codefox421

Did you do anything special for printing in the black material? I just recently printed in Black Strong and Flexible for the first time, and the parts came out with inconsistent dimensions. (Possibly from a polishing process?) How is the clutch power on your black track segment, and if it's similar to standard LEGO clutch power, did you do anything special to achieve that?

This is a tutorial detailing how to modify a LEGO 9V train motor so that it may be powered independently of the track. This effort is part of a larger project inspired by Thorsten Benter’s article in Railbricks Issue 7 titled “PF and 9V Trains: The Best of Both Worlds”. Step 1) Open the 9V motor. This has been covered elsewhere, so it should suffice to say you carefully remove the 12 tabs holding the bottom cover on with an xacto blade or something similar. There is enough friction to hold the bottom cover in place later even without the tabs. Step 2) Remove all internal parts. Ignore the fact that I took this photo after completing step 3. Step 3) Use a rotary tool with a cutoff disk to bisect the metal strips in the top of the motor enclosure. These strips are exposed in the top studs, and we will later use them to pull power from the track and apply power to the motor. Very important: Be sure to apply NO PRESSURE when using the rotary tool. Instead, just lightly touch the spinning cutoff disk against the metal strip, and let the tool do the work. It will take some time, so be patient and careful. If you apply pressure, the metal strips will heat up and deform the plastic. If the plastic deforms, it will be impossible to interface with LEGO bricks and PCB adapters (like the one in the upper-right corner of the picture). Keep it light and easy. You will thank yourself later when you haven’t ruined your motor’s plastic housing. Step 4) Desolder the metal pieces from the electric motor. I don’t have a picture of this exact step because I used the electric motor from a Power Functions train motor. If replacing the 9V motor with a Power Functions motor, open up the PF train motor using a T6 bit, remove the electric motor, and desolder it from the wires. Step 5) Solder a short length of wire to each tab on the electric motor (do this outside the housing to avoid accidently melting it). I used 32 gauge DCC decoder wire, but you can use whatever you have that will fit inside the motor. Reassemble the motor with exception of the wheels and the bottom cover. Step 6) Attach the wires to the outermost halves of the metal strips; the innermost halves are connected to the wheels through the wipers. I used a silver epoxy for this. I chose silver epoxy for two reasons: 1) I didn’t want to risk melting the studs by soldering the wires to the metal strips, and 2) silver epoxy has a lower resistance than graphite epoxy. Step 7) Reinstall the wheels and make sure everything is running smoothly. This would also be a good time to lubricate the gears if you want to. Make sure you don’t get any lubricant on the electrical parts! Press the bottom cover onto what remains of the tabs, and you’re done! If you ever want to run the motor directly from track power, simply use a PCB adapter with a loopback connector or connect a LEGO wire (9V or light gray end of PF). This is what a PCB adapter looks like when installed on the motor. (I’ve updated the design since taking the previous photo.) And here is a connector leading up to the electronics (currently just a Power Functions battery box, soon to include a Bluetooth receiver) in my Horizon Express. The connector plugs into the PCB adapter. The PCB adapter is attached to the electrical studs on the motor. And the motor is pinned to the bottom plate of the locomotive. Now I can charge the battery in my train without taking it off the track, run it indefinitely on a mixed metal and plastic layout, and have non-line-of-sight control when I add the Bluetooth receiver. It really is the best of both worlds!

I finally got part of my backer reward. Taking up the role of the squeaky wheel may have helped. If you haven't gotten a response in a week or two since your last communication, you might try pinging the ME Models folks again.

I have modded a 9V motor to output track power and take in power to the electric motor. Could be used like you describe. I will write up a post about it when I have the time.

A quick update: I've designed an enclosure for the modular receiver and put in an order for it through shapeways (took advantage of their free shipping promotion this week). I'm looking forward to its arrival and trying it out. Modular Receiver Housing by Nick Iaconis, on Shapeways I would love to see you do some experimentation with that. I remember witnessing it when running a prototype off of a 9V battery, but I have no doubt you're running more current through your receivers than I am mine. If you figure out a solution, let's get it into the upstream repository. I think this is where I got the HM-06: https://www.fasttech...ransparent-seri It looks like it's out of stock or not sold there anymore though; wish I had picked up a few spares. The new motor driver (an LV8402GP) has about the same current capacity as the DRV8833 but can handle up to 16 volts (the DRV8833 can only handle 11.8 volts). I plan on eventually making a battery module based around a 3S LiPo (or maybe LiFePO), which will have a max voltage of 12.6 volts (or 11.1 for LiFePO), so the extra voltage headroom is necessary. The motor driver was a little tricky to solder (I used a toaster over to get the job done), but with a good pair of tweezers, a good soldering iron tip, and some patience, you'd be surprised what you can do. Here's a quick draft BOM: https://gist.github....4729dce3e839759 I just used digikey part numbers to save time, but most everything can be replaced with equivalent parts.

