Busy week with the schedule

This week I was able to knock over quite a bit on the electronics installation schedule. Most evenings this week were spent soldering up the various control panel switches and indicator LEDs to their respective lead wires. This was completed on Friday night. As I explained to the missus I have to do this at night when the boys are not around as I am working with very hot implements and chemicals (soldering iron, flux and solder). That explained away why I was not keeping her company in the evenings!

I had a problem with how to mount the MRC decoder board. It only comes with one mounting hole (one cross against it for lack of mounting options!) and this hole is pretty small in diameter (about 2-2.5mm, say about 3/32" in the alternate scale). I looked up Jaycar and they had some 2mm bolts. Great. So after Lachlan's swimming lesson on Saturday morning, we went down to Jaycar Aspley to get a pack. Looked everywhere, spoke to an assistant and got "Sorry we seam to be out of stock" Grrrrrrrrr. "Maybe try Bunnings, you would be surprised at what they have available". Yes I would be bloody surprised if Bunnings has M2 size bolts and nuts! So back we went to Bunnings, and yes no M2 bolts there either. Another grrrrrr. "C'mon Lachlan time to go home, I will have to think of another way to mount that board." So going back through Brendale I was approaching Brisbane Fasteners and they were open. Why not give them a go. "Do you have M2 x 20-25mm bolts, mate?", "Yep how many do you want?" Brilliant. "Ten bolts and nuts please". "We only have 20mm in zinc pan head, will they still do?", "Most certainly". "That will be $4.95". I know where I will be going in the future! That afternoon, I used one of the 2x20mm bolts to mount the board on a piece of perspex cut to size. I also used a PCB space to space the board away from the perspex to protect the underside connections. The rest of Saturday afternoon was spent mounting the DS64, MRC decoder and the Mini-Panel to the underside of the layout. Working underneath the layout is going to be a right royal pain in the @rse literally as I have buggered up my left hip by working sitting down on the hard concrete.

Lachlan and I also did some more work on his layout, namely putting down the static grass over the previously scattered grass.

Sunday afternoon was spent wiring in the DS64 and MRC decoder to the power/signal bus and bolting in the control panel. What a spaghetti mess the control panel wiring is. That will be this week's evening job, wiring in the control panel wiring into the mini-panel so that the mess of cables isn't a temptation for little hands to grab and pull away! One thing I discovered was that I am going to have to modify the points' microswitch boards to be a 'T' shape so that the smaller end where the microswitch is located will fit between the wiring of the point motors (I hadn't considered that bit when I first made these up). All part of the "fine tuning" of the electronics!

The only other thing done on Sunday afternoon was testing out the mini (spy) video camera on Lachlan's layout as a first go as my layout is a construction zone at the moment! It's resolution is pretty good. Go over to Beaver Springs to view the movie.

So as mentioned above the only thing I can see myself doing this week is a lot of wiring up and testing of the various circuits and functions. I will use a piece of thick polystyrene though as a cushion on the concrete as my hip is well and truely giving me gip. Interesting times ahead methinks!