Last day of holidays and I finally get Shed Time!

Yes my two weeks leave is at an end. Back to the asylum, oops meant grindstone tomorrow. It has been a busy two weeks sorting out a few of the items off the Things To Do List, as well as one or two unexpected problems to be sorted out. Most of the days were right royal stinkers with the summer heat and humidity as only Brissie can do at this time of year. The times I ventured into the shed to get tools it was like an oven! As a result not much train time, except for this afternoon when the weather was OK and I spent a few hours on Illavearf, which had been neglected of late. I measured and cut down some timber for the goods yard platform and livestock platform. I then scraped out the scatter that had been glued in sometime during 2012. I positioned the terrace houses and drilled the holes for the LED wires. Yet to connect these up as I am looking at connecting these to a PCB with PIC to provide some lighting effects.

Yesterday I had to repair the set of shelves I use for my hobby materials storage as the read panel warped in the heat and buckled out. Fortunately I had some thicker MDF offcuts that I glued into position. Much better.

Three of my purchases from two weeks ago were delivered during the week. The yard lamps, the street lamps and the SMD LEDs. All tested OK and feedback provided back through Ebay. Unfortunately at least two of the four yard lamps suffered some damage thanks to Australia Post and their infernal use of rubber bands around mail! A pox on them! Nothing serious that some glue won't fix.

I was all ready to get to the Club on Wednesday when Murphy raised his ugle mug! Tuesday night the missus comes to me and says "We have a water leak in the bathroom". Oh joy. On looking it was more like a high pressure spray coming from the flexi-pipe going to the vanity cold water tap. Gaffer tape was no good, so the water mains was turned off, and a plumber summoned Wednesday. He was prompt and decided to sort my problem out first so was at my home mid morning. After this the vacuum cleaner decides to play up so a potential shop for a new one to replace the twelve year old one was on the cards, but after researching a couple of the better ones, the missus was no nearer a decision on which one to buy, so she decided to park the decision for later. So by the time all of this was done, there was no time to venture to the Club. Typical!

No further progress with the Raspberry Pi this week as it was too hot in the downstairs part of the house where my study/hobby room is located (even with A/C upstairs, not much was coming down the internal staircase).

So this week with things back to normal, I might be able to start sorting things out. At least two model structures to knock up (mentioned above), investigate the SMD LEDs installation into the semaphore signal, and maybe back to the RPi.

On holidays but not much play time happening!

Murphy is doing his best to prevent me from doing anything model train related this week. After surviving last weekend's family pre Christmas catchup, Tuesday arrived and brought with it Christmas. The kids scored well and I picked up an entry level Android 7" tablet. My intent is to mainly see if I can interface it with the Raspberry Pi. I survived Christmas at the In-Laws.

On the subject of the RPi, nothing happened this week except for researching persistent device naming in the Linux world. Hopefully I might do something about it in the upcoming week.

Thursday a snap working bee was called at the Club to cut down MDF sheeting into storage trays. I brought my trusty Triton saw bench along but forgot the cutting fence which without would be a serious safety issue. Fortunately two other member brought their Tritons along, so the cutting was going well. I decided to hoon around on the ride-on mower and knock down the Christmas grass growth about the Club yards.

Saturday arrived and with it the much anticipated running arvo over at Mr Mackie's. A crowd of 10 operators plus Craig was there. General pandemonium prevailed but it was fun nonetheless!

Today I thought I might have got out to the shed to run a train or two after I had helped my Dad with some wood routing he wanted done. However the first thing the missus said to me this morning was "While your Dad is down, maybe he could help you line the staircase cupboard to protect the asbestos sheeting [old Hardiflex]?". This translated as an item low down on the Things To Do List had been elevated up to No 1 job to do today! I could see where she was coming from (the boys safety etc as they tend to throw certain heavy things into the cupboard and one day it might go through the sheeting. So the trains became another memory! Monday will hopefully see me finish this job off and scratch it from The List!

Tuesday this week is New Years Day, and with it a trip to the Railway Workshops Museum in Ipswich.

Wednesday I have tentatively said I might head down to the Club but that is three days away and Lord knows what will happen to my plans by then!