B2 is for support of old 9v battery boxes. Power Functions cables can connect to these battery boxes, but they do so on C1/C2 instead of 9v/GND. The bridge rectifier ensures the polarity of the input voltage from old battery boxes, which would otherwise be at risk of being connected backward. If you don't plan to use these battery boxes, you can leave B2 unpopulated. If I haven't mentioned it before, you can probably leave B3 and B4 unpopulated in general. These were intended to be electrical "safety valves" to deal with back EMF from motors, but I've since realized that this function is built into the DRV8833 motor driver IC.

Up to you. I should have some more updates about it to post in the near future, but for now here's this: And a link to the new repo, though it's still kind of under construction (needs a README and a BOM): https://github.com/B...etooth-receiver

I was looking for a way to both store my trains and transport them safely. Living in an apartment, I am a bit strapped for space and wanted to make my girlfriend happy by putting the trains away from time to time. LEGO Train Storage and Transportation by Nick Iaconis, on Flickr I settled on a travel case from HPRC. LEGO Train Storage and Transportation by Nick Iaconis, on Flickr The top layer contains my modified Emerald Night with its LiPo charging supplies and my British Railways Mark 1. I plan to fill the middle with more rolling stock whenever I get around to building them. LEGO Train Storage and Transportation by Nick Iaconis, on Flickr Pulling out the top layer by the red shoe laces reveals the bottom layer where I store my double (or should I say complete) Horizon Express.

Conducting tape is durable if you get the right kind. I was talking to someone at Bricks bt the Bay last weekend who has been running an electrified crossover for about 8 years now, and he hasn't changed out the tape even once. The trick is to find copper tape that has been plated with tin. This is something you could find at a stained glass window supply shop. Copper alone is not durable (and also looks visibly different from the 9V track). Aluminum oxidizes when you run electricity through it, and aluminum oxide is non-conductive. Tin oxidizes to a lesser degree, but tin oxide is both conductive and easier to clean off.

Do make sure you've sent them an email rather than a direct message on eurobricks. I had been waiting for a reply to a DM since March, but I got a response within 24 hours as soon as a sent an email.

If both axles turn at the same rate, the larger wheels will cover more distance than the smaller wheels. (This is why fast passenger steam locomotives had huge drivers.) To make both wheels cover the same distance, you would need to slow down the large wheels or speed up the small wheels. Slowing down the small wheels will just make the problem worse.

I soldered up one of the new boards this weekend. Haven't had a chance to program it yet, but I'll get to that soon. It uses the ATtiny841, which means I'll finally be able to use hardware serial. Woot! :D Bluetooth Receiver (Top) by Nick Iaconis, on Flickr Bluetooth Receiver (Bottom) by Nick Iaconis, on Flickr

I gave Arduino IDE another shot. As it turns out, getting the arduino-tiny-841 core up and running is much easier with Arduino IDE 1.6.3+, so I can continue utilizing Arduino going forward. I was using an older version before, which was causing the trouble.

Whoa, there's been a bit of activity in this thread, and I haven't been getting notifications about it. Weird. Anyway... Yep, assuming all the specs are the same, there should be no difference between manufacturers. Heh, I've been experimenting with some JST-ZH connectors among other things (click for high-res): Similar idea to your molex connectors. JST-ZH is the connector type LifeLites uses in their products. The ATtiny84 is rated for 5.5v, but the HC-06 is only rated for about 3.3v (it's actually something like 3.8v, but I don't have the datasheet at hand). Both the ATtiny84 and the HC-06 are connected to the same 3v3 line, so you could potentially damage the Bluetooth module if your programmer feeds 5v to the board. That's awesome! Will you be posting a topic about your project? I'd love to hear more! Also, I've been playing around with one of the new ATtiny841s. I programmed it for the first time last night. I gave up on using the Arduino IDE for this chip though, so I'm fumbling around in Atmel Studio to figure out how to do all the things Arduino makes so simple. It will take some time, but that hardware serial will be well worth it! Better than commenting out that line would be to uncomment the line 3 down: digitalWrite(btResetPin, HIGH); // end Bluetooth reset This will drive the BTRST line high, thus enabling the HC-06. If btResetPin is allowed to float (not set as an output), static charges may cause the HC-06 to reset sporadically. The semaphore in bluetoothSerialService is used to circumvent an issue with SoftwareSerial where the transmitted value clobbers the received value. Your mileage may vary, but that semaphore was introduced to fix this issue, which outwardly looked like the 8884bt responding to commands that differed from the commands being sent to it. I haven't played with the HC-05. How do you like it?

