Progress Report 19 January 2005


Another 15 months has flown past and although progress has been made in that time frame it has been painfully slow. We started the year by connecting up all the track wiring that had been left hanging below whilst we laid all the track in our previous report. The track was then cleaned and thoroughly tested. No evident problems. Locos and stock run round all the trackwork on all levels.

We had made no progress on the electronics during the winter months as we had spent what time was available making up kits. Metcalfe, Superquick etc. etc.. We now had a fairly large collection of buildings so after the wiring completion and testing we set about adding some scenery to the Level 8 ends. Graystones Farm was the first to be completed in the corner where the Level 8 starts to descend to Level 4. We then added the industrial area to the adjacent corner at the approches to the Level 8 station. Some groundwork was also completed in this area between the corners.

At this point we started to construct the platforms for the Level 8 station and to take a look at the electronics for controlling the points and signals. That was when disaster struck!!!!
It had been our intention to use a Maplin Multi I/O card in a standard PC to connect to the various point and signal control boards dotted around the layout. The Maplin Multi I/O card provides 3 off 8 bit ports which was ideal for what we were going to do, thus providing us with an Address Port, a Data Port and a Control Port. Unfortunately the Multi I/O card is an ISA card and although the original PC supported ISA, that PC took an early bath and had to be replaced. The replacement PC only has PCI capability so the Multi I/O card is defunct and no longer any use. EEK!!

The long and the short of that experience drove us to find an alternative method of control, still PC based but using a different technology.
As part of my teaching in A Level Computing I have introduced my students to Microcontrollers, Stamps and PIC's primarily and the ease with which they can be programmed. Given the very low cost of these devices, we then considered using microcontrollers to control the points and signals on the layout. Given the unit cost of these devices we wanted a microcontroller that could control and monitor 4 devices and communicate with the PC. Looking at the variety of different microcontrollers available led us to find an educational company that can supply a number of different microcontrollers with differing capabilities but ALL programmable in a simple BASIC language.
Here's the website of Revolution Education. We have chosen to use the PICAXE 28X - it has the ability to control and monitor 4 devices (points or signals) and to communicate with the PC.

As the current drive from the PICAXE is quite low, the original control boards for the points and signals will remain in the same format that we had designed them. The difference being that they will be controlled by microcontrollers. Further discussion on the trials and tribulations of the electronics will appear in due course on the electronics page.

Having spent enormous amounts of time trying to resolve the electronics problems, the Level 8 station was never completed and that was the end of the summer. We were than back on the road with Exhibitions to attend. However, the winter months are proving very useful and by the time we get back out to the layout we will have sorted the electronics completely and built a number of PICAXE control boards so that we can start installing them and putting them to the acid test - DO THEY WORK AS WE WANT THEM TO?????. Having proven the new electronics to our satisfaction, we WILL finish off the Level 8 station and hopefully the rest of Level 8. Hopefully our next report at the end of the summer will include photographs of a completed Level 8.

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