@Casey_Jones Still doing well, still hacking away at stuff.
Here's the short version of what I am up to at the moment.
Still need to make a user friendly interface of my LC gateway, probably doing this with a screen and buttons. I have been holding off the development of that until I finished my next/current project:
For the past few months I have been working on a way to decode the IR system, mostly focused on the process of adding IR sensor track capability to LionChief locos.
Warning the following gets very nerdy:
I had planned on giving an update as soon as it was done, but since you asked I will get into it now. I've been building a from scratch recreation of the (discontinued) sensor car (IR transmitter add on box car) and technically doing deep dive into the infrared position monitoring system Lionel offers via the sensor track. I bought some new tools/toys to get going and progress has been going pretty well. One short term goal I have for that is to crack/decode the Infrared signals and recreate them myself. I have already been able to pass through the infrared signal on an Arduino but now I am actually starting to generate the signal myself. The fun challenge for me is the lessons of working with pulses of light that take a few microseconds to finish. I love challenging myself and this IR system has certainly accomplished that goal.
The following is a picture of my current mad science project setup, all centered around one upside down boxcar. It looks like the study of an alien with all the wires involved.
I should have an update post and video on all this soon.
A big idea I had since my last post was to allow the LC gateway board to ride in a boxcar behind the locomotive and to enable the Legacy decoding feature that I mentioned last time to be driven off an R4LC board. If nothing else though the signal is great when my board is literally towed behind the loco it is managing, I had some signal strength issues at the huge layout of my club.
That's what I've been up to, hope you're well too.
-Ryan
