4564 loco with PF and on the cheap

[Bartosz]

@Paperinik77pk this is slick! The snot'ted semi plates might look a bit out of place in such model, but they're successfully hiding so much! (I'm wondering how well they're kept in place, the one closer to cabin is mounted on one stud). And you got away without introducing another color, so you were able to get her back to black, which looks great. Oh, and thank you for taking care even of such fine detail I hadn't thought of - square reflectors, which imitate original better.

And all of this right after when I thought it make sense to build it like in original, only packing IR to the cabin, and 9V (16mm wide - so 2 studs width, and 3 bricks in height) to the front. And now I have no idea which way to pursuit;D would make sense to find out part that would allow building both versions.

Please share the lxf, definitely :) Although I have no idea when it'll come to fruition - the spring has started, kids only want to play outside and I lack the excuse for buying more Lego...

Edited April 6, 2018 by Bartosz

[Paperinik77pk]

3 hours ago, Bartosz said:

@Paperinik77pk

And all of this right after when I thought it make sense to build it like in original, only packing IR to the cabin, and 9V (16mm wide - so 2 studs width, and 3 bricks in height) to the front. And now I have no idea which way to pursuit;D would make sense to find out part that would allow building both versions.

And this probably will be the finest solution to keep everything in its good, old,right place .

Talking about the 9v battery - an old, yellow Lego 9v battery box (quite cheap and readily available on Ebay)  could solve a lot problems. It can be placed in the front, where the original "windows with shutters" were - it will need a custom made adapter cable to PF, but it will save the  bonnet design , keeping it 4-studs wide. This will allow also to put again the PF motor on the front and to recreate the correct rear unpowered bogie. At this point, there will be no need for a custom base anymore. I have to try this design but it should work! 

3 hours ago, Bartosz said:

the spring has started, kids only want to play outside and I lack the excuse for buying more Lego...

And they are right!!!  Time to build a Lego garden railway!!! (I cannot find a better excuse to combine "Lego" and "outside")  

[ElectroDiva]

On 04/04/2018 at 8:54 PM, Selander said:

 

Here is another loco I made with PP3 battery,  to make really compact designs.

Nice solution for compact designs.

 

What sort of run time do you get with a PP3 battery?

[Bartosz]

The project hasn't died yet!

I've ordered the parts for the (almost) vanilla version, but not everything went as planned. I found out a shop where I could fetch those yellow window frames (which are seemingly fairly rare), and this shop had pretty nice discount going on (even for PF parts), so I started preparing order. Wasn't fast enough for a motor and IR, but I went on the bricklinking spree and it didn't turn out exactly "on the cheap" (but hey - I've heard you can never get enough straight tracks and switches, right? ;) ). Bricklinking is hard.

I'm now left out without extension PF coord (to connect 9V battery), train motor and IR receiver for this, and with budget exceeded

[Paperinik77pk]

Hi @Bartosz, sorry for delay, here it is the .lxf file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w6ku042a9hx35lh/4564.lxf?dl=0

Good work on your 4564!!!

[Bartosz]

@Paperinik77pk - thanks!

In the meantime, I got another idea, which might, or might not be crazy. What if instead of using bulky (and expensive) IR receiver one would use some ATMega controller? From what I know, the smallest of them, the ATTiny, is capable of PWM. This would require some additional circuitry, but maybe it would be doable without much soldering :P

I stumbled on something like this: https://www.hackster.io/Notthemarsian/take-control-over-lego-power-functions-ee0bfa#toc-controlling-a-lego-motor-with-the-l293d-chip-1

My plan would be to replace the Arduino with just ATTiny chip (have to check if it would work without some additional resistors/capacitors), and then using 2 2xAAA battery holders. One such holder would fit in 2 x 7 x 3 area, so one could stuck them in the front and rear parts, leaving quite a lots of space in cabin for additional circuitry/cables. The disadvantage would be that it should be about 0.75 slower (because of lower voltage), but on the other hand it would last even longer :) (using 9V battery with such setup would cause problems because those chips operate on 5V level). The advantage - price (well, I haven't yet investigated prices of bluetooths chips properly) :)

