I use UNOs for random structure lighting, NANOs for crossing and tower light flashing, MEGAs for block signaling. NANOs for animation.
I have 9 UNO Random Lighting Controllers controlling 9 houses, each house has 20 bulbs. I have 2 NANOs flashing emergency lights on vehicles and tower lights. I use a MEGA to control 14 search light signals in a 7 block mainline. I use a couple of NANOs for opening and closing my roundhouse doors and miscellaneous animation.
I use a NANO to operate the gates and lights at two crossings.
I use two UNOs. One reads block occupancy detectors and controls 2 road crossings. One crossing is fashers and a bell and the other is a pair of period crossing gates. It also drives a couple of signals. The second UNO utilizes an IR receiver that reads the HEX codes from a TV remote and drives a digital sound chip to send a crossing horn sequence to one of two speakers. It was more of an experiment with IR receivers than to sound a crossing horn (DC layout). I can’t help but think that this has other applications in MRR.
I have no arduinos so far on the layout but I plan to.
Some projects I want to pursue:
animation - There is an Aussie on Youtube named Laurie McClean who does some really neat stuff that I am going to use as inspiration
lighting - I plan on using nanos or unos for lighting on some of the structures on the layout. I want to have lights turn on and off at random. Also I have a small mountain on the layout that I want to build an ariel tower and have an uno drive a light on the top of the tower that glows on and off with building and decreasing intensity
Crossing gates - have an uno control with IR sensors
For turnouts I am going to stick with Tortoises and Blue Points
I am still in the research and experimenting phase but am looking forward to getting them on the layout soon!
Uno, Nano, and Mega are just sizes. There are no acronyms in the post. The size names are in all caps on the boards, so people often refer to them as NANO or whatever.
I program my decoders with DCC++ running on a Mega. One of my modules has a yet to be installed grade crossing flasher powered by a Nano. That’s it for me.
I use incandescent GOW bulbs on my layout so I needed a bit more current than the NANO would handle so I made a NANO expansion board with a high current driver, the NANO would drive a LED on its own.
Here is my Arduino UNO Random Lighting Controller.
I’ve dabbled with using Arduino’s for operating turnouts. We modelers have the option of purchasing well-developed commercial systems or DIY. I chose DIY because it is cheaper but if I were to start over again, I would definitely go with a commercial system such as Berrett Hill or Tam Valley Depot. I didn’t enjoy the learning curve of DIY (purchase decisions, programming sketches, route indication, control panel setup, servo setup, etc). Commercial systems are simple to install, add route indication, and set up a control panel. Berrett Hill has touch toggle switches with route indication. These touch toggles are movable which makes it very easy to modify a control panel as needed or reuse if build a new layout.
Mel is an awesome resource and has helped me on several occasions! Appreciate you my friend!
I have recently bought some crossing flashers with controllers but have yet to install them. Automating them seems unnecessary to me. I can use a simple switch to turn them on as the train approaches a crossing and then turn it off when it passes. There are a few crossings which I would like to add crossing gates to but again, they will be conrolled with a manual switch.
How so? As your train is approaching the crossing, you just reach for a fascia mounted switch which can activate the flashers and gates if those are present. I have a double track main and have a few crossings that cross 3 or 4 tracks. Putting in detectors on all those tracks for trains approaching the crossing in either direction seems unnecessarily complex. A simple on/off switch seems like the simplest and most economical way to control a crossing.
Let see. My main staging yard uses an Ardiuno Uno with 4 I2C port expanders to route 15 tortoise switch machines via relays. It also controls LED’s on the panel to show the route selected. The 1st port expander has a button matrix on it so for the 15 push buttons it only uses like 7 or 8 inputs instead of 15.
I use two arduino nanos that control two 3 way peco turnouts with tortoise switch machines. I probably could have used a single arduino nano but they were installed at different times.
I have one arduino nano that controls the LED’s on my contruction scene. This was probably the easiest one and I might still make some change so LED’s don’t look like they are chasing each other and more of a random blink.
I have a another spot where a welder is working on a pipeline an the ardiuno nano drives the LEd’s that look like the arc from the welder. Probably overkill but it gives a super cool looking welding effect.
Lastly, I have a grade crossing with flashing LED’s and functional gates that drop using mini servos. I need to improve this system though because the IR sensors are proving to be a bit finicky. Since all my rail cars have resistor wheel sets I think I’m going to go back to current sensing. i didn’t want to mess with it since I have block detection already but its looking like I will have to change it.
I have at least 3 more grade crossings to install (no gates on those) which will use ardiuno nanos to dr
