Jump to content

AlmightyArjen

Eurobricks Citizen
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    449

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by AlmightyArjen

  1. AlmightyArjen
    What's the date of the next railbricks? Curious about the whole RFID thing...
  2. AlmightyArjen
    Every electic motor has its own most effective PWM frequency, but it is most of the times around 3kHz to 5kHz. THe sound you hear is that frequency, produced by the coils in the motor resonating at that frequency.
  3. AlmightyArjen
    The German ICE sounds the best I think, from 1:10:
  4. AlmightyArjen
    Take a look at model train forums, they use RFID as well, maybe you can find some info there. They stick an RFID tag on the bottom of the train and position the sensor between the sleepers...
  5. AlmightyArjen
    Cool to see everyone has their own solutions. I once automated a level crossing with an Arduino microcontroller, also using the micro motors!
  6. AlmightyArjen
    That is one slick locomotive, really awesome! Nice job!
  7. AlmightyArjen
    When a train starts, it doesn't get the full 9V right away. My experience is that when you have a lot of carriages and the train starts directly with 9V, the locomotive will run off by itself: the magnets won't be strong enough because of the drag of the carriages. So when I start a train a give it a Pulse Width Modulated signal (PWM) which ramps up the power of the signal. The same technique is used with real trains. When a train leaves, you hear a beep that's the coils resonating on the PWM frequency. The Lego motors make noise too, but because of the surrounding sounds you don't hear it. If you take a look at this video at time 0:30, you can hear the sound pretty good: Anyway, that is why the lights turn on slowly too: they receive the same power as the motor. And as for stopping: the train just hits a piece of track without power and slows down to a halt. And while slowing down, the wheels of the motor rotate, making the motor a generator which powers the lights. Since the train is slowing down, the generator produces less power and thus the lights dimm with it :)
  8. AlmightyArjen
    Everyone likes the crashes the most ScotNick, that's just nature or something I had a lot of unused video material so I made an extra video, came out quite nice!
  9. AlmightyArjen
    I finally got time to produce the video's, enjoy! Original: Onboard cam with the whole loop: And ofcourse the crashes! Enjoy!
  10. AlmightyArjen
    The 12 light bricks, you can make them by yourself if you know how to solder. Take a 2x3 brick, drill two holes in it where you can stick the LED's in. Then hollow out the back side of the brick and you'll have room for the resistors. Then you get something like this: I believe that the original brick has a connection for two wires. That means that you have to connect the LED's in antiparallel. The LED's need a 20mA current so when you connect them at 12V, you should use 560 ohms serial resistors (plus or minus 10% is no problem). When you're done, you could glue a 1x3 plate on the back of the 2x3 brick, so you can click it on the old 12V poles. Maybe I should make a Youtube instruction for it some day :)
  11. AlmightyArjen
    Epic indeed, I'm speechless! Kudo's!
  12. AlmightyArjen
    Yes I made it myself and I wanted it to look like the old 12V version. I drilled holes in a 2x3 brick, hollowed the back out and put some LED's and resistors inside.
  13. AlmightyArjen
    Yesterday we still had lots of troubles with the sensors: unexplainable behaviour or just failing sensors. This effected the whole set up quite a bit and we weren't able to run it like it supposed to run: there were frequently some train crashes The video will contain some nice footage I guess and will be online in a week from now. Until then, here are some nice images of the layout
  14. AlmightyArjen
    Yesterday we've been busy with laying the track down and error finding: there were some mechanical problems in the track and sensors that didn't work correctly. Finally we've managed to make it all work and today we'll shoot a video. Current status: A train needs 70 seconds to complete a full loop
  15. AlmightyArjen
    Sincerely, being AFOL, even if the galaxy squad came with benny-like minifigs I wouldn't buy it. For me it has nothing to do with classic space, futuron, blacktron, space police and Ice planet... The "space" sets of today totally miss the look and feel of the sets from 20 years ago.
  16. AlmightyArjen
    Nooo, just one! The rest what you see in the phot above are motordrivers to deliver the current to the motors for the switches and the isolated tracksegments
  17. AlmightyArjen
    The layout contains a crossing and what is a crossing without the proper signs? I tried to immitate the 12V-look:
  18. AlmightyArjen
    The bridges for the stations are ready!
  19. AlmightyArjen
    This is huge... Great work!!
  20. AlmightyArjen
    Some users have also 3D-alike sigs with the trains, where did they get those from??
  21. AlmightyArjen
    Yes those are L298 H-bridge drivers. A module like that costs about $7,00 at dx.com
  22. AlmightyArjen
    Yes... When I need a voltmeter, it means that the system does something I don't want it to do I did some Input/Output testing of the current wiring (I'm at 50% now) and it all looks good so far!
  23. AlmightyArjen
    Today we've put together a small loop with two "stations" to test the program. It turned out that the motorized switches weren't reliable so we needed to adjust them by removing "the click". Further we found some functional errors in the program but as far as we could tested it we are pretty sure that we'll be able to get it all work in two weeks from now!
  24. AlmightyArjen
    Haha no, since we cannot control which train stops at which station we do not have a time table. We let the system at random decide what kind of action it performs every 20 seconds
  25. AlmightyArjen
    Oh yeah, coffee date, totally forgot about that! The Teensy doesn't have enough I/O pins and I had a Mega laying around but thanks for the tip! After some intensive research I'm using these sensors: http://www.dx.com/p/smart-car-infrared-obstacle-avoidance-sensor-black-blue-213600#.U2QOH_l_t8E They are more stable than others. Other sensors would loose a bit of fine tuning once the power had been cut off, these sensors don't have that problem. The "horizontal" train on the crossing has priority and the "vertical" trains have to stop for it. So when sensor 9 at the left detects a train, the isolated parts 6 and 7 are brought back to 0V and if a train passes, it will stop right there. But in theory it could be that there's another train behind it and that one could crash into the stopped train. So when the power is off on those pieces AND sensor 7 detects a train stopping, the program will cut off the voltage from isolated track piece 8 too. The same principle is done for the other track but there station 2 is used for that purpose. It's an extra security built in: we don't know if we need it but we want to run as much trains as possible! Yes, the pieces in the red boxes are isolated and can be shut down separately without shutting down the rest of the track. So instead of controlling the trains, we will be controlling the stations :) I'll make a nice vid of it ofcouse
×
×
  • Create New...