One link.
The whole track.
RaceLink runs on long-range LoRa radio — 868 MHz in Europe, 915 MHz in the US — and keeps every device on one shared clock, so light, info and telemetry stay perfectly in step from the start line to the far gate.
WiFi, Bluetooth, Matter and ESP-NOW are built for short hops in clean air. A race is the opposite: a big site, dozens of pilots, and 2.4 GHz already saturated. RaceLink starts where they tap out — long range, low bandwidth, high reliability.
The system
Three pieces, one job
Each part does one thing well. Together they get your commands from a browser tab to the LEDs on the far side of the field.
The host
A Windows or Linux machine — laptop, mini PC or Raspberry Pi — runs the host software and its WebUI. You build groups, scenes and effects here, standalone or embedded inside RotorHazard.
The USB gateway
A small USB dongle turns the host's commands into radio and listens for replies. USB keeps it compatible with everything from a Pi to a full PC — and you can plug in more than one to run separate networks side by side.
The nodes
LED nodes, start blocks and your own custom devices listen on the radio, light up in sync and report their battery and signal back.
What it carries
A control link, built for what matters at a race
RaceLink moves exactly the things a race needs, and keeps them tight across the whole field.
Light & effects
Scenes, presets and full-track waves — fired on a shared clock so every node hits the beat together.
On-track info
Channel and pilot name pushed straight to the start block's e-paper screen — no uncertainties for the pilots.
Telemetry back
Battery level and signal strength flow back to the WebUI so you catch a weak node before it matters.
Lean on purpose
RaceLink is a control link, not a video or live-streaming pipe. Keeping the payload small is exactly what lets it reach across a packed site and stay rock-solid where high-bandwidth links would fall apart. It's tuned for control, info and telemetry — and it's very good at those.
Scale across the site
More gateways, more networks
One host can drive several USB gateways at once — each on its own LoRa channel, each with its own set of devices.
Multiple gateways, separate networks
Split the fleet into independent networks — say, one for lighting and one for start-line info — and the host keeps them cleanly apart, routing every command to the gateway that owns the device. Because the gateways transmit in parallel, two radios roughly double the airtime budget instead of sharing one. A single-gateway setup needs no extra steps; the second one just adds capacity when you want it.
It copes when the hardware changes
Gear gets swapped at events. Plug in a gateway mid-session and Scan Gateways picks it up without restarting the host; if it's a replacement, one click hands it the network whose gateway went missing. When a device turns up on a radio it shouldn't be on, the host believes the hardware — it moves the device to the network that can actually reach it and flags it, rather than leaving a record that says otherwise while the device sits unreachable. And for a node stranded on a channel nothing uses, Channel Scan goes looking for it.
No PC needed
Run it with zero setup
For a quick session you don't need a host or a gateway at all.
Headless mode
One node becomes the master — it takes over both the host and gateway roles and remote-controls up to 40 devices straight from its own button. Power it up, press the button, and the show runs. Perfect for practice nights and small meets. See the node button quickstart for all four gestures.
Integrations
Works with RotorHazard & WLED
RaceLink builds on the open-source tools the FPV and LED communities already trust — slot it into your timing setup, and drive the same addressable LEDs you'd use anywhere else.
RaceLink × RotorHazard
Run RaceLink standalone, or as a RotorHazard plugin so lighting and on-track info follow your existing race timing automatically. See the plugin setup guide.
RaceLink × WLED
Each node runs a RaceLink-extended build of WLED, the popular open-source firmware for addressable LED strips. You keep WLED's effects, presets and web UI, and get RaceLink's race-specific signaling and node-to-node sync on top — no separate controller, no proprietary lock-in.
A second kind of link
Wired nodes over Ethernet
Where a cable is easier than a radio, RaceLink will take the cable — without changing anything else about how you run the show.
No gateway, no radio — just your LAN
An Ethernet network replaces the USB gateway and LoRa with plain UDP over your network: the host reaches the nodes directly. The node firmware is the same usermod with the transport swapped, so groups, scenes, presets, sync, telemetry and OTA all behave identically — only the medium changes. It ships as a release build for ESP32-S3 + W5500 boards and you can flash it from the browser today, but it is the youngest part of the system: run it as a preview, not as the backbone of your event.
Good to know
Frequently asked
Will it interfere with my control or video link?
No. RaceLink runs on 868 MHz (EU868) or 915 MHz (US915) LoRa, well away from your 2.4 GHz control link and 5.8 GHz video. It's designed to sit alongside them, not fight them.
Do I need a computer at the event?
Not necessarily. Run it from a laptop or Raspberry Pi for the full WebUI, or use headless mode where one node is the master and everything is controlled from its button.
Does it work with RotorHazard?
Yes. RaceLink runs standalone or as a RotorHazard plugin, so it slots into the timing setup many events already use.
What hardware do I need?
A USB gateway and one or more nodes — off-the-shelf boards or your own build. See the hardware page for concrete options.
How do I get the firmware onto a new board?
In your browser. fw.racelink.dev knows every supported board and every release — pick yours, pick the channel it should run on, and click. Needs Chrome, Edge or Opera on a desktop; the flashing guide covers the command line for everything else. After the first flash, updates go over the air.
Is it really open source?
Fully. The code is MIT-licensed and on GitHub; you can extend it with your own device classes and effects.
Where are the deep technical details?
Everything — protocol, setup guides, developer reference — lives in the documentation. This site is the friendly overview; the docs are the manual.
Pick your hardware
See which boards to buy or build, and get running in four steps.