Garden Railway Forum

Location and Automation I've fitted an L&B open wagon with various experimental circuits. This includes a location device, sound and eventually a camera. I've looked at various ways of impementing location detection. Ideally GPS would have been good but it isn't accurate enough at this scale. T...

Yes, I have a one 3 foot section of track powered and park the loco there to charge. It could be extended to top up the charge during normal use but I haven't found a need for that.

Michael

Sorry Tom, not yet.

Michael

Bachmann Lyn Conversion Whilst the Bachmann Lyn is G scale (1:22.5) and therefore slightly undersized for the rest of my 16mm railway, it's a nice little loco, good value for the money and runs flawlessly on my less than perfectly laid 45mm track. A minor niggle is that the cab and bunker are too h...

My initial plan was to update my locos and get them working with the hand-held controller (one train at a time) similar to the way any other remote control system operates. Whilst writing the software I realised the many other things I could do with this system and my plans were continuingly being u...

No problem Dave, I knew there would be some lively interesting debate at some point! Luckily we can pick and choose which technologies we choose to use. I'm away for a long weekend visiting two very elderly Mums so will replay to the above comments and continue the article when I'm back home. Michael

Yes, MQTT is very simple to understand, to use, and to get working on a Raspberry Pi and ESP8266. For simplicity, I use separate messages for each function and each loco only subscribes to it's own named topics. Topics are a header followed by the loco name followed by the message. For example, rail...

Thanks Jim and Rik for your replies. The cost of the printed circuit board above used to control my Accucraft Lyn loco was around £13 from UK suppliers, £7.30 for the microcontroller and £3.30 for the step-up regulator. Below £10 if not using the one with an external aerial socket and/or buying on E...

The following posts detail my winter project, updating my Garden Railway locos with the latest single board microcontrollers, all connected and controlled via a local wi-fi network. As the "Why Live Steam?" thread shows, we are all different in our approach to this hobby. I came into Garde...

Another one to try as a DIY sound system is the dfplayer mini: dfplayer_mini.jpg https://www.dfrobot.com/wiki/index.php/DFPlayer_Mini_SKU:DFR0299 Plays mps or wav files from an integral micro sd card via a serial interface or separate trigger signals. 8 ohm speaker output. They are about £8 on Ebay ...

Rik, as Tom says it depends on your network/router but I have a simple BT router and have a dozen or so items connected at the same time. Tom (I assume?), obviously the main items like connecting to the network, MQTT control, reading a temperature sensor, outputting to the display are taken from onl...

Thanks for the riverdale-loco link. Nice to see someone doing it and interesting that they equate boiler temperature to pressure. I might try that. However, I don't like using a model aircraft 'joystick' controller for trains and that's why I use my own. Have my first loco working (a Bachmann Lyn) a...

Thanks for the replies. Mike, I should be at Peterborough, I'll come and have a look. Tom, I had noticed that you were using an Arduino (through a search), which is why I joined this forum. Rik, thanks for the link, yes that is what I was looking for. I agree sliding a finger on a phone/tablet won't...

Thanks Rik.
Michael

Great blog Rik, adding sound is now on my list of things to do. Do you mind if I ask what software you use for your schematic diagrams? I use Fritzing for my detailed circuit diagrams but I would also like to produce diagrams similar to yours.

Thanks

Michael

I've just regained interest in my garden railway again after a couple of lean years, and I'm currently adding a 50 foot extension to my layout and updating the remote control on my 3 locos. Checking the internet, recent copies of the 16mm magazine and forums, I noticed the improved availabilty of re...

Hello everyone, an interesting thread for my first post. I have an Electric Accucraft Lew and converted it to battery remote control, the battery is in the boiler and electronics underneath the cab. Yes, it is expensive but I'm really pleased with it. I have an electronics background and zero mechan...