I am working on the same thing. I have the crossing bell circuit working. I need to build a flasher circuit and train detection. I was going to use optical detectors, a photo transistor and an IR led. I planned to hide them inside those lineside aluminum painted electrical boxes that you see up and down the tracks on the prototype railroad. This way the operation of the crossing signals is completely independent of track power, track blocks, and it works on DC or DCC, no problem.
Sounds like you are thinking of using twin tee current detectors. They work by sensing the current drawn by the train. They will detect locomotives and lighted cars, but ordinary freight cars draw no current so the twin tee won't see them. To make such cars visible you connect a 10 K ohm resistor from the North wheel to the South wheel. I have a sizable collection of rolling stock and the thought of retrofitting them all with resistors and metal wheels is not attractive, hence the optical approach. Also, should you stop the train blocking the road, the Twin Tee will cease to see the train, since you have turned the current off. At least on a DC layout.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
It cannot be all that complicated. A little plastic man comes out of the little plastic house and turns a little plastic crank, and the gates come down. To make the go up is even easier: He just kicks a little plastic dog (pall) out of the way, and the gates go up.
If you do not have little plastic people, I guess you will have to find a different way to wire it.
Or simply build a SUBWAY layout. Subways (at least the real ones in NYC) do not have crossing gates.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
I used the IR system made by LogicRail. It's relatively straight-forward but requires some soldering and fairly easy wiring skills. They send you everything you need incl the resistors; you can even buy the power supply. I bought mine from Jim's Model Trains. BTW I used NJInternational crossing gates.
http://www.logicrailtech.com/
Hi all;
I've looked around and all I can see is prices that are absolutely insane! I could never afford to build a layout with "authentic brass" fixtures. (I doubt if there ever was a real RR crossing with brass crossbucks!) There's all kinds of little plastic crossbucks, crossing gates, etc for a buck apiece. I can't afford to pay another hundred just to make my crossbucks flash when a train approaches either. I wonder what it would actually cost to make an animated crossing gate with flashing lights. Maybe "if you have to ask you can't afford it!"?
I'm one of those micro-computer geeks. I made a circuit that includes IR track detectors and flashes a couple of LED's. I just poke the lenses out of a cheapie plastic crossbuck and replace them with LED's. Now I'm working on another circuit that runs a little stepper motor to drive the gates, it's up and running but still working on the mechanics. Oh yeah, a similar circuit is up and running using a stepper motor to motorize turnouts, including red/green indication and pushbutton control both locally and at a console.
Rich
If you want cheap, just use a toggle switch to manually turn the crossing signals on and off. Any automatic circuit that works is going to cost a significant amount.
cacole If you want cheap, just use a toggle switch to manually turn the crossing signals on and off. Any automatic circuit that works is going to cost a significant amount.
This is so. LION has big furry paws, and what he lacks in opposable thumbs he makes up for in retractable claws. What is era of your train. If you have steamy locomotives, then you need a little plastic person to lower the gates. You can imitate him with a toggle switch.
If you require automatic gates, then you need electronics of some sort. The cheapest (the lion uses this) is a micro switch with a long lever which is brushed aside by the passing train. Not very prototypical, but you can hide it. LION mostly uses these in holding siding hidden in the tunnels.
Wanting more elegant is possible, but of course more costly.
Thank you both for responding, but you may be missing the point. Yeah, a "REAL" train from the middle sixties didn't have a micro-computer controlling the signals and turnouts and they certainly didn't have plastic crossbucks and LED's for signal lights. They didn't have DCC either.
I'll bet you both complain that you don't understand why model trains is dying out too. I've been to a few RR swap meets (my term) and I've seen daddy bring his kids along. They walk around looking at tables that are eye level to them and all they see is a bunch of cardboard boxes. If there's a table with anything interesting happening they only get to stay for a couple of minutes. I carry a portable demo of IR detectors and flashing crossbucks. I get down on one knee and invite a little guy to pretend he's a train and block the IR. A four year old understands what's happening and they get really excited when they get to make it work..... Little girls too! They're fascinated by it! Then daddy gets bored and says come along kids... His layout doesn't have a flashing light at the crossings..... Crossing gates are fun too, my design doesn't have a problem if little fingers want to push the arm up and down either......
