8/2/2020

Wireless Railway Unit documentation

7/24/2020

Next step of URB Project — Wireless Railway Unit

Soon new hardware and new features.

7/18/2020

Wagon unloader

I received a message from the winner of the 2020 contest:

Good afternoon Steve. These wagon unloader. Where they could be in URB and what would be the button in the APP.

Greetings – Francisco Rodriguez

Ok! Since the purpose of the buttons in my applications is determined by the user in the COMM sketch, I offer one of the many options for connecting and controlling these mechanisms. There are 6 decouplers in the picture, that is, the task is to manage each of them individually.

The Protocol has a command for managing functions — fa0z (fb0z) and fa1z (fb1z) (Custom button). This button is located in the train control interface in the application, unlike the lighting control buttons and layout elements. Since the control of the decouplers is associated with the movement of the train (and the controls of the locomotive), it is logical to assign this button. The next question is that there are six decouplers, and, accordingly, you need to choose only one at the moment.

In the track-plan, three decouplers refer to Driver A and three to Driver B. Then the GEARS buttons in the application will be responsible for selecting a specific decoupler, and the CUSTOM button will activate it for a few seconds. The control of the electromagnet of the decoupler is in no way different from the control of the point-motor of the turnout switch, but it only has one channel. That is, it is even simpler, it is enough to take the Auto OFF algorithm from the snippet and the sketch for the local URB unit is ready.

In the COMM sketch, it is enough to make a choice according to the GEAR buttons, and then send the command for activate decoupler to local unit already programmed earlier. That's all, nothing complicated.

7/17/2020

Turntable II

New stepper motor NEMA mounted on turntable.

7/14/2020

Successful stepper motor test

I wrote a sketch to control this motor through the A4988 motor driver. The basic idea is to use step 1/16 and rotation control without using the Arduino libraries. You can download the sketch from the link.

7/6/2020

New design. New content.

New version of site are released.

6/16/2020

Need your opinion

I am making a new version of the site with an extended description and examples. Today I finished a new example for a signal system. It will be very interesting for me to read your opinion about this. Write me about it to steve@arduinorailwaycontrol.com

5/31/2020

My plans

I made some mistakes introducing my project. Despite the fact that on my site and in my videos I repeated a phrase about the use of ANY microcontrollers, modelers stubbornly considered the need to use the URB unit as the main obstacle to using the project. I also counted on the independent programming of the project participants of their layouts. What also turned out to be a mistake, people do not want to program and they insist on ready-made examples.

I'm tired of trying to explain this situation, and I will redo my site into simple ready-made solutions. For advanced users who are able to independently program information "how do" will only be in the URB Club.

I received a new motor with a gearbox from China, and, unfortunately, it turned out that its characteristics (inertia when stopping, backlash of the output shaft, errors of position sensors and a small range of speed control) do not allow its use it for the turntable. I am very upset about this, but the turntable design will be completed using a CNC stepper motor. To do this, I need to learn using my 1310 machine to produce gears, which I will do.

5/29/2020

For big layouts with Interlocking

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