Another Arduino Project for my Layout Finished

[RR_Mel]

I finally have a realistic looking beacon on my 130’ communications tower.  I built the tower from Oregon Rail 142 HO scale brass ladder stock many many years ago.  I originally used a 1mm 1½ volt micro bulb for the beacon and drove it with a simple transistor flip-flop circuit, not very realistic flashing.  Several years later I tried using a LM555 timer chip that would ramp up and down, better but still not what I wanted.

 

Well last month I decided to give it another try using an Arduino NANO as a driver.  Walla! Success!  I can tweak the up and down ramp to get a realistic looking flashing tower beacon.

 

I couldn’t find a manufactured NANO expansion board so I began by making one similar to the UNO expansion boards.  I had bought a ten pack of 5mm x 7mm perf boards and by scouring one using #11 blade then breaking it I ended up with three NANO expansion boards.

 

 

I finished wiring the expansion board after laying out the schematic on my CAD.

 

 

I went with a MPSA13 Darlington Transistor to drive a 2mm 12 volt 70ma Grain of Wheat bulb.  The MPSA13 is rated at 500ma.

 

I decided to go with a larger bulb on the tower, the 1mm bulb was a bit to small.  The 2½mm bulb looks pretty close in size to a real 620 Watt tower beacon.  I replaced many 620 Watt tower bulbs in my career.  Each beacon has two 620 Watt Mogul Base bulbs, one in the top of the folding beacon and one in the bottom.

 

 

I’m very happy with the way my tower beacon project turned out, it only took around 35 years to get it looking this good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mel

 

 

My Model Railroad   

http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

 

Bakersfield, California

 

I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

 

[mbinsewi]

Excellent Mel!  It must be nice to have electronic stuff come natural to you. It helps guys like me that don't have a clue! 

Just the term arduino flies has high over my head as your tower.

That maintainence guy on the tower reminds of my neices husband, he climbs cell towers for a living. NO THANK YOU ! 

Mike.

[Water Level Route]

Great work Mel, as always!

Up until a couple years ago, workers were allowed to climb these mostrosities with no fall protection.  Here is a video someone made while climbing to the top of one.  Scary stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A_h2AjJaMw

Mike

[hon30critter]

Very nice Mel!

Dave

[RR_Mel]

Thanks for the good words guys!

 

The tallest tower I was on was the KIBM-TV tower east of Roswell,NM back in the 1960s.  I didn’t do much climbing on that one, it had an elevator or person lift on the outside face to the 1000’ level.  There was a two-way radio base station on a small platform that I serviced at the 1000' level.  That 1410’ tower came down in an ice storm in 1965 and was replaced with a new 1836’ tower.  The tallest tower I climbed was 480’.

 

In the mid to late 50s I replaced tower bubs for the radio stations in El Paso Tx, I got a whopping $25 per tower to change all the bulbs on a tower.  Two stations had directional patterns and had four towers, that made me a $200 weekend.  Helped pay my way through College.

 

I took a fall in the summer of 1965 and that ended my tower climbing carrer, I thought it was bad recovering but now at 81 every bone that broke is telling me I shouldn't have fallen.

 

 

 

Mel

 

 

My Model Railroad   

http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

 

Bakersfield, California

 

I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

 

[HO-Velo]

Mel, As always, great modeling.  Guessing that's the climber's tool bag hanging from his safety belt?  I'd be too busy hanging on and not looking down to change any bulbs.  Thanks and regards,  Peter

[RR_Mel]

HO-Velo

Mel, As always, great modeling.  Guessing that's the climber's tool bag hanging from his safety belt?  I'd be too busy hanging on and not looking down to change any bulbs.  Thanks and regards,  Peter

 

Yep!

 

When I built the tower I still had my climbing gear so it was easy to come up with an HO tower tool pouch.  Shortly after I installed the tower on my layout I tossed all of my climbing gear.  I hadn’t used it since I fell in 65 and I was beginning to feel the problems, I didn’t need the reminder stuff anymore.

 

 

 

Mel

 

 

My Model Railroad   

http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

 

Bakersfield, California

 

I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

 

[rrinker]

 This is the sort of thing I plan to use the little ATTiny85 chips for, a little 8 pin chip (same as a 555 timer) but it's a full microcontroller, and can be programmed with the Arduino IDE. Of course, with only 8 pins, and 2 of them being power and ground, it doesn;t have many outputs. But it's exactly right for crossing gates (2 LED circuits and a servo to lower the gates) or something like this, a single special effect blinking LED. 

 My idea is for self-contained structures - random lights going ona nd off in different rooms, maybe a flickery B&W TV simulation (perfect for my mid-50's era) so probably a Tiny 85 in each building, and just connect power to them. I like distributed stuff - seen some people with large layouts have these big stacks with 3-4 DCC boosters all in one rack, with meters and all sorts of things, but IMO the whole point of DCC systems having a 'booster bus' is so that you can put the high current boosters close to where they need to supply power and keeep the heavy bus wire runs to a minimum length, since the control or booster bus is usually a differential signal and some loss over a long run of the typical phoen cord used to connect them is no big deal, it doesn't cause the booster at the far end to put out lower voltage. 

 The TV simulation was in one of Geoff Bunza's articles. A short video of it looked quite convincing, like you occasionally see driving around at night when people are watching TV and their TV happens to face a window in their house.

                          --Randy