Interior lighting makes a world of difference in buildings. You should see what street lights and interior lighting does to a KFC restaurant.....
Maybe you're one of the operational types that have computer generated timetables, etc. But the next generation would find that boring, (so does the wife). You build fancy scenery and buy expensive building kits, why not put a little more work in it and make it come alive? Let lights flash, hear bells ringing, see crossing gates go up and down automatically...... the locomotive just goes round and round.
I'm not trying to sell you anything. Yeah, you can buy the parts from me and build it yourself, or buy the parts from somebody else and duplicate my design. Go for it. I'm asking for your help in making stuff that the guy with the plastic crossbucks can afford and his layout will be far more interesting that the "authentic' one with the kerosene lanterns like we used back in the days of steam engines. I'd much rather see a steam locomotive running on a more modern track.
My web-page has been banned from the forum because there's something you can buy on it. See if the guru will let you see my email address... rich@railroadmicro.com If you're willing to help do something that has a chance of attracting more people to the hobby I could use all the help I can get. I'm looking for 'Beta Testers' willing to build these things and critique the design, documentation and performance. Please don't block me out just because it doesn't look as good as the $100 & up stuff. You might just find that mine works better......
By the way, buying plug-n-play stuff doesn't make you a computer whiz nor does a plug together IR sensor make you an electronic genius. Building one of these kits is kind of like building a stick-built model airplane. When it's finished it's something that YOU built and you can be proud.
Rich,
Not to be negative in a reply to you,,but I believe you should have read the Forum Policy's of our Hosts,,you may have understood why some issues are not allowed on the Forums..That being,many of us,have lighted buildings and so forth for year's,,so we know what they look like,with interiors and figures and many more Electrical uses..I reviewed your site and sounds interesting and could be helpful to many..My belief,is that you need to find a better way to promote your ideas,,rather than put down what others are doing..manufactures of said items included.....Just My Thought!!
Cheers,
Frank
Before automatic track circuits, crossing gates and warnings were controlled by a guy (often a disabled RR worker - in the days of link and pin couplers, lost limbs were pretty common) who manually raised and lowered the gates - so the idea of using a toggle switch and flipping it when the train approaches is absolutely prototypical.
For track circuits, well, then we get on the "omg it costs too much". No, railroads didn;t have microprocoessor controls (they do now - many gates are speed sensitive, lowering sooner if the train is moving faster, and holding off for a slow moving train - since motorist hate to be inconvenienced). But they also didn;t need to supply power to the locomotive through the rails. So a simple relay and battery that got shorted by the metal wheels and axles was plenty. Also the deep cycle Edison batteries they used could stand that dead short because they had high internal resistence. You wouldn;t want to try that with a NiCad or Li-ion battery! So we have to simulate it somehow - a microcontroller chip and some code repalces a bunch of linked relays for the logic - because the gates did not simply go up and down - if the train stopped short, and/or then reveresed, the gates went up. If on double track and one train just cleared as another approached - the gates stayed down. IR sensors work for doing the detecting, and require no modifications to the rolling stock. Track detection in either DC or DCC requires some modifications, unless you never run a train longer than the detection area and outfit the loco and caboose. It's not cheap - but what is? It amazes me peopel who will think nothing of paying for a $300 sound loco then balk at spending $200 to make a realistic operating grade crossing.
As with anything in this hobby, the more you do yourself, the cheaper it is. If you know PIC or Aurdino or one of the other micros, you can build the equivalent of the Logic Rail controller for a fraction of the cost, if you don;t count your time.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Hi Frank and Randy and all;
I didn't mean to offend anyone here, I fully understand that you guys are all pros at modeling and looking around I see some incredible displays of craftsmanship. I also didn't come here to sell you a bunch of cheap stuff. The only negative comment that I made was that the Hosts dropped my web-page address and I didn't intend a cheap shot by that, I understand and approve of their policy.
That being said, I don't know why I see such a negative reaction to everything I'm proposing. I certainly don't expect anyone to tear up their layout just to install a bunch of cheap junk, but I'm not talking about "cheap" stuff. It's high-performance circuitry that's inexpensive. I've spent much of my life designing embedded applications for industry in my own lab and have authored a number of patents. If there are any flaws or shortcomings in my design I would hope that you guys would help by pointing them out so that I can make it even better. If there's something that you need that isn't offered, maybe I can fill that need for you. On the drawing board is a distributed system where turnouts, block detectors, semaphores and other signal lights can be interconnected with a 4-wire cable to a main control panel. Again, not cheap; inexpensive.
As an example, looking around I see transmissive IR track detectors mounted in tubes that look to be 2 inch long quarter inch tubes. If you were to look through the .doc file on my flasher circuit you'll see where I'm showing that you can hide the IR LED in a whistle post and the mating detector in a toolshed or whatever. The wire that I use is small enough to tuck under the roadbed and the module is so small you can hide it with a piece of shrubbery. No need to crawl around under the layout.... The design automatically compensates for ambient light conditions and is sensitive enough to work more than 5 feet apart. (If you change a resistor value you could extend that out to 20 feet or more.) Does that sound like cheap junk? Does that smack of 1970's technology?
Yeah, Randy. I do balk at spending $200 to make a decent rail crossing. You obviously have the resources to do that sort of thing and your time is more than money. Are you content with model railroading becoming a venue for old guys with lots of money? How about the young person raising a family that couldn't spend a couple hundred on his toys when he could put that money to better use? They are the future of model railroading and I don't see anyone catering to them, at least not in the electronics areas.
I obviously don't have any idea how I can present this stuff. That's why I'm here asking you guys for your help. If I was only interested in making money I'd be better off selling my designs to someone else that already has a marketing structure. I set out to help the little guy put together some pretty nice stuff for the least cost. Please don't just sneer at someone that can't afford a $200 circuit and don't just dismiss my designs as being cheap.
If this isn't a good place to look for help, what is? Am I an outsider intruding on a private group?
Rich_R,
I have just been sitting,here at my desk,,trying to come up with some kind of answer for you and I keep coming up with so many variables,that are involved in the equation,that,I don't know what to say....You need exposure,,but how are you going to get it,,without crossing some red-lines?
Take for instance the OP (original poster) he said he is new,but would like to have crossing gates,with lights,,okay that's fine,,now does he have enough knowledge to be able to make his own? Maybe not,,so the responses he received,where from some people,who have done it,,with the products out there and some simply say,,it's too expensive...Then found other cheaper ways to get at least close to having to some degree..I lot of people would like to have,toys,cars,houses,,but can't afford it, so they get by on what they have,,hoping, for that one day..
I sympathize with you,,for having a great idea,that you would like to share,,but how do you get the exposure?
I wonder how Tucker felt,,when the big Three run him out of business and so many other inventors,that the Monopoly put the hammer down on them,,
Wish,,you luck in Your Endeavor..And by no means,,is this a private,group,,but we have to follow,our Host's rules,,bottom line..
Just an after thought:: Why don't you post one of your designs,on this very Thread,,with a diagram,for the OP and others,who may be interested in it,,or will surely look at it,,That would be a start,,to share your ideas..There are many posts on the forums,about how to wire certain turnouts and such,,It's Railroad related,,why not.. A diagram would be great..
Like I said,m if you have the means to replicate that $200 circuit, which is, after all, maybe $30 worth of parts), then more power to you. It so happens that I probably could do it too. It all depends on where you want to spend your hobby dollar.
Notice I also said "people who think nothing of spending $300 for a sound loco" - the implication being that if you have the menas to buy a $300 loco then you clearly have the means to buy a $200 grade crossing setup. And if you don't, you don't.
While you may be able to take $30 of parts and make a decent system for your own use (and that's just the control electronics), making something you can SELL for $30 is a whole other story. There's a reason the Grade Crossing Pro costs what it does, and it's not simply that Logic Rail wants to rip off modelers.
As for the crossbucks, if the plastic ones meet your standards, then use them. I plan to have signals on my layout, the Atlas ones are the right type but to me they look kind of crude. But at $30 or more for nice brass ones, I may have to think long and hard about it, and maybe use the nice brass ones up front and stick to the more affordable Atlas ones in the back. Which is where I'm coming from with the grade crossing - something animated like that, I'd want to have right up front where even the non-train visitors can go gaga over it - in which case I'd want it to look as nice as possible.