 

Edited April 12, 2018 by Bartosz

[bradaz11]

it's a dead series now, but I had been starting to go down this route

https://arduinolegotrains.wordpress.com/category/videos/

he uses a digispark and 2nd arduino to control the pf train motor, no reason why you need the PF battery pack. looks a lot smaller than the link you posted above. I just need to learn a lot more about arduino, but I have most of the kit, just need time to start setting it all up

 

Edited April 12, 2018 by bradaz11

[Bartosz]

1 hour ago, bradaz11 said:

looks a lot smaller than the link you posted above

In the first link - yes there's full blown arduino there. What I had in mind is barebone ATTiny, which is...tiny;) (just realised there's no second link in my previous post - forgot to paste it: http://www.hackvandedam.nl/blog/?page_id=547) 

Even arduino nano is bigger than needed - it has microusb socket.

Thanks for videos! Need to watch them. If you start something - I'm interested in your progress!

Edited April 12, 2018 by Bartosz

[bradaz11]

@Bartosz

yeah, looking through his project, it looks like he had that board made, I think that is far beyond me. I got up to buying all the bits like a digispark, and the motor driver arduino lego trains uses, they are quite compact, but I can see where the lego version size comes in.

I was considering at one point to just break a lego reciever open, and rearange all the components and set up wired leads to it, to try to get the space saving, and just use the digispark over radio, to control the IR inside the model.

but it all comes down to time. with work, other hobbies and my first baby on the way, I can't just get any time to play with trains. and now with the new PF architecture possibly about to solve some of these issues maybe, its taken even more of a backseat. still also waiting on my PFxbrick to arrive too

 

[Bartosz]

13 hours ago, bradaz11 said:

I think that is far beyond me

Yeah, I don't want to make a board either (I have some soldering equipment, but almost zero soldering experience ;) ) - I'm just evaluating whether it would be possible to just connect all components with cables (I'd then buy the DIP version of chips).

Edit:

@bradaz11 - cool, I've checked some of those videos, in one of them he mentioned it would be better to use AAA batteries with step-up converter (to increase voltage), than 9V batteries. And it's quite a good idea I'd say, but one could even try it with AA batteries.

Now, suppose we have 2 AA rechargeables, with 2600mAh (which, from what I've found, cost bit less than one 9V counterparts), and we connect it to 5V step-up converter (costs about the price of those 2 batteries), then, following calculations from this link, we could achieve 1248mAh, and with 85% efficiency it would still be above 1000mAh which would be quite awesome (hope I got that right ;P ) !

Edited April 13, 2018 by Bartosz

[bradaz11]

@Bartosz

That sounds an interesting idea.  

[Bartosz]

Time for small report!

So, after hooking the voltage regulator and 2xAA batteries, the IR receiver would start normally (green led on), but then after sending a signal for motors, the motor wheels barely moved and IR receiver restarted itself.

Now, this is a failure, but it's not something unexpected. Probably the current needed for motor to start (haven't measured it) was just too much for regulator, and it did what spec says it was supposed to do - drop the voltage to some level that was probably unacceptable for IR receiver. I was expecting it to happen on stalling - it wouldn't be that bad, because after such stall it would be able to run it again, but I didn't anticipate it happening while starting :)

Time to get back to plan B, and use the 9V battery...If only I had accounted for plan B and ordered 9V batteries as well! But I did not :D

Edited April 19, 2018 by Bartosz

[Bartosz]

Wohoo, I've finished it...

First of all, I had to connect 9V battery connector with PF connector. Fortunately andriend suggested simple solution:

This resulted in quite a bit of connectors that needed to be stuffed in:

In the end, it worked pretty well I think:

Vid

Edited December 16, 2019 by Bartosz