The Latest Evolution Lighting Controller
Our next generation controller is already installed in at least a dozen passenger cars already. They all have the Lightning effect we added for the Halloween Ghost Town. We upgraded the last three with the Christmas light effect, the green and creme colored "Pennsylvania Limited" set. The 2812 individually addressable LED strips solve a multitude of issues, including parts count reduction.
That made it possible to fit all the required electronics in an oversized, 3D printed battery box that replaced the original 9V battery case on the underside of the Bachmann passenger cars. With the idea of Christmas lights decorating the train always in the back of our mind, the latest evolution is moving toward miniaturization. Not that our lighting controller isn't small already, but it's all about fitting all the electronics in the original 9V battery box!
The 3D printed ones work just fine, but we don't really need 11 - 12 hours of continuous operation. That means we don't really need that size battery either. Some of them boast 2800mAH while others just 2000mAH, but compared to the more than 4 hours we get from a 1000mAH battery, I'd say 2800mAH is closer to the mark. The entire reason for the oversized battery box was the size of the battery.
The 1000mAH battery fits nicely in the original battery case, with room to spare for the battery monitor/charge circuit board, and a Wemos D1 mini (ESP8266 Arduino). Unfortunately, I've had nothing but problems with those D1 minis, from issues with Windows drivers not being able to upload new program versions to failure to serve the web page files reliably via WiFi once programmed.
When they work, they work well. When they don't, which is most of the time, it's very frustrating to say the least. Already short on time, I don't have any extra to mess around with, "Why doesn't this blasted thing work now?" Until the latest round of Windows updates, my laptop was able to communicate with them. But no longer, even after rolling back the driver. There has to be a small form factor Arduino that's much more reliable than these pieces of... junk.
I try to keep up with the latest innovations, but with the time constraints already mentioned, can't be as thorough as I'd like. Thankfully Nick found these "super mini" versions of the ESP32C3 and ESP32S3 Arduino boards. So when we talk about the "latest evolution", we're talking about replacing the already small Arduino D1 mini boards with even more tiny, and more powerful, Arduinos.
We recently acquired an Aristocraft B&O "Royal Blue" Pacific and tender, along with heavyweight passenger cars, including a baggage car, two coaches, a diner, and
an observation car. I say we... I bought the set as a birthday present to myself. You can read all about it in our Blog posts.
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But the gist of it is they are old school technology, using incandescent bulbs, circa 1993. The only "modern" piece of equipment in that set is the diner car, with LEDs cleverly diguised as the table lamps! For now, they work well enough, but eventually the bulbs will be replaced with some version of our lighting controller. One piece of the puzzle still missing is charging the battery from track power, which could also be used in the USA Trains "cabeese" that still use 9V batteries!
We invite you to enjoy our Passenger Car Lighting series on the Barkyard YouTube channel if you're so inclined. We go into much more detail than we could possibly
fit on a web page. Even our Barkyard Blog posts can't capture all the details the videos do.
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