DCC++ Microblock trains

Well, that was kind of easy. Two locos modified with DCC decoders and connected to JMRI. Also got current sensing block detection running with an arduino. Fun times! Now on to automation and JMRI.

Decoder is wired in and working. But casing no longer fits.

20170917_221637 from arcadeperfect on Vimeo.

Early experiment using a small micro controller and a motor controller rather than DCC. It's just running a hard coded forward backward loop. The plan was to control via wifi.

Kind of cool that the train could be truly programmable more like an independent robot than something controlled by a central brain as with DCC. It could have a pi zero and even a camera and some open-cv - the possibilities!

But I couldn't cram it all into the body of the train since the nanoblocks necessarily protrude too far into the inside to keep the structure solid. I could glue just a thin shell. But on top of that it would be so much more work to get it running I just went for DCC. Maybe one day.