Home of my HO Scale Model Railroad
Amanda entered her 2nd NMRA contest at Grand Rapids MI by creating a scratch-built Gallows Turntable. This project allowed Amanda to focus her creative talents on heavily weathering the project. It also tested her patience with over 200 nut-bolt-washer details. She won Peoples Choice for Structures and also special awards by HunterLine and Fantasonics who gratiously provided gift awards with the recognition. She had a great time with the project and the recognition.
We have successfully decoded the communications format from the MRC computer interface to the Prodigy Controller. We are now decoding the Command structure for the controller communications. So far we have identified the Function keys, the stationary decoder commands, and some of the speed/dir commands. We have successfully built a Visual Basic Program that monitors commands from other controllers on the bus and allows user control of the bell and whistle. Although this is just a few commands we simply need to add the VB routines for the others as the basic communications seems to be solid. We will try to start document these protocols so others can use them.
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Just home from our 3rd NMRA Convention at Grand Rapids, MI. We had a great time and we had the whole family in attendance this time. My son, father-in-law, and I attended the Detroit convention and then my daughter and I attended the Milwaukee convention. This year the kids wanted to go one more time but also wanted “mom” to come along. Mom accepted the invitation with a little caution and figuring she could easily spend some quiet time in the hotel. Well the “train bug” has bitten and she found herself enjoying the clinics and layout tours and talking techniques in between. It was all fun to watch. Now if only we all had some time to work on our layout. See separate post on Amanda’s project and 2nd entry into the NMRA contest.
Designed the Switch Interface board. Developed Schematic, Board Layout, Produced First Board. Attached to Propeller board and added code to allow Propeller to decode the track signal and control the switch machine. It works.
Next up: Add I2C into Board to allow 8 boards on 2 communication lines. Also, need to develop Visual Basic Code to add control and configuration into the board.
Using the Parrallax Propeller I have successfully written the Assembly Code to detect the track signal and decode it to monitor the Stationary Decoder commands. The results are displayed on an LCD screen added onto the Propeller board.
Next up: Need to develop an interface to control the Tortoise switch Machines.
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