Arduino

Multi Track Two Way Railway Crossing

At the ‘Fun with Arduino‘ blog I posted an article on an Arduino sketch for a multi track two way railway crossing, with blinking LEDs and a servo controlled beam to close the road. There are more sketches available over there at the Arduino blog that are suitable for Model Railways. Such as the Station … Continue reading →

USB Configurable Arduino DDC Servo & Accessory Decoder: Add a Port to a Servo to Switch Electrofrog Polarity

When a port is configured as a servo, we have the option to also configure one or even two outputs to go along with it. This can be used for many different purposes, but the main application of the extra outputs is to switch a relay to accommodate a so called ‘electrofrog’ turnout. These turnouts … Continue reading →

USB Configurable Arduino DDC Servo & Accessory Decoder – ArCoMoRa 4 – Configure and Tune Servos

In the 2 previous videos we configured ports as an accessory. In this video we’ll have a look at how to configure a port to control a servo motor via a DCC address. First, of course, we have to connect a servo to one of the ports. When we solder our DCCnext we can decide … Continue reading →

USB Configurable Arduino DDC Servo & Accessory Decoder – ArCoMoRa 2 – Configure an On Off Accessory

Now that we installed the Windows software (see previous video) and uploaded the MARDEC sketch to a DCCnext or to an Arduino, we can start to configure the 16 available ports to do what we want them to do. The video shows an example of how to configure an on/off accessory on port 1 that … Continue reading →

USB Configurable Arduino DCC Servo & Accessory Decoder – ArCoMoRa 1 – Download & Install the Software

Model railroad hobbyist friend Nico Teering took the Arduino DCC decoder software to a whole new level. A wealth of functions are combined all into one Arduino sketch for multi-purpose DCC control of 16 pins: servo control, angles and speed solenoid control point frog polarization accessory switching one shot blink and more … even manual … Continue reading →

Reversing Loop – Arduino controlled

A ‘reversing loop’ is a quite common feature in a model railway. What needs to be accomplished is to first switch the DCC-A and -B track power in the loop to the same polarity as the track where the train comes from … and later to switch it to the polarity of the track where … Continue reading →

A super smooth Joystick and Throttle part 2: the woodwork for the housings

This is part 2 of 3 on building your own ‘super smooth’ joystick and throttle that can be used with flight simulators or racing games. The final result and the components needed. The woodwork, a Fusion 360 model and drawings with dimensions. The wiring and the software, with a download link of course. This page … Continue reading →

A super smooth Joystick and Throttle part 1: final result and components needed

No model trains this time … this article is part 1 of  3 on building your own ‘super smooth’ joystick and throttle that can be used with flight simulators or racing games. The final result and the components needed. The woodwork, a Fusion 360 model and drawings with dimensions. The wiring and the software, with … Continue reading →

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A € 6,- model train speed measurement device. Part 1: the hardware.

The Traincontroller 9 User Manual, on page 128, says : “Traincontroller Gold provides the possibility to perform all speed measurements with third party measurement facilities …”. Also with Koploper and iTrain this is possible … the speed table can be manually edited. Of course I wanted to try this out. The only thing is … … Continue reading →

JYE DSO Shell 150 diy oscilloscope kit

SUMMARY: The JYE DSO Shell 150 is a very portable, fun to build and fun to use oscilloscope. Don’t expect super specs, sample rate is 1M/s and analog bandwith is 200kHz. But then … all this fun comes at an incredible price, ranging from $20 – $50. The DSO Shell can be bought as a … Continue reading →