Hi all, My name is Joe and reside in Granite Bay CA USA. I'm joining the group in seek of help with automating my wife's Department 56 Christmas Village HO model trains. It's a good thing I'm retired because this DCC and DCCPlusPlus looks like it will take some time to concur. I automated her trains about 5 years ago just using 8052 PWM for base station and Visual Basic for the host to control the engines which worked fine for one engine at a time, but now she want's multiple engines on common and side tracks running at the same time. Oh lucky me. When I came across DCCPlusPlus running on Arduino Atmega2560 with the Arduino Motor Shield I thought I had it made. Wrong! I'm not a "C" programmer, or an Arduino language programmer. I'm a assembly language programmer in microcontrollers AVR - 8052. I have been using Bascom for high level code with assembly calls for direct I/O. As of now I have two engines running under DCC control, but just manually. Anyway long story short, I plan to tackle DCC++ for the base station and are looking at PMRI or the DCC++ windows DCCPP_Controller application for automation. If there are any big gotcha's with either app's it would be nice to know early in the design stage, so any input will be appreciated. Thanks, Joe
Hi, Joe. Welcome to TrainBoard. We're happy to have you aboard. Our DCC thread(s) should fetch you any and all information you would ever need to find answers to. In TrainBoard, there's no such thing as "stupid" questions ... so jump right in there.
Hi Joe, welcome. Your challenge sounds fascinating, I'm sure the bunch in the DCC forum will have plenty of ideas and support.
Welcome aboard, Joe. Where is Granite Bay? I thought I knew Cali. Keep up the hobby, it sounds like you are well versed in the electronics.
Welcome Joe. Simple and low cost train automation is not very far down the road. It will be a major change from existing train control technology, and therefore will have a difficult time finding its place in the slowly changing train hobby world. So DCCpp is a good choice for the time being. But I would be leery of spending a lot of money on the currently available train automation approaches. Bob
I think you will find some others around with similar backgrounds and interests. I still vaguely recall doing a little bit in assembly for a CS class in what now seems like another life...
Hello Joe. Only gotchas with DCC++ is make sure you only use the Arduino V3 or Pollu motor shields. I used the Arduino Mega and Arduino V3 motor shield with the default Processing interface and it only took a few hours to get it running in manual. Taken me weeks to slog through the Processing interface just to change the track layout. Gregg did a great job. I just think I am slow. Good luck! Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk
Welcome Joe. While DCC++ is an interesting challenge unto itself, don't ignore a "simpler" automation path of using JMRI with a commercial command station. You can set up a Linux machine using the Raspberry Pi, and run JMRI from there. No base programming necessary
