New player in the market - Monocacytrains

[Robin2]

 messing around with wiring Peco OO points today, and thinking what a waste of time it was, when I could just lay the track, put a loco on, and turn on the Tx!

So very true

 

...R

[davetheroad]

I'll have a read later. I suspect I'll go for Deltang for my O gauge layout, but would like to look at something cheaper for the future, perhaps for my 4mm layouts. With my head immersed in thinking about RC, I was messing around with wiring Peco OO points today, and thinking what a waste of time it was, when I could just lay the track, put a loco on, and turn on the Tx!

 

They are selling R/C cars in my local shopping mall for £15, they are medium sized. I wonder if the innards would be of any use?

 

No wiring, no huge control panel with hundreds of switches for the cab control, no wiring......no wiring, just 3 little hand throttles......bliss.

[BG John]

They are selling R/C cars in my local shopping mall for £15, they are medium sized. I wonder if the innards would be of any use?

 

No wiring, no huge control panel with hundreds of switches for the cab control, no wiring......no wiring, just 3 little hand throttles......bliss.

I've just bought one on eBay for £6.99. I think it has potential for experimenting with. One of the gears on the driveshaft to the front wheels is split, which is a bit annoying (it's 4 wheel drive), but other than that it seems to have some reasonable quality components. The main problem with cheap cars is that they don't have speed control. They're made to run as fast as possible, while I want something to go as slow as possible! I'm wondering if the steering control could be used to switch between three different speeds, but ideally it would need to change speed gradually, rather than in jerks. I'm thinking of railcars and maybe very slow shunters, while using Deltang for the good locos.

[SimonME46]

You may be sorry you asked

 

I am using an nRF2L01+ 2.4GHz transceiver together with an Atmega Attiny 1634 microprocessor and a Pololu DRV8833 motor driver as shown on the left in the first image. The much bigger Mk1 version is on the right. It has an Atmega 328 microprocessor as used in the Arduino Uno. All this is programmed using the Arduino system.

 

The second image shows how it fits nice and snugly into the boiler space of a 2-6-2 tank. Two x 240mAH LiPo cells will fit in the tender space.

 

I am also fitting an optical detector that can monitor the speed of the motor and, hopefully, it will also allow me to move it along by N revolutions for accurate positioning.

 

...R

Great to see the hardware and how you've joined it all together Robin, this is a big help.

 

Dumb question - with the 'Deltino' sun/planet pair, how do you physically connect the Deltang sun to the computer? Is it as simple as a USB/serial converter? Any chance of a photo of your implementation? Sorry if you've posted before and I've missed it.

 

If I spent a little bit of time working out the EEprom side of things, I reckon we could get the Deltino's so that you could program them using Decoder pro. In which case BPRC would be cheap and plug and play...

[Robin2]

Dumb question - with the 'Deltino' sun/planet pair, how do you physically connect the Deltang sun to the computer? Is it as simple as a USB/serial converter? Any chance of a photo of your implementation?

Yes, I just used a USB-TTL cable. I mounted the Deltino on a piece of Veroboard that had a 6-pin connector on it to match that on the cable.

 

It's a long time since I used it and I cannot find it now so, sorry, no photo.

 

CAUTION If you are thinking of using my software be aware that there was a change in the Deltinos which required a change in the program so as not to damage the h-bridge. And sorry, right this minute I cannot remember which Deltino marked the change.  If you are thinking of using my program and if you need help please post the code you plan to use and I will try to figure it out.

 

...R