Transponder questions from an oldish timer

I got into Karting back in 2009, and in 2012 had to move across the US for a job and wound up taking a stupidly long break. I’m now getting back into karting, and seemed to have misplaced my AMB 160 transponder. Looking at these new ones now, I’m a bit confused and hope someone here could help answer some questions on these X2 Transponders:

  1. You seem to be rail-roaded into a subscription. If I go for the one-year, and then let it lapse, will the Orbit/scoring software raise a stink? I don’t give a poop about pulling up my times online. The only point of my getting a transponder is for scoring.

  2. I ran the "powered’ transponder. It was nice and clean; 2 wires and you’re done. The new one appears to require a bunch of dongles and extra cables and I cannot identify how much of this garbage is necessary. Can I just bypass the middle dongle with the power cord and power the transponder itself directly?

(I will be looking for my old transponder still…)

Thanks!

I used the X2 yearly for a bit. Yeah, you are signing up for a sub based model. Basically getting the transponder for “free”.

There’s a fella who posts here time to time, selling transponders, old-style. Pretty sure those are not subscription based.

I ran the rechargeable one. It holds charge for a very long time. They sell this now:

Seems like its only 2 wires as well.

Yeah that would be one of the two dongles they require for the direct powered unit. It seems like the actual unit isn’t direct powered, but rather still battery based and this is just an onboard charger which keeps it going. :frowning:

You’d think one end would attach to the battery and call it a day. Maybe try one of the old school ones. They are rechargeable that I have seen. They look like the ones you get when you rent from a track, rectangles that are very plain.

Yup! The ol’ yellow ones (I still have mine -somewhere-).

Thanks for the follow up!

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Morning David

I have the X2 with direct power.

Yes it’s a two wire affair, kind of. The power wires go to the dongle cradle which has to be mounted somewhere on the kart, then a lead runs from that to the transponder. The dongle tells the transponder you have an active subscription, no active subscription no functionality. You have to periodically connect the dongle to the inter web to keep the subscription data valid.

It does direct power and also charges it, by that I mean if you arrive at the track with a completely dead transponder, you don’t have to charge it up initially before it will work, soon as you fire up the kart it will start to transmit whilst it’s charging.

Hope that helps - sounds like the older yellow ones are what you seek

That helps a ton. So If I let the subscription ‘lapse’ it won’t just be no scoring being posted on mylaps, it will be no scoring at all as it quits registering anything.

That’s kind of sad, but I appreciate the heads up!

Yeah it sucks a bit, and yes once the sub lapses the transponder becomes dead weight.

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