Hi Frank;
I'd love to post one of my designs here, but how is the world would I do that? If you could go to my web-page you can download the complete docs on the flasher design. I'll be posting the crossing gate circuit and the turnout motor circuit soon. My URL is blocked because there's a means of buying the parts kit on it. (Hint: railroadmicro )
I just found an icon for "Paste from Word" and I'm trying that now....
Hi Randy;
Welcome aboard! Maybe now I'll have your attention..... Not $30, I'm talking about $20. And that's not just my cost, but it's what I plan to sell for $20. You can use the nice brass ones it you want. Maybe put the $30 crossbucks up front and put the cheaper ones in the background. How about a flasher/crossing gate up front and a less expensive one a block further down? How about several of those a block apart, working in sequence, and use just flashers in more rural settings? For the $200 price you can have 10 crossing gates.. Oh, by the way, the design lets you control more than just one gate, you can easily drive four of them at a crossing. The IR devices, the flasher circuitry, the motor drive circuitry, the motor, the connectors, the wire, th LED's, all that stuff is included. You have to make a mounting bracket for the motor and hook it up to the crossing gates and use your own crossbucks. Also, by the way, you can flash a half dozen LED pairs from this circuit, still more on request.... We can add a dollars worth of parts and drive 12V lamps like they use on some of the O27 crossbucks. Oh, by the way, wait'll you see how I do the little cheapie crossbucks and drive the pair of LED's with only two wires. (If you really want to hide the wiring I can send you some 34 AWG 'solderable' magnet wire that you can't even see without your glasses.)
I didn't copy the "Grade Crossing Pro", I didn't know it existed when I started my design and I have no idea what you get for the money. I don't want to look into it because I don't want to contaminate my design. Logic Rail is in business to make money, I'm not. I'd be delighted to break even.
I tried to post the schematic for my flasher circuit on a previous post to Randy. Please take a look at it and lets discuss it.
Hi Frank and thank you so much for trying to help!
I totally agree with you about the OP. I would love to work with him. I desperately need to know how the "Average" person would react. How can I reach him? I don't quite know what he was asking for, it sounded like he was looking for a way to build his own circuit.
Yeah, "I Need" this and "I Need" that..... I need a lot of help so that I can help out a whole bunch of people. I've heard comments from people that "I can't read schematics", but I show them my "Wiring diagram" and they don't have a problem with that..... I try to make my doc file as clear as possible and include lots of pictures. (I don't lock the pictures, I encourage the user to stretch them out as big as they want them.) I don't care if somebody copies my circuit, they're welcome to it.
"I Need" a bunch of people to voice their opinions, tell me what I didn't do and where I confused them. I'm sitting here in my lab designing this stuff and writing the instructions and I have no idea what others are thinking. That makes the OP the most important of all, doesn't it.
Oh, by the way. If somebody wanted to build a whole bunch of these as complete assemblies, plug-n-play, or whatever, and sell them to others that can't (or won't) build it themselves they're welcome to it.
Hi All;
Here's the schematic for a 'basic' RR crossing flasher with IR track detectors.
Well, if you are looking for comments............I looked at your instruction pictures for the flasher. Speaking as one of the soldering challenged, I really would have a concern about the wiring of the IC socket with all that "stuff" connected from here to there and bending and crossing itself and hanging from this corner and that.
If I were to want to assemble one of these, a small pc circuit board where the components got plugged in/soldered at the proper locations would absolutely be necessary.
Hi Maxman!
Great post by the way, and thank you!
Yep, you're absolutely right....... but. If you look again at the wiring diagram, about all you see is the wiring to/from the sensors and the wiring to the LED's. All those wires would still have to be connected even if it came with a circuit board. What components would be on the circuit board, just one? Oh yeah, there's three others to make up the power supply, but you don't have to mount the power supply onto the IC socket, you can pick up a 5VDC wall wart on ebay for just a couple of bucks.... By connecting wires directly to the socket it remains small enough to easily hide with a piece of shrubbery. The components supplied are intentionally tiny, including the wire which is small enough to hide above-board so you won't have to crawl around underneath your layout.