So on reflection 2012 was not a bad year from a modelling perspective. New knowledge acquired about electronics (MERG, PIC programming, RPi, etc). Some modelling completed on the layout. A couple of running sessions at Mr Mackie's. And a Club modelling trophy!

I wonder what 2013 will bring? Maybe the much anticipated Auscision NSWGR Class 73 diesel "Dubbo" to add to the Narromine roster. Possibly finally integrating the Rpi with JMRI, MERG and the wifi? A bit more progress on Illavearf as I have been neglecting it with all the electronics stuff of 2012! And maybe, just maybe, running a train or two on Illavearf in between The List items! ;-)

Happy New Year to all my Followers and Friends.

Santy comes tonight. Ho,ho,ho!

The week's evening work concentrated on the Raspberry Pi. I was trying to get the wifi to go int access point mode, without much success. Researching the problem is lending itself to a possible driver issue. The reason for trying to get it into this mode is to have it generate the static IP address/es required for smartphone / tablet connectivity via Engine Driver or something similar. This hasn't been resolved as yet but I am sure it will sometime soon (hopefully). The other thing was to get JMRI connected to the NCE and MERG system USB interfaces. I had success with JMRI capturing the MERG signals. As for the NCE system I will have to try this separately as with the MERG connected JMRI could see two USB devices but I had no idea which USB was what. I made some progress with researching persistent device names which will identify them either as MERG and NCE interfaces. Hopefully this will be resolved soon.

On another front I have been waiting for a MERG CANACC8 kit to come into stock. This kit can be converted into a servo output controller (CANSERVO8) as I was wanting to try my hand at automating the ratio semaphore with a servo. So through the week one did so I purchased it. While I was in the MERG shop I thought I would suss out their servo mounting brackit kit, so one of these were purchased. Next over to eBay to purchase some SG90 servos. You can really get a bargain with these from the Chinese based stores. I picked up a 10 pack which included postage which with dollar conversion came up to about $2 per servo! Bargain. Then I stumbled on a couple of OO gauge yard LED lamps from a UK site. I have been looking around for something like these since last year when the brass models I was interested in where not available outside of the UK. I got two packs. Then while I was in eBay I happened onto another Chinese site selling 20 LED street lampposts which I was wanting to replace the bulb variety I had purchased a couple of years ago. Then while I was at it I thought that I could possibly make a working semaphore lamp from SMD LEDs. So across to LEDBaron (a German company) and bought a 10 pack of pre-wired SMD LEDs to have a go at. So a bit of a buying splurge to get ready for 2013's projects.

So the big jolly fellow in the red suit passes overhead tonight, magically dropping off his gifts. Merry Christmas to all my followers and thanks for taking the time to read my musings.

Pi Wi Fi Yah!

The week started with me pottering around with the PIC programmer and the breadboard working out how to make things happen. I got the LED flashing and being able to recognise a off and on signal. May not sound like much but it is a start to know more about the potential use of PICs on the layout.

The new wifi dongle from the UK arrived during the week. Friday night arrived and I decided lets see if the Pi recognises it. Popped it in, turned it on, waited for the boot up and nothing happened. Aaarrrgghhhh!!!! Then I thought that perhaps all my ginning around previously had buggered up the backend configs etc. So I took the momentous decision to start from the beginning again and reimage the SD card. After a bit of ginning around to get the screen output displaying correctly (overscan settings to adjust the left and right pixels) I was able to read the screen. I fired up the windows gui and it had an application I hadn't seen before to do with the wifi config. Well this was a start in the right direction! Fired this up and with a few clicks and text entries entered, BINGO! the dongle was up and running, scanning and seeing my wifi router. The little bugger even auto-connected and I had an Internet connection. THANK GOD! Hooray, and all that nonsense!

Saturday had other things to do, and the night was a right off due to a street Xmas party. I behaved myself and only had three heavies before heading home to look after a sick son, but you have to have a couple more while getting dinner ready don't you;-) ? So after the fifth heavy I was a bit weary.

