I love open source and DIY projects and and this is an extremely lovely one. Who doesn’t like blinking and colorful lights?
What is iFLAG?
Petr Vostrel created a very handy marshaling software using Arduino and LED matrix to help to identify visually some situations in iRacing.
“Open source race marshalling light board for iRacing.com simulation. LED matrix displays racing flags in a truly noticable peripheral vision fashion making it literally impossible to miss any flag like yellow, blue or safetycar flags. Additionaly includes optional useful signals like start lights on the grid and more.”
Features
- Open Source
- Free
- A complete list of signals and other visual features of iFLAG
What do I need to buy?
You just need to purchase 3 hardware items to get a basic iFlag device:
- Arduino UNO board or any 100% UNO compatible clone
- Colors Shield by Itead
- 60mm 8×8 LED Matrix by Itead
Arduino board can be acquired usually in your local country retailers. Matrix LED and shield are always in stock from Itead webshop.
Installation
iFlag software translates provides the interconnection of iRacing and the matrix. It continuously listens for iRacing session and other signals, processes them and issues commands telling the device exactly what to display
on the LED matrix.
So far iFlag doesn’t come with any installer, it is only an EXE you run. This means that you need to provide certain prerequisities yourself. Namely have this installed on your computer:
- .NET Framework 4 – get it for free from Microsoft.
- Arduino IDE (only for drivers) – get it for free from Arduino.
Copy the software/iFlag folder to anywhere you like on your harddrive, except Program Files folder(s), and run it from there. It is useful to make a shortcut in Startup items to have iFlag ready as soon as you start the computer.
Run iFlag.exe and connect the USB hardware. Order doesn’t matter.”
Thanks to Petr Vostrel for this gift to the iRacing community. You can find enclosures, retailers data, installation, setup and mounting instructions in the forum thread here.
Help if possible, I have one row of solid blue on all the time.
Clean thoroughfully pins and pin holes in both pieces and try several times to see if that fix it. If not maybe some hardware is damaged. Try with at least two different software versions.
i cant buy the color shield board is there any other board i can use and could you show me how it works
You have to go to the iFlag thread to see if there is any alternative
Could or does this work with other games like rFactor2 or just iRacing???
Nope, program is only reading iRacing API
Thank you
IFlag yellow and white is faded. yellow is orange and white is so faded i barely see it.
That’s hardware, not software. 🙁
We have developed a new version of the iFlag software based on the original at shop.penguinrc.com. Under the software section. This release fixes many of the issues that the original version has had and adds significant functionality that many have requested over the years. The software is still free as it falls under the same open source licensing as the original but all of the programming and revisions were done by Penguin r/c.
Nice to see you here Brion. You are a real guru for DD guys from the beginnings 🙂