coreyg

That is really cool. Which sensor is for what? You listed a light sensor and an ultrasound sensor. Your detection of the train is perfect (and the shutoff is quick!) I've done a trolley setup with an arduino uno that used reed switches at both sides. The first couple versions would have failures on the reed switches. I moved them 90 degrees and since then, I've had only 2 failures in about 50 hours of use. Did you get a shield or breakout for the L298N?

Wow! It's great to talk to someone else doing this! No problem on the app. You'll need a bluetooth connection. I just buy the HC-05 on ebay. There's a nice serial library that supports it and it only takes 2 pins on the Arduino to hook up. and I've defined an API from the app to the Arduino so I don't have to rev the hardware at the same time as the app. On your PWM controllers, what motor driver are you using? (I'm using the DRV8835) What frequency do you have the PWM at? (I was at 800Hz but increased it to 4000Hz after a few days). We've seen higher than normal failures on the 9v motor and my next gen hardware is going to supply true DC voltage to the train. It's a pain to do though. There's a reason why the entire world has gone to PWM.

Hello Everyone, My name is Corey Gehman. I've been lurking around here for a while and posting quite a bit to flickr, but flickr isn't very good for conversations, so I figured I needed to get over here. I've wanted to do trains as my dark age was ending but I quickly got bored with a train going in a simple oval so I never really got into it although I felt like I wanted to. But, that all changed at Bricks by the Bay 2014 which basically showed me how easy the Arduino was to program and that lead to my Arduino based train controller for 9v layout. I've attached the picture of the first full hardware version with the second software version. Both of which are being upgraded right now (hopefully done soon...). The train controller controls up to 4 trains and 16 motorized switches and it talks via bluetooth to an Android app. Both the Arduino design and software are mine as well as the Android app. The app is fairly basic but able to switch trains from one track to another and open up "parking" spots for either parking a train or pulling out a new train. Of course, as soon as I got this working on a very small layout (2 loops with a crossover and 2 parking spots), it became obvious that I need a whole lot more trains. I've been getting pictures of them recently and I'll start uploading more pictures. So far, my biggest train project has been the "Blue Horizon". Here's by flickr album so far on my 9v trains: