Stan;
An excellent job of documenting the ITAD -- I'm glad I sent it to you.
I am making very good progress on my RFID approach to Engine Identification.
I decided to write each engine # into the EEPROM on the tag for that particular engine.
When the engine passes over the RFID antenna under the track, the the RFID controller (an Arduino), will retrieve the engine # and then send a command to the Arduino with the radio that I use to send commands to the TIU.
The engine will then sound the crossing signal.
Another decision I recently made was to use a RFID card to contain the 'engine table' for all my engines.
Any time I wish to update the RFID detector with a new engine #, I'll wave the special RFID card over the detector and since the card is a Mifare Classic Card (4 byte UID) the program will know it's supposed to write a new engine # into the RFID tag on the engine it just recognized. The engines use the Mifare Ultralight Card (7 byte UID) and that's how the detector program knows it's supposed to update the current engine RFID tag as opposed to sending a command to sound the crossing sound.
I'll write a small program to allow me to update the special RFID card used for holding the current engine table.
I'm also in the process of replacing all Arduino Uno R3's with Arduino Pro Mini's for control purposes. The Uno is really overkill for what I need it to do for the RFID processing.
Since the RFID board (Adafruit PN532 Breakout board) is 3.3 v, I ordered some 3.3 v versions of the Arduino Pro Mini to get away from logic level shifting.
When I finally get it all working, I'll post some pictures/videos along with any explanation that might be helpful.
Thanks again Stan for your very excellent work!
Ray
