I have to apologize to all the trackhacker.com followers out there for letting the site sit so long without updating it. I lost my job in March and then had to deal with a host of medical problems my wife is experiencing while trying to fight depression myself. Life got complicated and busy really fast and I am only now just getting things back under control so I apologize for the hiatus. Not making excuses, just explaining what happened.
Jun 152011
JT continues his series on Building and Programming the Fabulous Fabio “Arduino-Compatible” Controller Board:
Setting Z-axis milling depth with conical engraving bits.
The Fabio Arduino clone PCB was milled into .062” (1/16”) FR4 PCB material with a 1oz. copper cladding (weight of copper is 1 ounce per square foot). The CNC engraver / CNC Router was fitted with a 45 degree engraving bit from Think & Tinker LTD. I picked this bit so I could adjust the width of the cut by specifying the depth of cut and still make some narrow cuts. If you do the math (Geometry, actually), you come up with a formula that tells you how deep to make a cut for a desired cut width and tool tip included angle. To make things easy for you (and me) I developed a spreadsheet for various engraving bit included tip angles as shown below: Continue reading »
Notes on building and programming the Fabulous Fabio “Arduino-compatible controller” board from the Make Your Bot! website (makeyourbot.org) – This is the first in a series of Fabio Arduino-Clone related posts from Track Hacker member JT. Thank you for all of the hard work that has gone into this and for sharing it with the Track Hacker community! -craigbic (admin)
Note: weblinks have been footnoted and moved to the bottom.
Over the last six months, I’ve built, tuned, and tested a 3-axis CNC machine based on plans from Rockcliff Machine [1] Now that it is functioning and capable of milling PCBs, I decided to experiment with using it as an “Additive Manufacturing” machine, in other words, a rapid prototyping machine under computer control that uses extruded plastic filaments to build a structure based on commands generated from a processed CAD file. Continue reading »
Well, I tried using the Pocket AVR Programmer I got from Sparkfun to reload the bootloader to my existing Arduino Duemilanove ATMega328 chip but it did not work. 
However, this interesting saga has a happy ending – MakerSHED (where I got my Duemilanove board) technical support has notified me they are sending me out a NEW Arduino Duemilanove board! 
How’s that for great technical support? I really thought they were going to say “Well, you must have blown out a component or a pin experimenting” and tell me it’s my own fault and not do anything since it is a development board. Great to see there are still companies out there that value their customers! As I was awaiting what I thought would be the inevitable dismissal from MakerSHED, I started looking into Arduino alternatives and came across this awesome little company called Freetronics! You guys HAVE to check them out! It’s just two guys but one of them, Jon Oxer was co-author of the popular book “Practical Arduino“ (maybe you’ve heard of it?) and they make a FANTASTIC Arduino clone (in fact it’s 100% compatible with a Duemilanove) called the Freetronics TwentyTen (in keeping with the Arduino culture you can call it the “Duemiladieci”). They are expert Arduino hackers themselves and really looked at the Duemilanove and took note of it’s good points and bad points and really listened to the Arduino community when they designed the TwentyTen. It’s an awesome board that is getting TONS of good reviews and it’s even been overclocked! Well what makes this “improved” Duemilanove so great? Well here is a list of improvements and you can be the judge:
Sep 122010
Just a quick little update for the blog – Some of you may have seen a “bandwidth exceeded” page instead of trackhacker.com. Oops! 
Sorry, I run my own web host server and wasn’t paying attention to how popular the blog has become of late since Jameco Electronics ran a September product update: Why is the Arduino a Hit with Entry-Level
Electronics Tinkerers? and prominently mentioned trackhacker.com! How cool is that? 
Very kewl but it bumped my bandwidth usage up dramatically and I wasn’t right on top of it so the site was down a little bit today until I noticed and adjusted trackhacker.com’s bandwidth limit. Dohhh! Well, besides that – I am just about finished the building phase of my CNC router and will be beginning the testing/tweaking phase. I hope to have it up and cutting within a week. After it’s up and running, I have a TON of model railroad CNC projects and hacks planned. I am also thinking about manufacturing niche model railroading accessories and a custom model service using my CNC router, my NextEngine 3D Laser Scanner and my homemade vacuum former machine (see images below).
Well here’s another little hack that demonstrates hooking up a temperature sensor to an Arduino Duemilanove micro-controller and displaying the temperature on an LCD. Before you say anything, yes I realize it’s not directly model railroad related but I suppose it could be if you needed to monitor the temperature from something, say a model railroad volcano with lava flow. 
Really it just demonstrates how easy it is to hook up an analog sensor to the Arduino and get meaningful data out and onto an LCD. I can picture the LCD embedded in a cool layout control panel and you could certainly swap the temperature IC for something like the opto-interruptor in my hack on making a Model Railroad Scale Speedometer and be able to display the scale speed of a model locomotive right on the LCD. Well anyway, it’s a good foundation for other more model railroad related projects to come and it tests out and shows off some of the new doo-dads I picked up recently.
Just a quick hack idea – I have an SD card datalogging shield, a mini 2-axis joystick, a 20 character x 4 line backlit LCD and a temperature sensor IC all coming in today from Adafruit to use with my Arduino Duemilanove micro-controller. Some of these are for another, non-railroad related project (is there such a thing?) but I do have a few model railroad Arduino projects in mind that I will be able to use these components for. I plan to use the Arduino as an intelligent power pack (controller) for running model trains and to do that, I plan on using the mini 2-axis joystick to control proportional acceleration of the locomotive – forward and reverse. The other axis of the joystick could be used for something else. This obviously doesn’t require an Arduino to do but the Arduino does open up several possibilities for an advance model train controller. I can use the LCD to readout the status of various sensors that can be hooked to a model layout or a locomotive. I can output controller diagnostics to the LCD such as voltage levels or current draw. I could install a model railroad scale speedometer onto a layout and have it output directly back to the LCD while the Arduino is controlling the train via the joystick and monitoring position sensors. There are a lot of possibilities and these are just a few of the ideas that bounced into my head. Let me know what you think or tell us your ideas for model railroad projects involving Arduino and the accessory hardware above! 
Please comment and let me know what you’re thinking! I am looking for ideas, feedback, just about anything at all you can say constructively. Don’t think one of my projects will work? Let me know. Like my idea on an Arduino Model Railroad Turntable? Let me know. Hate the color scheme of the blog? Tell me about it. Love my Model Railroad Scale Speed Calculator? Have a great idea for a project? Let’s talk about it. Just say so. I want and openly invite community contribution here. I am also considering allowing selected contributors to write posts and submit hacks. If you’re interested in doing so, please drop me a line via the contact form. Continue reading »
Aug 092010
So I have another little hack I am working on – I have to get a locomotive and some track yet. Speaking of that, if anyone wants to be charitable and has an extra HO scale locomotive and some track (cheap toy store stuff is ok) and you want to donate it to the cause, please feel free to contact me! Anyrate, I have another hack planned and this was is very simple but neat. I want to setup an Arduino Duemilanove micro-controller to measure and report the scale speed of a passing locomotive. The way I want to do this is pretty simple – I envision (feel free to comment with suggestions, mistakes in my thinking, ideas, etc…)using two opto-interruptors (see my Arduino Controlled Model Railroad Turntable hack for a good description of opto-interruptors) as a means of starting and stopping the Arduino internal timer (might have to use an external crystal if I want something really accurate) with the opto-interruptors positioned at a known distance away from each other on a straight track, I should be able to calculate how fast the train took to traverse that known distance and then calculate the HO scale miles per hour based on that. Locomotive comes along and breaks the first opto-interruptor and starts the Arduino timer function based on the Arduino clock. The Arduino is now waiting for the train to break the second opto-interruptor to stop the timer function. Once the train does break the second opto-interruptor, the Arduino sketch then determines the HO scale speed based on the following formula:
Jul 282010
I have finally started working on my first TRUE model railroading hack and this one is really cool! It uses Arduino, like many of the model railroading hacks I have floating around in my head or on the back of napkins, to control a model railroad turntable. For those who don’t already know, a turntable is a large turning platform with a track on it that a locomotive can drive onto and then be turned around to other tracks or even 360 degrees within the locomotives own length. Click here for a closer look at rail turntables on Wikipedia. What makes this any different than any number of model railroading turntable kits that might exist or why is it better than just sticking a motor onto the turntable with a switch? Well, because this is a micro-controlled turntable that’s why! Other turntables are not often precise and frequently misalign. The hack I am describing here uses the Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller coupled with an Adafruit Servo Motor shield to control a stepper motor and get positional feedback from opto-interrupters positioned to stop the turntable (via a deftly programmed Arduino sketch) precisely at an adjoining track location and be accurate and repeatable. I want the control panel input to the Arduino be nothing more than a rotary switch with each pole telling the Arduino to spin the turntable to a different fixed position for the turntable. Maybe an LED for each position could be used at the control panel as feedback. I want to use a stepper motor with at least a right angle gear box with good reduction so it can be easily located directly under the turntable and have enough oommph to spin large, heavy brass locomotives around. I was thinking about this relatively inexpensive (hey it’s only $16.95!) 3.3V stepper motor with built-in 180 degree gear reduction unit from MPJA, Inc. I have seen this exact motor unit built-into homemade CNC routers as a 4th axis to spin long material and use the router much like a CNC lath – good for carving ornate pool cues, spindles etc… This unit works well, is readily available all over the internet, meets my somewhat arbitrary requirements, and is dirt cheap! Can’t beat that!
