Busy week as expected but not with modelling. Finally got to the shed Saturday afternoon with the boys in tow. Time to slice those grass tufts off from the oven tray and use them somewhere. Couldn't identify an immediate need on Illavearf however Beaver Springs' village pond was beckoning. With PVA glue bottle in hand, blobs were put around the edge of the pond, then the tufts placed on the blobs. I've been contemplating what to do with the breaking the plain blue of the backscene with something against the backboard. I had some 3mm MDF so after doing some measurements it was over to the bandsaw to cut the angle for a retaining wall for a 'virtual road' behind the village. I will put some brick paper on this, and then affix into place. I also printed out the bases of the terrace houses and corner shops paper plans to see if these would fit in the space remaining once the retaining wall was in place. Seemed to work OK and maybe able to not only do some 'flats' but have some shops and a pub as well!
I might even enter this structure into the club modelling competition in December if it scrubs up OK.
Sunday arrived and after a busy morning out followed by mowing the jungle of grass in the yard, I was just about to go for a nap when my Dad rocked up unannounced. The boys were excited and Lachlan wanted to show him how his layout was going. So off to the shed we went after arvo tea. dad was impressed with the progress of Beaver Springs. After he left I thought I might investigate why 4494 wasn't responding last week. Connecting up the PowerCab to the programming track I did a few things which didn't work. I then looked at CV29 again. I reset the values in there and the thing worked. No idea why it was not registering '4494' as the long address in the first place, but it became alive again once this was sorted out. It then did some laps around Illavearf.
That's it for the week that was. As for this week, not sure. Might start looking at the terrace houses a bit closer.
Not much done this week but I was able to get to the shed late Sunday arvo, hookup the laptop to the USB which was connected to the PowerCab so as to get to the Programming Track supported feature (as the SB3a does not support this). Jumpers set to 9600 baud worked OK.
I updated the Roster with my remaining 44's and EL class engines. After I had finished I decided to let them go for a spin as it had been awhile since all had been operating. After swapping from PowerCab to SB3a mode, 4480 and EL51 OK, but 4494 didn't respond. I wasn't able to check what was in the DecoderPro roster configs for this loco as the missus was using the laptop last night. Need to make sure that the decoder number hadn't changed somehow between having the decoder's values written to DecoderPro and operating it afterwards.
Other than that, the only other thing I was able to get around to was purchasing a couple of Scalescenes plans for Small Terrace Houses and Small Corner Shops for the terrace ends. These will form the village seen opposite Kensington Hill station.
Until next time. Ciao.
Once again this week saw me mucking around with JMRI's Panel Pro's integration with the NCE SB3a system via the NCE USB interface. I had posted a question on the NCE-DCC Yahoo Forum and that guru of DCC, Mark Gurries, answered no less! He was convincing with his explanation as to why JMRI probably wouldn't accept NCE commands across the Cab Bus via the USB card. However to prove it to myself I set up an 'Internal Sensor' within Panel Pro and linked it to a hardware address. The test being to send a ACCY command to this address and see what happens. I associated this sensor on the Panel diagram of the layout as a sensor to indicate OFF/ON. Saturday arvo after Club I went to the shed with the laptop ready to test. Then Murphy got in the way and the laptop was getting connection problems with the USB. I had earlier set the USB jumpers to 9600 baud and the Panel Pro to 9600 as per all doco indicating this is what it is supposed to be. No idea. No joy investigating further as I had to head inside.
Sunday morning I went out again and reset the jumper to 19200 and the Panel Pro setting to 19200. Connected perfectly. WTF! Anyway now that I had it connected up I did my test and nothing happened. Oh Well, Mark G was right then. That answers that! So no more time wasting on this subject.
While I had the laptop out in the shed I thought "let's have a look at Decoder Pro". After a number of error messages I realised it was because it was connected to the SB3a. So after a small rearrangement of the connections to the piece of track that I use for 'programming' (either under programming or ops line depending on the setup requeried), I reconnected via the PowerCab setup. Still connection problems. So....I reset the jumper to 9600 and the preferences to the same, and bingo, it connected.
I have no idea why Decoder Pro connects at the documented 9600 and why Panel Pro prefers 19200. White Man's Magic! Once DecoderPro could 'see' a loco decoder I was able to upload the settings from a number of loco decoders into the program for later viewing and Roster setup.
On the subject of the Club Meeting on Saturday, we had an earlier gathering of the HO Clan to discuss a number of points holding up the construction. This was a productive meeting with all the main sticking points decided upon so the builders can continue through the week. I also picked up the first prize in the raffle - a 59 piece hobby knife set (Aldi) - when Lachlan picked out my ticket number out of the bucket. IT WASN'T RIGGED!!!
My experiment of the grass tufts from last week worked out pretty well straight from the oven tray. I just have to carefully slice them off the oven tray (might use one of the above hobby knives!) but definately better than off the Alfoil. Once off, I will glue these around the pond on Lachlan's layout to break up the edge.
Not sure what this week will bring but hopefully modelling rather than faffing around with the computer!
I have added a new site to 'My Links of Interest' list to the right - Mark Gurries' Home page.
A DCC Guru and a VERY helpful chap on the NCE Yahoo Forum.
When I have been able, week night's have been spent pottering around with Decoder Pro 3 (or ver 2.14 of the production version). Go to JMRI to ascertain the meaning behind 3 versus 2.14 (or 2.99 for the development version!). Mostly focussing on Panel Pro and understanding how it hangs together.
Thursday and Friday I started pondering how to have sensor feedback picked up in JMRI as my current NCE SB3a and USB doesn't work with a NCE AIU (accessory input unit). Only the Big Boys have this privelege apparently. Some info on the web suggested using LocoNet Buffer USB as a second interface and allow JMRI to integrate the system. The problem here is that the input units to the LocoNet are not want I am after. I was hoping to utilise IR LEDs for occupancy detection and the AIU would hopefully let the on/off signal be registered. I haven't found anything similar but will continue my hunt. Maybe some obscure US or European company has something to allow sensor/accessory input (eg microswitch)feedback to something that NCE or LocoNet can utilise. it isn't critical that I emply this on Illavearf but I am interested to know if it would work. I might just have to wait until the Club's new layout is running to see if the AIU would work as proposed.
On another note, this weekend Lachlan and I finished another section of ballasting on his layout. I completely overlooked a small section near the station so this will have to wait.
On my layout I added some Wee People to the station - passengers and station staff. It is starting to look lived in now! Today I fixed into position the old style BR crossing gates into the goods yard and pre-positioned the fencing between them and the station. I'll do some scenicing first and then glue the fence into place. Next will be what to do about the village scene. Some terrace houses for the station staff and maybe a pub and/or corner shop, but it will depend on the space available.
Another experiment I did on Saturday was to try and make some grass tufts from longer length static grass by placing drops of PVA onto the silver side of aluminium foil, connect the static applicator's ground wire to the 'alfoil', and apply some grass to the glue. Worked perfectly. Today I went to peel the 'alfoil' off the PVA to use the tufts and the 'alfoil' wouldn't come away. Hmmm. Into the bin. I have an old oven tray, so straight onto it went the glue blobs and grass. I'll see how this went in the next night and if easier to peel off the metal oven tray.
This week's nights are busy with a school function or two so not sure what work will be done either in the shed or on the laptop. Saturday is Club Day and an earlier meeting of the HO Clan to discuss the new layout has been organised.