Of course, there's the cost issue. I really can't lay out a thousand dollars for a circuit board with no probability of a return. Then the next item would be to pre-wire the sensors and somehow make crossbucks that I can sell. Want connectors too? Now the cost is moving way up and all I would be offering is improved performance. Yeah, it's not easy to build, but think of it as a 'stick built' project. The first on that I built took several hours, the second one was much easier, and after that I could built one in well under an hour. I've had several others build it and they had a similar experience.
Hey, I don't mean this as a put down. Your input is exactly what I'm looking for and I sincerely hope you take an active part in this discussion. Within the next couple of weeks I hope to be ready with motorized crossing gates and motorized turn-outs. They'll be a little more complex and I'll be including a piece of prototyping circuit boad. Stick around and help out. If we can make it a good enough product and get some exposure maybe it'll be worth more up-front money. First, I have to have people like you build this thing and try it out. I'm sure you can do it, I'll help you all I can. If you'll share your experience with me and show me where I can make improvements it the docs, etc. I'd like to ask our hosts to do an article on it and maybe we'll get enough interest to make a circuit board if you really think that would help.... Maybe all you really need is a little help from me and to how to actually connect all those tiny wires to the IC socket in a reasonable fashion. Frankly, I kind of quit with the documentation because I couldn't get someone like you interested in it even if I came out and wired it into your layout. (I'm not joking, that was an actual situation that I ran into..)
If you'll just have enough patience to get started with this stuff you'll soon have automated flashers/crossing gates, motor driven turnouts with signaling, block detectors and signal lights, etc. etc. for about what you'd pay now for just one crossing gate. (You'd need two for almost any crossing.) Want street lights and interior lighting? Wait'll I get my partner off his duff and put up his LED kits and his 'how-to' on making 99 cent street lights, etc. etc.
I hope you stick around, Rich
From what I see,you really don't need a PC board,,you can use Perf board,with colored insulated wires,for your connections..Made a couple for my son's,Star War's,model toys,the Millenium Falcon to be exact,so the two guns would alternately flash with LED's,on a simple timer cicuit,, IC,Diodes and Electrolytic Caps,to control the flash rate for a laser cannon,,the whole cicuit,with all components,was only 1 inch square,,on off switch on the model,which I hid in a antenna and a 9 volt batt..Worked great hanging from his ceiling at night..
After reading about your partner,,I agree,,get him off his duff,,,,,do something,,even if it's wrong..
Regulator, micro, and the resistors would all go on the pc board, and some sort of connector like screw terminals to attach the wires tot he IR sensors and LEDs in the crossbucks.
To actually make this and sell it - I really can;t see $20 even breaking you even. ANd to just pre-porogram the micro and throw all the parts in a bag and sell it, which you certainly could do for $20, is going to get maybe 3 peopel to buy it and put it together - there are a few of us into electronics but most people have trouble just hooking up the two rails, let alone wiring a circuit per schematic, simple though your design is. Heck I've been trying to convince people to try their hand by building a CD power supply for their snap switches, that's all of 4 or 5 parts total, the first one of which I built just point to point wiring the parts on the back of the transistor when I was about 12.
If you use a micro with more ports so you can add 2 more sets of IR pairs, you can write the code such that you'd get full prototypical features. With two sensors on each side of the crossing instead of one, you cna have it shut off if the train stops short of the crossing, or have it stay on if the train passes and then backs up, etc. That's the sort of thing the GCP does. It could be optional - there's have to be code to check for the presence of the extra sensors at startup, and ignore that portion of the code if they aren't present. That way it would be up to the user if they want to get extra realiztic action by purchasing an extra set of IR emitter/detectors, or just go with the basic system
Rich_R Hi All; Here's the schematic for a 'basic' RR crossing flasher with IR track detectors. Rich
Hello Rich,
I work as a service engineer for a very large auto company. Part of my job is creating schematics and service information. I took a look at the PDF documentation and wiring schematic. Both are pretty good. Graphics are plentiful and clear, which is a big help. Over all you did a fine job.
