suggest
we now use 24 speakers, test with the mat and try to decouple again.
Change the soundfiles.
Now I kick you out of here , so that I can talk without a mask.
Sound is and will remain a difficult topic 
but we are right on track,
we don't want people to see the speakers.
We have tried everything, built them into houses, built them into streets.
The problem is, every house sounds different.
Even when we use the same speakers in diffrent houses,
then each one sounds different.
So we decided, like 19 years ago in the Knuffingen fire department,
that the speakers come also into the streets or next to the streets. They are perforated.
The speakers are screwed into a cabinet.
We have found very good speakers that can reproduce the entire spectrum.
And now it's about to find the positions, installing without rattling, and after all the software.
But I'll push that back a little.
I would say today or the last week was hard.
We have found out that we have to work with so many connected microcontrollers,
that we push it to the limits when it comes to transmission and performance.
When I drive in a curve and have two sections, in which one car can drive in each,
with the curcuit path, which interlock so that the outer curve separates the curcuit path
and at the next inner curve they are tighter again and the car is exactly between
two such paths, it becomes geometrically really difficult,
which circuit path causes which phase jump.
Axel has solved this in the processor.
We also go straight to him.
But it torments us both,
that we said to each other, even if it is a hard thing to say after five years
we turn this around.
More computing power goes into the PC, 
because we have reached for the stars.
Then this is a step back in the timeline.
For two months we will both sit at our computers and change the software.
I tell this here in peace, accompanied by a formula-1 car
because now I go to Axel in the heart of the hectic and show you such a PCB.
And maybe at least one car will drive on the board.
For perhaps the most important topic I snuck in to see Axel.
I also talk a little quieter now to not disturb him.
We have been fighting windmills for weeks,
once on the software side,
both software sides, the many microcontrollers in the section,
as well as the main control software in the PC, are quite overloaded with the task.
at least at the upper limit.
We have to decide, which software is actually doing what,
how much is the PC calculating and sends,
under high data traffic load,
that is also such a small problem, already precalculated information to the controllers,
which then have to execute it.
Or does the PC output says: "I want this" and the controllers calculate everything.
We have been on this topic for three years
which means extensive software changes.
When, like now two weeks ago, we have just told ourselves that we do things differently.
We have a small time lag here,
so we make massive adjustments for performance reasons
and it simply runs more stable.
Also rounding errors can be better eliminated in the PC than in the microcontroller.
So that was very technical.
Now we come to aother technical area, namely the PCBs.
We got here the first boards from China.
We first looked for PCB manufactures in germany, then europe-wide and later worldwide
which can produce these very large six layer PCBs.
And whether the Chinese were self-confident about it,
because from Germany and so on
we actually only received refusals because of the size,
we will just see.
But they are definitely very involved there,
because we have not yet received
a flawless, error-free board.
Every time we discover an error, it becomes clear relative quickly what causes it.
They are also doing this for the very first time,
because what we are planning is very special.
Because we have a six-layer PCB that is enormously large,
with at the same time very intensive use of space and very thick circuit paths
because there is a lot of current going through.
This is a combination which is not common.
Now the very worst, you could say exaggerated,
our system actually works because it deliberately creates a short circuit.
The magnetic field is created, when a high current is going to ground.
The PCB manufacturers are not familiar with this, and
think every time that there is a short circuit,
but this one is actually intended.
Small, very small micro short circuits are not detected by the producers.
This is always the problem that when we put the board into operation
and in this case it took us almost two months to complete,
to check this board and find
that there are some small errors on it.
After a long analysis which is not so easy about this distance and by e-mail and telephone,
the reason is probably found in China now.
Five of the circuit tracks must be drilled through, but the sixth must not be hit.
And in another place the circuit paths six and five are drilled through,
and the fourth must not be hit.
In such thin layers,
after these different layers are pressed together.
On such a board, such micro drills are used at many thousands of drilling positions.
If one hole is wrong, we have a small latent short-circuit somewhere, which destroys all our signals.
This is a huge challenge.
But we knew or suspected this before.
We have ignored that, with the 21 meter
long distance one single error,
will add up like this.
But one out of four boards that we have now received is already error-free,
or rather there is such a small error on it that we can fix it in the software.
China is currently producing the next charge
after all these errors are detected and analyzed
and the work processes there were actually completely turned upside down.
That we now hope to get the next black gold [as we call it now] in about two weeks
and then maybe even drive three or four meters.
These are now many words and few pictures.
I know, pictures are always more powerful.
I have them in my head
and maybe they are slowly developing with you 
and I still hope
that first of all we lead this project to success,
the setbacks in the past weeks
have sometimes made us doubt it.
But we strongly believe that at some point in time
we let small formula-1 cars drive in circles.
I am looking forward to it!
Stay tuned,
bye!
[music]
