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Not only am I a bad writer and a poor excuse for a 3D artist, I also pretend to know how to play with electronics and microcontrollers ...
So when one of my brothers (also over 60 and still plays with trains) wondered if I had the parts to make a programmable train controller to do boring track cleaning chores on his outside G scale layout, I whipped this little toy up.
Just an Arduino controller under a 16 by 2 LCD display and keypad with a side of motor controller. The only 'work' was those two little green boards tying them together. A dozen wires, eight 1K resisters, one pot, one transistor and those five LEDs from a xmas tree light set.
I just programmed it to show off the basics and then let my dear brother (who happens to do programming for a living) set it up how he liked/wanted. (Which can be changed by simply loading in new code.
The nice thing about it is you can pull it all apart and use the main pieces to build something else.
Beware of old farts with soldering irons - you never know what they'll be doing next!
So when one of my brothers (also over 60 and still plays with trains) wondered if I had the parts to make a programmable train controller to do boring track cleaning chores on his outside G scale layout, I whipped this little toy up.
Just an Arduino controller under a 16 by 2 LCD display and keypad with a side of motor controller. The only 'work' was those two little green boards tying them together. A dozen wires, eight 1K resisters, one pot, one transistor and those five LEDs from a xmas tree light set.
I just programmed it to show off the basics and then let my dear brother (who happens to do programming for a living) set it up how he liked/wanted. (Which can be changed by simply loading in new code.
The nice thing about it is you can pull it all apart and use the main pieces to build something else.
Beware of old farts with soldering irons - you never know what they'll be doing next!
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 4032 x 3024px
File Size 3.78 MB
Oh, I have a pair of Pis tucked into an old tower case - borrowing power from the AMD 900 w/W2000 system (and there's a car stereo also tucked in and stealing power!)
But a Pi would had needed more in a display and doesn't have any PWM outputs or anolog inputs to play with.
As far as simple, my brother thought all he wanted/needed was the Arduino, two pots, 3 LEDs and a pair of 10 amp relays. I thought mine was much more fun!
But a Pi would had needed more in a display and doesn't have any PWM outputs or anolog inputs to play with.
As far as simple, my brother thought all he wanted/needed was the Arduino, two pots, 3 LEDs and a pair of 10 amp relays. I thought mine was much more fun!
Hmmm a bunch of PC boards in plactic laundry basket...
All this micro-controller stuff is confusing to me... mainly because I haven't been exposed to the guts and wires workings of them... but again, I hand someone my welding gear and a drawing of something to be made they would be facing the same thing... lack of knowledge of the subject.
All this micro-controller stuff is confusing to me... mainly because I haven't been exposed to the guts and wires workings of them... but again, I hand someone my welding gear and a drawing of something to be made they would be facing the same thing... lack of knowledge of the subject.
The nicest thing about it is not having to completely hardwire something to make it do each thing you need.
An Arduino has 20 pins that you can set as inputs or outputs, and then tell it 'if this do that'.
A few connections and a little programming and that board trio on the left could watch your voltages and current on your bird and other little tricks, replace the motor board with one with a dozen relays to turn on/off different things.
The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys (though new all the bits would have been under $50)
An Arduino has 20 pins that you can set as inputs or outputs, and then tell it 'if this do that'.
A few connections and a little programming and that board trio on the left could watch your voltages and current on your bird and other little tricks, replace the motor board with one with a dozen relays to turn on/off different things.
The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys (though new all the bits would have been under $50)
making me nostalgic for my high school electronics classes.
we'd be building things during labs, learning during class time, and playing halo on the xboxs the teacher had set up when our work was done. we also had a network of pc's with full admin rights, used for games when not practicing networking.
my final year we got to build an EV using a sand rail chassis my teacher had gotten for less than $200, estimated top speed was about 60 mph iirc
we'd be building things during labs, learning during class time, and playing halo on the xboxs the teacher had set up when our work was done. we also had a network of pc's with full admin rights, used for games when not practicing networking.
my final year we got to build an EV using a sand rail chassis my teacher had gotten for less than $200, estimated top speed was about 60 mph iirc
I was repairing old tube B/W TVs while still in middle school - thank the deities for Radio Shack's tube tester!
First two years in HS I spent PE time in physics teaching Jrs and Srs why a transistor would only work when put in the right way!
As I was telling someone else, class of '76 here, so my school got a few TRS-80s the year after I was done ... but I've been playing with the new tech as it came out.
Spent '96-'03 at Dell in sever support, for my own entertainment and training at one point I had 8 W2000 servers and a pair of workstations playing networking games in my living room (don't ask what it looked like, just picture any mad scientist's den - or a small company running a server farm in a non-server type room ... )
What's sad is I still have enough spare bits lying around that I could make another one right now, a third if I feel like making the button panel, and still two more if I'm willing to trade out that motor speed board for a MOSFET and a relay.
(and don't get me started on playing with lights/lighting ... )
First two years in HS I spent PE time in physics teaching Jrs and Srs why a transistor would only work when put in the right way!
As I was telling someone else, class of '76 here, so my school got a few TRS-80s the year after I was done ... but I've been playing with the new tech as it came out.
Spent '96-'03 at Dell in sever support, for my own entertainment and training at one point I had 8 W2000 servers and a pair of workstations playing networking games in my living room (don't ask what it looked like, just picture any mad scientist's den - or a small company running a server farm in a non-server type room ... )
What's sad is I still have enough spare bits lying around that I could make another one right now, a third if I feel like making the button panel, and still two more if I'm willing to trade out that motor speed board for a MOSFET and a relay.
(and don't get me started on playing with lights/lighting ... )
Takes me back to working at an electronics assembly plant in Flagstaff in the late 1990s. We built a lot of control circuit boards, stuff for Belkin, Teledyne Waterpik and some other outfits. We did have a contract for building control computers for Heart Lung machines but a large number of our bench workers really didn't know what they were doing when it came to reading the codes on Caps and Resisters. Even after a 2 week class on it they were still fugging it up and we lost the contract. I quit in disgust soon after that
We all have have known, there is a source, neals madnis is coming from.......
I´m like you... my technical madnis starts with tube radios/ bw tv sets from roadside trasch in primary skool , tools from my father and a boys hobby book >Radiobasteln für Jungen<(1964) from the in germany legandary Heinz Richter.....
First (diy) computer in 1981.....
First online 1982 (diy acustic coppler) .....
Snowballed from there.......
Don´t mind faulty spelling and Grammar, i´m german.
I´m like you... my technical madnis starts with tube radios/ bw tv sets from roadside trasch in primary skool , tools from my father and a boys hobby book >Radiobasteln für Jungen<(1964) from the in germany legandary Heinz Richter.....
First (diy) computer in 1981.....
First online 1982 (diy acustic coppler) .....
Snowballed from there.......
Don´t mind faulty spelling and Grammar, i´m german.
What could possibly go wrong?
Heh, there's just a little 2 by 3 connector that links the boards, and there's no 'guide' pin, so my brother did ask what might happen if he plugged it in wrong.
I just smiled because the way I wired it nothing shorts out nothing burns up - just nothing happens on the motor board.
Heh, there's just a little 2 by 3 connector that links the boards, and there's no 'guide' pin, so my brother did ask what might happen if he plugged it in wrong.
I just smiled because the way I wired it nothing shorts out nothing burns up - just nothing happens on the motor board.
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