The Kart Trophy held on 9 May 2009 by the mechanical engineering company Maschinenfabrik Herkules GmbH in Siegen, Germany, marked the 10th anniversary of this company event, in which the Beckhoff team from the Rhine-Ruhr branch office also took part. Numerous customers and core suppliers are invited every year to this motor sport event at the Herkules works site. This year, 35 teams from Europe as well as North and South America took up the invitation. The race takes place using identical carts with about 5.2 kW engines.
In order to constantly display the current standings of the individual teams to the spectators, Beckhoff Ethernet Control Panels were installed in four different places. The data was transmitted using the new CP-Link 3 technology. This TCP/IP- or UDP-based technology enabled the race results to be sent via the company network from the race PC, which evaluated the transponders of the individual karts, to the individual Beckhoff Ethernet Panels.
The CP-Link 3 host software runs on the PC and the corresponding client software on the CE panels, which required no operator intervention at all during commissioning and connected themselves immediately to the host PC within the Herkules network. A CX1020 Embedded PC was installed as a CP-Link 3 client, to whose DVI output a TFT display was connected.
Maschinenfabrik Herkules 
www.herkules-group.de
CP-Link 3 www.beckhoff.com/CP-Link3
CP-Link 3 technology in use at the Herkules Kart Trophy 2009
The race ended in yet another victory for the Herkules works team, their 10th in a row. The Beckhoff TwinCAT Racing Team finished 6th.