A suggestion is to label the color code near the pin numbers on the controller. Abbreviations such as BLK, BLU, etc work well if space is tight.
I like the idea you are trying to promote. The electrical part of our hobby is a mysterious one, to many modelers. I agree you need feedback from modelers with little or average electrical ability. The key is finding a balance between cost and simplicity.
Take advantage of resources such as Youtube to show a working model. Then show how easy it is to build one.
Jim
N-scale is a bit of a problem, I haven't found any LED's smaller than 3mm and I have no idea what's available in the way of n-scale crossbucks. I put together a montage to give you an idea how I modified the crossbucks for HO scale. ?attachmentid=183
The upper left corner shows the IR LED mounted inside a 1/4 in sq. tube that could be disguised as a whistlepost. You could probably make something similar on a smaller scale. Next to that there's a couple shots of an old painted crossbuck that I lashed up with 34AWG magnet wire. Us old guys can't even see that stuff, even with our glasses on. There's several different views showing how tight the LED retrofit can be and how small the wire is. Note that there's only two wires that control the LED's independantly. As far as I can see I'm the only one that does this, all I've seen so far use either 3 or 4 wires. The 30AWG Kynar wire is supplied as part of my parts kit. Note also that there's a tiny current limiting resistor buried in the wiring to each pair of LED's and you can connect a half dozen pairs in that same manner.
Is there any way that you can think of where this same size LED's could be used in an n-scale layout? The module will also drive either common cathode or common anode led's using 3-wires. Are there any n-scale lighted crossbucks available? (I guess if we were really clever we could run some fiber-optics and light them from below the table...)
I've built almost a dozen of these crossbucks like this and I'm getting pretty good at it. The one in the pix is one of the early ones. I'm 73, can't see very well and I'm not nearly as steady as I used to be but I don't find that to be all that difficult to build. In the center there's a prototype board that I put together for the crossing gate circuit.
I'll build up a module for the basic flasher/track detector circuit and post some pix of it to give you an idea how I envision it. It seems to me that it would be hard to justify a PC board for just one component. From the incredible workmanship that I've seen in the model railroad community I'm sure that any of you could build this stuff much better than I.
Rich_RN-scale is a bit of a problem, I haven't found any LED's smaller than 3mm and I have no idea what's available in the way of n-scale crossbucks.
Rich:
Have you thought about surface mount LEDs? They are available in red. See: http://www.ulrichmodels.biz/servlet/the-350/Miniature-Surface-Mount-LEDs/Detail for example. I've been following this thread with interest and wish you good luck in your efforts.
Joe
Hi Jim and glad to have you aboard. Thanks for the tip on the schematic, is this what you have in mind?
?attachmentid=184
I'm sure there's a lot more massaging to be done on the docs..... That's probably the most important part of the whole project and will make it or break it. I'm sure it'll be like pushing a Cadillac uphill with a rope trying to convince people to get away from the plug-n-play stuff and get back to 'stick-built' modeling.
The basic flasher kit is actually quite simple. There's almost nothing in the way of parts involved other than the IR devices, the flasher LED's and the microprocessor. The three components mounted on the micro's socket comprise a 5VDC regulated supply and wouldn't be needed if you have your own 5V supply. Still, the first reaction is 'where's the printed circuit board'?
Randy; In my view adding a pc board just for the micro and then adding screw terminals for 10 wires would make the module too big to hide and wouldn't save much. Here's a pix of the way I connect the micro.........
?attachmentid=186
There's plenty of room to hide things under the layout.
FOr how small it can be, check out Tam Valley's Singlets, that's a DCC decoder, servo driver, power supply, pushbuttons, and LED indicators on about a 1" square board. Many more components than the crossing flasher, and a bigger micro, too.
Rich_R Hi Jim and glad to have you aboard. Thanks for the tip on the schematic, is this what you have in mind? ?attachmentid=184
Yes it is. No question what color wire goes where with this revision.
Another suggestion is to CYA with some verbiage recommending that the P/S is properly fused. Most of the wall warts will fail after one short circuit over the rated value. A fuse recommendation slightly over your max circuit value would be a good idea.