Hello, I figured it best to introduce myself here rather than in the main introductions section as I am primerilly on the TrainBoard for DCC++ and I am approaching this from a different perspective to most. Currently I don't have a layout and haven't had one since I was a kid. At the moment all I have are a few old locomotives in a box in my parents attic (I home they're still there). Having studied electronics and computer systems at university my career has slowly taken me away from doing and into management. For a while now I have been looking for an Ardunio or Raspberry PI project to get me doing some hands on electronics and coding once again, the real question for me has been what to make? Then about a month back I literally stumbled on Gregg's videos by acident whilst aimlessly browsing YouTube. I though DCC++ looks like a fun project, and solved my childhood fustration of only being able to run one train at a time (until I started watching Gregg's videos and reading various posts I hadn't even heared of DCC). My current plan is to build a small DCC++ setup, then make a little shunting yard to have a play with and see how far I can go with automation. So far I've downloaded base station code from GitHub and programmed up and Arduino Mega and that's happilly talking to the DCC++ controller running in Processing 3, big thanks to Gregg for both making this availible to anyone and also for making it so easy to understand. This moring picked up a DCC decoder for the next stage of testing, unfortunately my folks live a fair drive away so I won't have any locos to convert until they come & visit over Christmas holidays, but I figure if I can get the output voltage go up & down on the bench then there's no reason it won't work when fitted to a locomotive. My next steps over the comming weeks are going to be connecting up an ethernet shield and seeing if I can get it to work with WiThrottle. So far everything has been almost too easy but I'm sure I'll encounter problems and some point and will be back here asking for help. Rob
Hi Rob, Welcome to these forums! I too only frequent the DCC++ & DCC forums here. It sounds like you have followed a very similar path to me to get here! I was an electronic/computer engineer for all of my working life, and retired (early) a couple of years ago. I have recently become interested in Arduinos and stumbled on Gregg's Youtube videos, which started me on building my first model layout, - a small n-gauge shunting yard and station. The layout is about 40" by 9". I have managed to automate a rail bus which shuttles backwards and forwards, and returns to alternate platforms at the station each trip. I have built my own WiFi controller to manually control a shunter and decoupling operations. The electronics side of things I find very addictive. I posted a thread recently showing how far I've got here: http://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?threads/dcc-wifi-controller-on-an-esp8266-07.111489/ Where in the UK are you? Jim
Jim, I does indeed sound like we are going down simular routes. I live over in the forest of Dean, yourself?
