My panel design meets your stated requirements. You would have to make your enclosures larger than mine to fit your Arduino and NCE equipment inside.
Connectors on rear permit easy removal of panel from layout:
Link for how to build: http://www.lkorailroad.com/control-panels-part-i/
Alan
Freelancing the LK&O Railroad
Alan: Slightly off topic here, but every time I see photos of your control panels I am both in awe and humiliated at the same time. Incredible work.
Old Fat Robert
Simple way - get a piece of perf board and header pins. The servo connectors fit on standard 0.100 header pins. Connect the wires from the Arduino to the header pins, also add a coax barrel jack for power to the Arduino. OK, that means you have to plug in each servo lead individually, bbut how often are you going to totally remove the control panel? Having the panel hinged to flip open without having to take it off the layout should satisfy 99.9% of the issues with potentially manking internal changes to it. Add a short USB extension and you wouldn't even have to open the thing up to load new code in the Arduino.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Old Fat RobertAlan: Slightly off topic here, but every time I see photos of your control panels I am both in awe and humiliated at the same time. Incredible work.
Not really OT, they do look like some sort of art work.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
I guess I would have to ask why?
Your Powercab is set up for walk-around control from the get-go. If the cord won't reach, then you will have to add jacks and an SB booster/command station. But it maintains your ability to walk around your layout, controlling your train as you go.
If you are walking around, why not distribute the turnout toggles near to where the turnout is located? And since the toggle is hopefully within easy visual distance from the turnout it is controlling, why bother with LED indicators? Just look at the turnout, decide if it needs to be thrown to the other direction, and if it does, flip the toggle.
I've spent my life in electronics, and the last thing I want on my layout is a Starship bridge replica. But that's me. Others have given you good ideas if you want to go ahead with the control panel, and seated operation.
Fred W
....modeling foggy coastal Oregon, where it's always 1900....
Coupld of options to accomplish that, too - for a single turnout, you can use the ATTiny85, an 8 pin chip (programs the same as an Arduino though). There's enough pins for the switch, a servo, and indicator lights. Where 4 or 5 turnouts are all toogether, like a yard, instead of one of the bigger Arduinos, the Nano is very small (would easily fit in Alan's panels) and actually has MORE I/O pins than the Uno. Also very cheap on eBay. Even Amazon - I got a 5 pack of them for like $8. The board I designed is even fancier, but probably overkill for you. It has inputs to be controlled by a stationary decoder to both change the points and also lock out the local control (for a mainline turnout, locked unless the dispatcher releases it to local control, which also drops the signals at the ends of the block). It uses an ATMegas328 (same chip as the Uno) for 2 turnouts - with pushbuttons local controls, LED indicators, an unlocked LED for each, plus a relay for each to switch frog polarity. And of course the servos. Take out the remote control stuff and there are enough IO pins for a third servo with buttons, LEDs, and a relay. Not as dense as a simple button/servo implementation, but we're talking a chip that costs about $2 - the pushbuttons (same ones shown on the Canadian Canyons project, with LEDs built in) cost more than the microcontroller chip. I'm working on another module that uses a CMRI interface back to the dispatcher computer (eventually a real CTC panel) to drive these as well as the signals, with a default setting the enables the local control if the computer is not turned on, so I can just run trains by myself without having to run back to the dispatcher panel all the time. Each switch location will have a small acrylic panel witht he switch number, the buttons, and the lock indicator. For hard to see spots, I may put signal repeaters on the panels. The only place I see anything approaching a large panel would be at the main yard since there will be a lot of turnouts in a small space. The rest will be small panels at each crossover, siding, or industry. The coal breaker may have a larger one as well since it will have quite a few tracks. That's the grand plan, anyway. Designing the electronics keeps me busy until the basement is finished.
fwright I guess I would have to ask why?
I think control panels are a bit last millenium also. My layout has the toggle switches on the fascia adjacent to the turnouts. Easy wiring, no needs for lights to show alignment etc and ideal for walk around control. If I really wanted a panel I would be looking at creating the panel on a touch screen tablet or similar rather than a conventional panel.
Bill
No offense Fred W. but I think having a control center that looks like a starship control panel would be cool
Sorry just had to interject.
Joe Staten Island West
Maybe. But having to run from the opposite side of the room every time I wanted to line a switch would get old, real fast. Yeah, when we had a 4x8 we had an interesting control panel, various types of switch machine controls, a random toggle board my Dad built to control structure lighting, rows of Atlas switches to control power to various parts of the layout, a pair of dual power packs plus another single one. That's just the way it grew as the layout grew. No worries for me, I had no problems running trains, several at a time. Even though my Dad is the one who built most of it, he could rarely manage more than a lap without running an open switchand derailing something.
I do find it interesting (not disparaging anyone, just an observation) that people will pick the PowerCab instead of the Zephyr because the PowerCab has a tether and you can walk around with the train instead of being fixed in place like an old power pack, but then want a centralized control panel. Kind of defeats the purpose. As soon as I went to building more linear style layouts, I went to distributed control. But then, I always have been quite the odd duck.
Thanks for all the input guys. Lots of good ideas. Hopefully others will provide me more ideas to consider.