I got a solid five hours on the smaller layout Sunday. Some time ago I removed a small fruit and vegetable stand from the larger layout and saved it for use on the smaller one, which has a couple of vacant areas. The first job was to clear the trees and undergrowth in an open area next to the motel T_IMG_1603 by Bookbear1 posted Sep 13, 2020 at 7:04 PM The Salmonella Bros. building was placed T_IMG_1605 by Bookbear1 posted Sep 13, 2020 at 7:05 PM Produce stocked and customers added T_IMG_1607 by Bookbear1 posted Sep 13, 2020 at 7:06 PM And finally a tree replanted T_IMG_1608 by Bookbear1 posted Sep 13, 2020 at 7:07 PM Still to come is a freight loading dock for the rear of the building and wooden fence close to the tree, both kits on order.
Yay! I figured out what my grief with the Tortoise / Hare combos are... My Hare's seem to be failing. So I measured the tortoise outputs on the failed ones and get almost 0V unloaded. I tested the good ones and I get 10.5V unloaded. When I toggle the Hare, the voltage goes to -10.5V on a good Hare. Next I measured every pin on the PIC16F636 chip with pin 1 on J5 (the tortoise motor connector) and could not find either + or -10.5V, then I measured the LM358 dual op amp, and found -10.5V on pin 7. Looking up the dual op amp, it gets inputs from the pic and outputs on pins 1 and 7. Measuring the voltage at pins 2 and 3, the voltage goes from -2.5 to +2.5 when toggling the Hare, and the voltage on pins 5 and 6 (the other op amp in the package) goes from +2.5 to -2.5. So the working Hare toggles op amp outputs from -10.5 to +10.5, and the bad Hare's measure 0V output. I just need to replace the LM358 op amps to repair the Hare's. I got 50 pieces ordered of SOP-8 packaged LM358's for $8 from Amazon to repair my bad Hare's, which I have 3 of so far. A replacement Hare costs about $30, so I can repair all of them for 1/3 the cost of one replacement.
