I’m taking a hiatus from this site for a while, perhaps a few months. I’ll return maybe during the summer time. Thanks to my loyal readers, the two of you! For other good things to read, just hit the sidebar over there on the right.
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Recent ReviewsProject UpdatesI’ve heard from a few people now that they like my wishlist if only because it has a small list of places to buy Japanese model trains. With these comments as inspiration, I have created a dedicated page (linked to in the menu up above) to indexing all the sources I have found. Right now it is very short, because I haven’t spent much time on it. But it will be growing! I’ll post here when I add significant chunks to it. I’m arranging it by continent, as that seems to me somehow logical; I’m open to the idea that this is the wrong way to do it, if anyone has definite opinions on the matter. My family’s Christmas, er, New Year’s layout, Shogatsu, has been retired for the year. We haul it out of the basement for only a couple months each year, around New Year’s, to work on it and display it. This year’s time is up. We made some small progress on it, especially in forestation and village construction. New concrete retaining walls were built, and our village received a bath-house, a liquor store, a long string of merchant stalls for the New Year’s festival, and a portable shrine being hauled down the main street. It also received a new bit of rolling stock, a Tomytec モ1030. Before we packed it up last weekend, I made a video of it, below.  Test-type in Cylon training school. A couple of nights ago, I hooked my custom LED Driver up to an Arduino running some custom software, and 16 LEDs. And, who’d have thunk it: Worked on the first try! So many things could have gone wrong between the circuit design, the hand-soldering (jumpers, burn-outs), and the programming. But it worked. Granted, the Cylon effect is perhaps not that impressive, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. Now, to tidy up the hardware schematics, and do something more interesting with the software, and to start posting all of that to the interwebz.  LED Driver prototype 1, fully populated. Having recevied my PCBs, all that remained was to assemble the parts onto one and test it. Assembly took a couple of hours, but that’s because I was being careful at each step. I can now say that I am pretty comfortable soldering SMD components; having a good iron does help. Continuity testing shows that everything is connected correctly, and plugging it into the wall didn’t cause it to explode. Still, I might have lingered just a bit too long on the two ICs. The shiny spot is where my home-made heatpipe from the TLC5941 chip was supposed to connect to the board, but I just couldn’t get the brass strip I was using to stick to the thermal pad on the underside of the chip. I won’t know if I burned the chips out until I can get around to proper testing. If I did, no big deal: I’ve got more (and they were free samples). When I do get around to testing, I’ll make a video so you can see what I’ve designed this thing for, and why I’m excited about it.  オロネ25-901 (with body-mount TN coupler) and オハネ25-100 (with truck-mount TN coupler) Not every Tomix or Micro Ace train accepts the fancy-pants body-mount TN couplers. Sometimes you have to make do with compromises. Which is what Tomix’s truck-mount TN couplers are: A compromise. They work, but they’re not nearly as cool, and don’t look quite as good. And they’re harder to install. But, in the end, I think they are still worthwhile to bother with. Here’s how to install them.  The boards I received in the mail, about two inches long by one-and-a-half wide. I built a prototype. Then I designed a PCB. This weekend I received a set of my very first custom-designed circuit boards. It’s quite a thrill to hold an item manufactured to your own specifications. Best of all, I ordered two, but was sent four. Thanks to BatchPCB for their generosity in this regard. Very nice. I designed the board using the EAGLE circuit design software on my MacBook, which had a weird learning curve but isn’t too bad to use. Once I complete testing of the boards, and make any necessary tweaks to the designs, I’ll post the EAGLE files here for anyone who’d like them. I still have to order some parts to populate these boards (almost all SMD), but I have code ready to test these things out. Once the code is a little more polished, I’ll make that available too. Exciting days ahead! Just an update on this project. I managed three more cars in one evening, for a total of four out of seven. It’s tedious going, but I’ve got the hang of it now. What’s slowing me down is cleaning the trucks: They’re filthy! Spent the evening with a bowl of rubbing alcohol and a supply of toothpicks. I figure I can complete the conversion to LEDs in one more evening. Then I can move on to actually installing decoders.  Kato 10-173 651系 'Super Hitachi' So, you have just purchaed Kato 10-173 651系 (651-series) “Super Hitachi”, and want to know how to convert it to DCC. I’ve just begun this process myself; here is part one (of many!) of my report. The 651系 is factory-fitted with interior lighting, a nice touch. But, being bulbs, those lights have to go. For one, they draw a ton of current—55mA/bulb @ 9 bulbs = almost half an ampere!—which limits the number of trains that my Digitrax Zephyr can drive simultaneously from two to one. For another, bulbs get hot when powered by AC, and DCC is AC. Some people have reported that Kato’s bulb-based interior lights cause meltdowns when run on DCC. I don’t have a link, because I think this claim is largely apocryphal, but Kato nevertheless cautions against using their bulb kits with DCC. Or at least they did until they discontinued those sets. Anyway, Kato’s LED interior lighting kits aren’t compatible with the 651系. You’ll see why below. This means we’re going to have to improvise something new if we want to run out 651系 on DCC. The EF81 done, I’ve been trying to decide what DCC project to tackle next. I’ve settled on my Kato 651-series for several reasons. First, the set is being re-released next month, which means a new wave(let) of interest. It also means a new wave of spare parts if I mess up. Too, the pre-fitted interior lighting—bulbs all, prone to melting the roof when powered by DCC, and custom tailored to each carriage—present an intriguing challenge. I’ve already begun ordering parts, so look forward to the first posts in a couple of weeks. |
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