Greengiant Posted March 21, 2013 Author Share Posted March 21, 2013 Not much to report on last night's activities suffice to say the point servo and mount worked on our power supply. The assembly has been taken home by a club member to try hooking it up to the software. Track building and wiring carried on a pace, labelling is being installed as we go along. Martin Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tender Posted March 21, 2013 Share Posted March 21, 2013 Hi Martin. Watching this with interest. I bought one of the servo brackets last year when I joined the MERG group but not got around to putting it together yet. Your pictures will be a great help. What are you using to control the servos? Something from the MERG range I guess. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulr1949 Posted March 22, 2013 Share Posted March 22, 2013 One or two annoyances emerged when trackbuilding on Wednesday night. We have acquired some of the new peco "coupling sections" which allow you to join code 100 and code 75 rail; much better than the brown adaptor fishplates - but only if you are continuing with peco track, as the sleeper height on the code 75 section is increased to balance the decrease in the rail section. So we have had to take out some code 100 sleepers at the end of each fiddleyard road where they join the points. Did manage to make a start on building a point though - only another quite a lot to go 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted March 22, 2013 Author Share Posted March 22, 2013 Hi Martin. Watching this with interest. I bought one of the servo brackets last year when I joined the MERG group but not got around to putting it together yet. Your pictures will be a great help. What are you using to control the servos? Something from the MERG range I guess. We are controlling using the MERG CANSERVO8C software, which will be running on the boards we have ordered from China. We tried it with the mounted servo yesterday, and it works really well - you can easily adjust the endpoints and servo speed with a PC, and once setup, it just seems to work. Martin Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted March 28, 2013 Author Share Posted March 28, 2013 This week's update. All the straight fiddle yard boards were erected, plugged in and some locos run the whole length, all worked a treat. These are the inter board connectors we are using, when disconnected they are held by a clip under the board. Here is the power box and one of the handsets. A close up of one of the handsets. This is the proving board for testing all the detectors and controllers to make sure it will work, which it did This is the TOTI board with a short piece of segmented track, just touching the track with a finger lights the LED. This is to represent some mimic panel indicator LEDs, these change with TOTI instructions as well as point motor position. These are some switches emulating route setting for the fiddle yard. When the switches were pressed these servos activated to represent each point changing. This will now be rolled out to all the boards as required. Delivered this week were 40 of the MERG servo mount kits, someone is going to be busy the next couple of weeks. Next on the list for development is JMRI to control the colour light signals, some of which will be auto switched in the correct sequence a s train approaches/departs a section. Martin 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted April 25, 2013 Author Share Posted April 25, 2013 Latest progress is a fiddle yard board wiring is complete along with TOTI working as it should, now on with the rest. Also under construction are the 40 laser cut servo mounts. Martin 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium PaulCheffus Posted May 1, 2013 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 1, 2013 Latest progress is a fiddle yard board wiring is complete along with TOTI working as it should, now on with the rest. Also under construction are the 40 laser cut servo mounts. Martin Hi What are the components between the terminal block screwed to the layout and the outputs of the CANToTI and what are they for? Cheers Paul Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted May 1, 2013 Author Share Posted May 1, 2013 Hi What are the components between the terminal block screwed to the layout and the outputs of the CANToTI and what are they for? Cheers Paul Paul, They are PTC fuses or Poly fuses, they basically help when a short happens to keep the rest of the layout going. Martin 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted May 1, 2013 Author Share Posted May 1, 2013 Further to what Paul asked about the Poly fuses, from tonight's session, here we have three sound equipped locos to give a good current draw while we short out a set of rails to test the rest kept going and our circuits and wiring are up to spec. Tonight we programmed up some of the boards and checked the event reporting to make sure all was working correctly. On another bench, batch building TOTI boards. Martin 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianh Posted May 2, 2013 Share Posted May 2, 2013 A slight correction to the last picture. The boards are "CAN_FLIM_IO_A" which are being built to be equivalent to a MERG CANACE8C. The board takes 8 inputs and connects to the MERG CBUS. The surface mount TOTI board drives the inputs of the CAN_FLIM_IO_A board. Regards, Ian H Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted May 9, 2013 Author Share Posted May 9, 2013 A slight correction to the last picture. The boards are "CAN_FLIM_IO_A" which are being built to be equivalent to a MERG CANACE8C. The board takes 8 inputs and connects to the MERG CBUS. The surface mount TOTI board drives the inputs of the CAN_FLIM_IO_A board. Regards, Ian H Ian, You are correct, my bad for misunderstanding what I was being told Tonight involved initial testing of the colour light signal control board with a batch of signals, plus deciding on the best colour LEDs. Alongside all this, fiddle yard point construction continued a pace. Martin 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted June 22, 2013 Author Share Posted June 22, 2013 We had an opportunity to use the village hall for a couple of hours one evening, so we set the whole layout up to check everything fitted, pleased to say it did. Martin 10 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted September 20, 2013 Author Share Posted September 20, 2013 Latest update Lots of wiring, track and servo mount construction has taken place over the past few months. This week we installed the first servo point motor on one of the fiddle yard boards. The laptop was used to set up the travel movement of the servo arm for operation of the point, an omega loop has been used to absorb an minor adjustment should that be required. Underneath the baseboards has seen a great deal of activity with wiring and installing various control boards. Top left (Green board): "FLIM IO A" board (designed by Ian Hart) with CAN-TOTI firmware Top right (White board): MERG DCC-TOTI board, populated for 4 channelsThis senses the trains on the four running tracks, AND provides 4 channels of point readback (the brown wires)Bottom: "FLIM IO A" board with CAN-SERVO8C firmwareThis drives the 7 servos on this board. Buildings are being constructed offsite for the time being until all track and wiring is complete. Martin 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted November 3, 2013 Author Share Posted November 3, 2013 Work continues apace with installation and calibration of fiddle yard point servos. Martin 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted December 6, 2013 Author Share Posted December 6, 2013 Small update, more wiring and servos that seem to be breeding! Station buildings are coming along, full interiors with lighting and I forget to photograph them! Martin 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted December 15, 2013 Author Share Posted December 15, 2013 Current project is making and installing perspex protection covers for the point servos. Martin 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted February 13, 2014 Author Share Posted February 13, 2014 We have been prototyping the mimic control panel construction and come up with the final specification. Basically two sheets of acrylic sandwiching a track plan print. The rear sheet of acrylic is drilled for switches and LEDs, the front sheet is drilled for switches only which neatly protects the LEDs. Martin 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted February 1, 2015 Author Share Posted February 1, 2015 As a break from track building we started some basic land forming to get a feel for the look in 3D. Martin 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 Some of the first point complexes starting to take shape. Martin 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold martin_wynne Posted February 6, 2015 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 6, 2015 Looking good. But trees this shape grow only at Beer: Interlace a couple of plain sleepers instead. Martin. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted February 7, 2015 Author Share Posted February 7, 2015 Looking good. But trees this shape grow only at Beer: bent_timber.jpg Interlace a couple of plain sleepers instead. Martin. Martin, Thanks for the pointer, I will pass this on to our track builder. Martin Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
blueeighties Posted October 3, 2015 Share Posted October 3, 2015 Enjoyed reading about the progress so far, how are things getting on now? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted October 3, 2015 Author Share Posted October 3, 2015 Enjoyed reading about the progress so far, how are things getting on now? Track, track and more track. We are now on the front of stage track, which means blackening rail, painting and weathering concrete sleeper bases, assembling and glueing down track with super elevation on the curves. This will complete two of the four main lines, next will be the wooden sleeper track. Once this is done we can start the fun bit of carving out the landscape. Martin Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greengiant Posted July 20, 2016 Author Share Posted July 20, 2016 It has been a while since I have updated this project, suffice to say track laying continues while scenery mock up takes place. Here we have MK1 version of the motorway bridge, we are making use of perspective modelling to give the illusion of distance. This bridge will go some way to disguise the exit to the fiddle yard. Martin 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wigan Wallgate OO Gauge Posted March 17, 2017 Share Posted March 17, 2017 Any updates? 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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