July 2017 update

To begin with sorry for no updates in May and June but have been rather busy at work and haven't been doing  much in the way of modeling. I did take the gas tanks diorama to the Club at the May monthly meeting, took some photos, received some compliments. When I went to the phone to retrieve the photos tonight not there. It has been playing up lately so I can only assume perhaps they were zapped. Since then the only thing I have done was get the fence and gate parts for the diorama made and painted but yet to put these together and install. Plenty of time before the Modeling Competition!

What I have been spending my time on is getting my head around the esp8266 wifi devices that can be used as IoT devices within JMRI. ESP-01, ESP-12E, NodeMCU and Arduino Pro minis can all be connected to these or have the wifi chip onboard (NodeMCU). I received one of these today to play with, but I have connected up a ESP-01 (2 GPIO port) into a test rig with a switch and using the onboard test LED. I was able to set this up in JMRI and control the LED via the switch using JMRI Logix. What it proves is that these devices can be used in place of a wired layout control bus or DCC stationery decoders. All done over wifi. It doesn't have the full JMRI tables integration, only Turnout (ie Outputs) and Sensors (Input), but if you get your head around the basics of outputs and input controls, then the potential exists to control many non DCC devices. All it is passing is the IP address of the wifi chip, the GPIO port number, and whether Input (Internal Sensor - IS) or Output (Internal Turnout - IT). I have yet to fully test operability wit say pro minis using Geoff Bunza sketches, but with a few coding changes can't see why not. So you could have a few of these spread around a layout controlling a number of local outputs &/or receiving sensor/switch inputs and sending to JMRI to process if required, without the need for a separate LCB. Power and Ground could be sourced from the track with a AC-DC converter, or standalone with a separate power supply.

ESP-01 test - programming rig. ESP01 chip in the middle

Modified ESP-01 with the pins splayed to fit across the breadboard channel

An early birthday present arrived through this week in the way of the QR wagons I had ordered from PGC Models nearly two years ago. Just enough to make up one or two branch mixed traffic trains when I finally get the QR diesels I have ordered.

CMN refrigerated wagon

FGM wagon

FJS wagon

FJS wagon

Guard's - 1st Class carriage

HO wagon

KKB Guard Cattle wagon

KSA Cattle wagon

QLX wagon

And today the family gave me on my birthday a few more BR vehicles for the layout. I must get back to that sometime this year!

Bob's Hot Dogs

BR Fire Truck

BR lorry

The Tour de France is back on so another distraction!