Our “Under Construction” layout has reached the point where we are considering how to control lighting, sound, etc. The layout is @ 38 x 22 so there are a lot of structures, lights, and other stuff. The roundhouse alone has seven bays, all of which can be separately controlled off/on/dim, overall 100 LEDs.
Other structures have lights for day, night, and day/night. Add in street lights, flood, spot, yard, special effects such as thunder/lightning, and then 3-4 sound modules and we need an electrical engineer OR a 14 year old that knows how to program arduinos.
We want to control the layout with an I-pad, not a sit-down control panel.
The layout uses DCS and thanks to Stan, GRJ, and others, so far so good BUT, we need something that is practical and in use that we can adopt rather than continue to try and figure it out ourselves.
I guess that we are beyond just considering how to do lighting, etc since we have a lot of stuff working and controlled by AIUs and separate relays where needed. But this is quickly getting out of control and if there is a better way, we better ask for help now.
I sold insurance and owned boats until retirement which is to say that we are somewhat out of our element. We are not electrical people.
Would some of you please give us some ideas? Thanks so much for the help. What is out there that can control all this? Is there something better or should we just keep on going?
Paula just said, “We need something that is easy and not complicated” and then started mumbling about impossible to figure out computer stuff.
