A Sussex countryside model railway

Looks Good but I have no idea what the heck it is for. #Lost

3 hours ago, Georgeconna said:

Looks Good but I have no idea what the heck it is for. #Lost

 

It's an open source (and hardware) alternative to buying a DCC Controller system from the likes of Hornby or Gaugemaster (other manufacturers are available).  To be fair this box is only half of the solution.  If you use this (here: https://github.com/GreyLimit/DCCGenerator ) in limited DCC++ emulation (or indeed just build yourself a DCC++ solution, see here: https://github.com/DccPlusPlus ) and use the JMRI software on a PC then you don't need to buy a commercial solution to operate DCC models and accessories on you layout.

 

I've also been writing an alternative to JMRI (which I call "The Fat Controller" as it's a substantial chunk of code as well as the other reason) as well as building my own handsets for the actual operation of trains, so I have a completely "open" and relatively cheap DCC solution to operate my model trains (well, train set ).

 

I started this because my wife and I had a full set of Gaugemaster kit but found it just plain fiddly to operate and spent more time trying to work out how to play trains rather than actually playing with the trains.  My thought was "there has to be something easier and simpler that doesn't place so many hurdles between us and doing what we want".  Replacing all the Gaugemaster equipment with an alternative system wasn't an option (money still doesn't grow on trees our way ) but by chance a member at our local club (Bluelightning in these parts) said "haven't you heard about DCC++ running on an Arduino?".  From there it's all grown out of all proportion.

 

I have Arduinos (cheap Chinese knock offs mostly) everywhere as I play around with what is possible with them (having had a long IT and programming career behind me) and have been slowly pushing the boundaries of what I can achieve with them.

 

I have to say that this DCC Generator box has given me the most pleasure so far.  Writing the code to generate the actual "on track" DCC signal accurately in both form and timing has been a challenge, especially on a piece of hardware running at just 16 MHz and with just 2048 BYTES of variable space.  Putting that into perspective: A modern PC is probably getting on for 200 times faster and has 2 million times more writeable memory in it than the basic Arduino Uno (yes; 2,000,000 times, that's not a mistake).

 

There are still ideas brewing away on the back burner, but I really need to try and spend a little time consolidating some ideas and bringing them together.

 

Did that help?

 

Jeff

Edited December 23, 2020 by jeff_p

Think I will stick with my Sprog that's enough for me.

However, I will say the DCC+ box you've created does look cracking