I made an actual size CAD drawing of the Arduino UNO Expansion board D-243 and saved it to my Google Drive as a PDF file if anyone is interested.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7gZp9MPvrm3LU1JSzBHM3pyTkk
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
Not sure what the costs of having these made would be, but the layout is pretty much identical to the ones I bought for $1.40 each:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J1KM3RM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
You’d need to have those in Gerber format to be able to send to a PC house to be made.
–Randy
Thanks for posting that, Mel.
For someone interested in picking up Arduino to tinker with, it looks like the only difference between the Starter Kit and the Basic Kit is the projects book? And with the Basic Kit it looks like it’s available online rather than in bound-form.
I have some basic electronics training so I’m not exactly a novice. It would be fun to go through the elemental tutorial projects - even as a refresher. I’m just trying to determine what would be the best entry-level kit for me and one that I could quickly expand upon.
Tom
Randy
I’m not making the boards, I made the drawing to make it easier to layout my circuits for my expansion boards. I also bought 10 of the D-243 boards off eBay for $14.
There is a better board available for $2.50 that fits my needs better. I’ve only been able to find it from one seller on eBay. The board is a 64502SP13-10, it has multiple rows of doubled linked solder holes. The D-243 board is plain Jane, no links. Here is a link to the 64502SP13-10 board with the sockets in place.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7gZp9MPvrm3RFQyLTdKYWNoZDA
There are large varieties of starter kits, the main difference is usually the variety of parts you get in each one. The thing is - everything Arduino is open source, hardware AND software (that’s why you can buy clone Arduinos for $6 and the real ones are $30). The examples that are in any of those books or online are also already included in the Arduino IDE when you install that. There are also the component kits sold seperately - The one I got had the Arduino and a decent selection of components, then I bought another component pack that partly duplicated what I had (never can have too many LEDs and resistors though) plus had other parts which allowed me to do some of the other projects.
These would be good:
The last one has some nifty sensors to play with as well.
I guess the double link holes makes it a bit easier to make connections, otherwise you have to do it the old fashioned way and drop the wire into the hole next to the component and bend it over.
Some day I may use the other 9 - my main controllers will be a PCB I design and have made that takes an Nano as the controller. The one I am using just has an 8 pin DIP socket and a single capacitor to make an ArduinoISP shield to program the Tiny85’s, so for 8 wires I can deal with not having doubled holes.
I’ve seen another one, MUCH more expensive, but it’s completely universal, there are horizontal and vertical rows the loop around each hole - you can connect any hole to its vertical or horizontal bus by solder bridging it. Not describing it very well, but it’s completely universal - and also something like $40 each, so I know I won’t be buying one.
–Randy
Tom
I went with a basic $40 something starter kit off eBay, it’s got all kinds of goodies. I doubt if I will ever use half of them but I would say it can’t be beat for the price.
The only thing it lacked is a 5 volt wall wart but it did come with a USB cable that doubles as a power supply and programming cable. I bought the Arduino downloadable manual for $7 and change, it’s not what I expected though!
Can’t go wrong wi
Randy
I did a bit of research to find a low active 7 channel driver, the ULN2003 is a high active driver.
The low active driver is a Toshiba TD62304AP, I found a source on eBay for ten for $14.58. They are a bit higher in cost than the 2003 but I’m not wild using inverted chips as drivers.
At almost 80 my brain ain’t what it used to be, low in to low out functions easier for me.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
There’s a reason for that price difference (besides popularity) - active low outputs are MUCH more efficient. That’s why a chip the size of a fly spec on a DCC decoder can run 150 or 200ma of functions. ON for a function wire is when it’s low.
It all works though. If you were trying for high current control something like the ULN2003 would be better, but most of this stuff isn’t coming close to stressing the chip’s capacity. In the end, the relays in my program track controller will be wired just like LEDs in a loco - common to the +5V side and individual connectiosn to each ULN2003 pin.
Still MAJOR props for getting into this in your 80’s. I’ve been sort of doing this for over 40 years, I can only hope that I am still able when I hit my 80’s. Or maybe I can just hope I will hit my 80’s.
–Randy
Thanks, Randy! I purchased the last one. Thought that would provide more variety and learning experience. I’ll download and start looking at the Arduino software while I wait for my package to arrive on Monday.
Tom
Well, no more fancy NYC steam locos for you, you’ll be buying Arduinos and components now, you’ve been hooked.
What’s bad (maybe) is that I still haven’t finished my dual purpose workbench - the top for the model side still needs to be cut and covered in poly. The electronics side is up and working though. And so far I am proceeding with the electronics at the same glacial pace my layout construction usually takes. This winter/spring I will finally be getting the basement redone, and since one part of that will be a fixed divider wall I guess i should finalize my track plan.
–Randy
Randy
I still remember my first Solid State school in the summer of 1960. Motorola sent their dealer two-way radio techs to a two week school in Shamburg Ill. Things have slightly progressed since then. I remember the instructor saying that in the future even this will have transistors in it, he was pointing to the room light switch.
I worked in two-way radio and telecommunications from February 1958 until December 2007, I saw quite a few advances in the electronics industry during my working career. I started off burning my fingers replacing tubes in the 50s. It has really taken off in the last ten years.
Even Dick Tracy’s wristwatch would be a kids toy now days.
Mel
Well, there certainly are some idiots who buy their kids an Apple Watch. And when they turn 16 they will buy the kid a high performance car and wonder why it ends up wrecked in under a week. It’s amazing though that it’s actually here. My first computer was an 8 1/2 x 11" board that had a whole 256 BYTES of memory. A miniscule little DCC decoder has far more computing power and is smaller than a dime.
–Randy
Received the WeiKedz UNIO Project Super Starter Kit. Lotsa goodies but the tutorials are poorly written (looks like it’s translated from Mardarin) and not very helpful with getting things set up. Ordered the Arduino Starter kit and will use the aforementioned kit as a supplement.
Tom
Go to the Arduino web site
You can find all the standard tutorials here, ones that match the sample code in the IDE. And lots of other ideas and help.
–Randy
Thanks, Randy. Ran across those when I was poking around the Arduino website. They’re definitely better-written from an explanation POV.
The Arduino kit also comes with a booklet of 15 projects for hands-on lessons and the contents of the kit are specifically geared towards that. As mentioned, the initial kit I purchased will make a nice supplement for further tutorials.
Tom
I thought I would up date my post. I ordered some active low 7 channel 500ma driver chips to replace the UNL2003s (active high), Toshiba TD62304AP (active low). They arrived today and they work as advertised. I installed both of my Arduino UNO random lighting controllers today and both work great.
I worked up the cost of one controller, the total cost for my version of an Arduino UNO 12 port driver came out at just under $14. I used a lot of connectors that wouldn’t be needed by most model railroaders, by eliminating the connectors and monitoring LEDs would reduce the cost to about $9. I’m a connector nut and make everything on my layout compatible, easy in easy out using .10” spacing micro connectors and round pin IC sockets.
I operate my 12 volt incandescent bulbs on 8½ volts for longer life and realism. The max switching voltage on the TD62304AP is 50 volts at 500ma per channel. Max Vcc (P