Sunday morning was more promising in that I was able to get sick son lying beside me in a chair watching Thomas the Tank Engine while I tinkered around with the Pi. I installed JMRI before switching off for the day. In the evening I was able to configure JMRI and was able to fire up Engine Driver with a connection to my smartphone.

So this week, investigate how to convert the Pi into an access point rather than have to rely on the wifi router to make the connection. The reason for this is eventually I don't want to have to connect the Pi to the Internet but just use it as a wireless LAN to just connect wirelessly to smartphones and tablets. For updating of the software etc, I would disconnect the Pi from the layout (as it is in the shed) and take it back to my computer in the house and hard connect via ethernet cable to my PC to get an Internet connection. The other option could be to have a second dongle. One would be configured as the Internet connection and the other the wifi LAN access point. I might be getting ahead of myself but it is a plan m'Lord! First things first though is to next connect the Pi/JMRI to the NCE and MERG systems and test connectivity.

Not sure if I will get back to the PIC programmer this week, but with Xmas-New Year approaching I will have some spare time (amongst the Things to Do list that has been waiting for me all year!) to tinker with the programmer.

And now the photos from the weekend

As promised in the previous post here are some photos of Lachlan and myself with our trophies.

I have no idea why this won't insert in the correct orientation (portrait)!
Sorry!

Winners' Weekend!

Saturday afternoon was the final Club Monthly Meeting for the year which means the Club Modelling Competition. This year we also added a Photo Competition. As I had been organising the competition this year, I was pretty busy for the hour before the Club Meeting and the hour after the meeting. It was great to see so many entries in the expanded categories that were developed this year. Some might fine models were displayed. Unfortunately as I was running around sorting things out I didn't get any photos! I will see what my mate PK took and get some snaps uploaded.

I was very surprised to pick up the Structure Minor category. There was only two of us in the category and I thought the other model might have pipped me at the post but the judges thought otherwise, so The Terraces are trophy quality! Bugger me! Also my son Lachlan picked up the inaugral President's Award for a mentored model. He was over the moon and hopefully encourage him to develop his modelling skills for the following year. Once again once I have some pics of the trophies I'll up load them. Lachlan was also lucky in getting one of the winning tickets in the annual Xmas raffles. So we (I mean me!) came home with a bottle of chardy (already in the fridge), a 149 drill bit kit which will come in handy, a small Thomas throw rug which the youngest Matthew has already taken, and various lollies, bottled fruit and such. Upon getting home the missus checked the use by dates on the food, and all but the passionfruit pulp (Lord knows what this will be used for? Something for the mother in law) was out of date. I must mention to the membership next year no regifting or check the use byt dates. The jar of fruit salad was 18 months out of date!

The PIC programmer arrived through the week and I have only had a chance to put together the programming shield and put the software on the PC. Hopefully this week some success on using this.

Yet to receive the wifi dongle from the UK, so nothing further on the Pi.

So pretty happy with the weekend outcomes.

Pi Wi Fi - no way!

As the terraces were done, I focussed on the problem with the wifi and the Raspberry Pi. Online research followed by application of said fixes was not working after three nights. I decided that the problem must still be with the manufacturer's latest firmware not operating correctly on the Pi's linux. This is a wild arse assumption but I had to blame something! So my answer was to order a wifi dongle from the UK which is supposed to work out of the box according the the Pi online community. As it was it was half the price including postage than the one I have. I will use the D-link that didn't work on the Pi with the PC instead.

I have decided also not to progress with the JMRI and Pi integration until the wifi connectivity is sorted out as I need a wireless LAN operating for connectivity to the Engine Driver app on the smartphone, as well as experimenting with remote terminal connectivity via WLAN.

I also received in the post a Ratio GWR home semaphore kit to try. I started it on Saturday and got to the point of it being operational. This has now perked my interest in possible investigating MERG's servo control to operate the semaphore. Something else to research!

Still waiting on the PIC programmer so may not get to banging up some PIC smarts to operate the terrace LEDs so might have to resort to just connecting them up in parallel to a 9V battery for the club modelling competition this weekend.

Apart from progressing with the semaphore kit, not exactly sure what I will get around to do as I am waiting on things to come in the mail. One of those things I have to sort out is the electronic components drawer as it is a bit all over the place!