I'm sure it's just the simple fact that Mike and Eric are swamped getting everything together, but I'm starting to really regret adding metal track to my reward. =(

Looking forward to the house fire; please post video. Just kidding. I'm doing something similar except using 9V motors. I pick up power from the rails to charge a battery, then pipe the battery power to a Bluetooth receiver before sending it back to the motor. And I'm working on making it all modular so any part could be replaced with a simple loopback. The only trouble is 9V doesn't charge the batter very efficiently, so I may have to run 12V on the rails... I find that kind of funny.

Not sure if parts are available in those colors, but that is one fantastic looking locomotive!

I never went through with the order, so I have no tape. However, I figured I should comment since I had that information.

Here is an excerpt from a conversation I had with a metal tape sales person: Hello, I noticed you slit the stainless steel foil tape at time of order. Can you do 1/4" width? --- Yes.. Min order is $50 $21.25 per roll Suzy Palmer Viadon LLC 26200 South Whiting Way Monee, IL 60449 Toll Free - 866-534-3900 Fax - 708-534-3957 suzy@viadon.com ISO 9001:2008 Certified & A Woman Owned Business www.viadon.com - Check out our new redesigned website!! www.metal-tapes.com

Those aren't the only ways. You can also bank your curves by placing plates (1x2 plates should do the trick) under the ties on the outside edge of the curve. I'm sure there are more methods that haven't been listed too.

Or open up the motor assembly (use a T6 bit) and flip the polarity by re-soldering the motor leads.

How about this link? http://shpws.me/EQtr The connector is patented along with other features of the Power Functions system, or so I've been told. Patent searching is rather difficult, and although I never found the Power Functions patents I don't doubt they exist. I'd like to stay as far away from trouble with patent law as I can, hence the redesign. The old version's connectors were verbatim copies of LEGO's connectors.

I probably should have gotten some much needed sleep, but instead I did this. Ask and ye shall receive, I suppose. www.shapeways.com/.../brickster-case Go to https://github.com/B...cc00b3a7e4ca27c and switch to "Revision Slider"... it's a pretty cool way to look at the difference between old and new versions. Do you think it's enough of a change?

The trouble is the SoftwareSerial library, which is necessary when using the ATtiny84 since that microcontroller doesn't support hardware serial. If you happen to be writing to SoftwareSerial while data is coming in, the incoming data gets corrupted. Obviously, if the incoming data is corrupt, the receiver won't be responding to the commands you were sending it. It will be responding to garbage commands, some of which will look like real commands, and thus will result in the receiver responding to commands that the user did not send. I call this the "phantom commands" issue, and it took me a really long time to track down what was going wrong because it's so intermittent. The "solution" was to place a lock on the Bluetooth connection after sending a command and wait for the receiver's response before releasing the lock, thus allowing subsequent commands to be sent (links go to the lines of source code where these things happen). This works because the receiver goes quiet (not writing data to serial) after it has sent its one-byte response, and therefore the next command the app sends won't be clobbered by the receiver's response stage. However, this "solution" means that if the app somehow misses the receiver's response, it becomes locked up and must be restarted (cleared from the recent apps and reopened). Now I've been saying "solution" (with quotes) because the REAL solution is to replace the ATtiny84 microcontroller with one that supports hardware serial. That way data can be sent and received simultaneously without clobbering the incoming commands, which keeps the app from having to do hacky things and potentially locking up. With that also comes the potential to send/receiver more data. For instance, the app could poll the receiver for what firmware version it's running and use different command sets for different receivers running different firmware versions or even with different hardware components. Many things become possible that just aren't possible while stuck using the ATtiny84. Additionally, I want to replace the input/output solder pads with vias, so that it's easier to solder PF cables to the board or metal bits if using the enclosure. I should do that. I can't just yet, because the connection geometry is a direct copy of LEGO's at the moment. However, now that I know everything is situated correctly, I should be able to change the surrounding shape and open it up to be purchased.

Woot! Finally! I'm excitied. :D Any reason why you chose to fulfill all the plastic-only orders before fulfilling the plastic portion of any mixed orders even though you are splitting mixed orders into separate plastic and metal shipments?