@Casey_Jones posted:Hi Ryan, hope you are in good health and spirits
any news/progress?
Hi @Casey_Jones,
Sorry for the long delay and thanks for the well wishes. Same to you, hope your doing well.
I am doing well but due to some wild circumstances recently I have been literally quite far away from my workbench for the last few months. Hopefully that should be changing in the next few weeks tough.
Here is an update from last time, a lot of my efforts were derailed(so to speak) and I got a bit of recoil from my club after using their Legacy base to try out some data reading(with a little bit of data writing). See this video for the results of that: https://youtu.be/9tPro7mHm8A All I did was plug into the serial port on the back of the Legacy base. But what I had not expected was that people can be a bit upset by that. I was basically shot down and told to get my own if I wanted to play.(Kinda thought playing with trains was the point of a train club, but anyway) I once again stuck without easy local access to a Legacy system. This really was an upset for me and my project efforts that caused me to have to rethink how I could progress. Next thing you know the virus came to town and things got complicated. (everything is alright in my immediate family). But I have had to relocate for a few months on short notice. I packed as much train stuff in a suitcase that I could to work on while away. For a few months I hadn't had any room to setup a test track, so my efforts had all been on hold and my postwar e-unit drum was also still bad. In the last two weeks, my space situation has improved and I finally got an oval of Fastrack setup. Also now that the train stores have opened up, I picked up an e-unit rebuild kit and now I'm finally rolling again (literally).
Also picked up a little K-Line speeder and shed accessory with a little turntable, it's awesome but parking the speeder on the turntable is hard. Today I think I will make a module to stop the track power as soon as it gets into position. This could have other uses too of course. I think I may even try to determine the track speeder's speed based on how long it takes to pass a sensor. Might be even more fun.
Where I left off on the postwar LC project was that I have to resolve a latency issue in my LC Gateway board that causes relayed command from the remote to have a delay after running for a while. Little bugs like that can be pretty tricky to solve. Once that is solved I need to start looking into scaling down the electronics inside the postwar loco to better fit under the shell. Things were a bit too tight for the shell after I added Electro-Coupler control. Also I need to review my circuit designs. I managed to blow out a power switching component on my board (called a triac) due to what I believe to be a EMF spike from the Electo-Coupler. My main skill is in software but I learned just enough electrical engineering in college to get me this far in the circuit design. If the component blows up again I will be stuck for a few more weeks on that.
So back on to my future plans and schedule. While my day job has been soaking up a lot of my spare time (now that I have been working remotely for the last few months), I still plan to progress my testing of the postwar LionChief code. The board I am using on the locomotive has a technical limitation that requires me to use the LC gateway to act as a bridge between the LC app/remote and my control board on the loco,(so I will need to fix the bug mentioned above) but I can assure you that it is still running the LionChief protocol. Schedule wise no matter what I should be back to my real workshop in a few more short weeks.
Aside from the postwar LC conversion board project, I also have some BIG plans for legacy base integrations. First of that would be two way LC integration, Ability to use a LC remote with the legacy base, and the ability to use the legacy base with LC locomotives. Both of which I had already started work on (first video link above) but as I mentioned above my club had stopped it. As a result I have been saving lots of pennies in the bank (this was also aided by the virus shutdown) and can now manage to get myself a Legacy Cab-2 system! I have may things in mind such as other ways of interacting with the trains by using the legacy base itself as a gateway between the locomotives and some custom interfaces.
I also have still not forgotten about LionChief Lashups, the concept of which I have already tested here: youtu.be/mYDu9uKFSws and however I will need to get a second LionChief Loco that actually has couplers (unlike my LIRR M7 set) and that is also in my future plans. Since I will probably have a Cab-2 in the near future I figure I had better get a LC 2.0 loco next. I know I am committing to this LC integration project though considering that I will be getting a Cab-2 without any TMCC or Legacy locos! I do have about 5 Fastrack switches(C&C) and will probably be picking up a SC-1 to play with too since they are cheap.(and I can add my own relays to the SC-1 if I wanted).
I cant wait to start driving a LionChief loco using the Cab-2! This is the sort of thrill I live for! Remember I had the idea for this because the folks at the train store told me you can't integrate things LionChief. I wanted to prove anything is possible.
Updates to come,
Ryan
