Last night at 10 pm, No 1's front headlight sparked into life and the new DCC system went live.
Like anything electronic here at La Casa Dandruff, things fought all the way to the end. When we left our story last time, I was cursing the creators of Ubuntu to a short walk off a very high plank. This also forced me back into the arms of the devil ie Windows....
Creating the Windows 10 boot USB gave problems with the file size which required the third suggested solution of those I tried (after the first 2). The install itself went fine, as did installing Java and JMRI. The computer picked up the DCC-Ex and I could then set it up under JMRI.
I purchased my Arduino and motor shield with DCC-Ex pre loaded for $65 from JT electronics in Hawks bay. They also do quite a few other electronic dodads.
The final install started with me having to get wires into the small tag board, and doing some trimming as I had folded the wires over to make them stronger which didn't fit. I then got no life from the track (including trying to induce a short). Worried that I had "bricked" the Arduino I dragged everything back into the living room to download the DCC-Ex program to see if it would read. Firing up JMRI, I then discovered that I had not turned the track power on in JMRI.
Back to the train room, plug it all back in and again no life from the power pack. However I noticed all the other lights on the outputs were lit. I then swaped the powerpack for a 30 year one from a Mac aquired back when I worked at Victoria university (which has also been the power supply for the Paekakariki loco depot). Firing up old reliable and pushing the light button for the front light on No 3 and theres life.......
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| The sign of success |
At this point I had a play for 10 minutes... And that will waste soo much time in the future.
To finsh this section (since its not an On30 blog) does anyone have any questions on the DCC-Ex setup? Its a bit complex online but in real life its very simple.
1 comment:
Glad to see you have the DCC-EX system working well, It's pretty easy! Also note these DCC-EX modules I sell have a modified 5V regulator on the microcontroller shield to handle up to 20V input voltage, thicker pins on the motor shield to provide a much more reliable connection to the lower shield, superior thermal performance of the motor shield, and testing of the complete system. These all combine to get the most reliable DCC-EX system from these components. Most shields sold on AliExpress are manufactured by cutting corners to be as cheap as possible.
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