Hello again! Due to several, mostly valid reasons, I cannot lay down any track for a while. Like “maybe next summer” a while. The short story is I now have plenty of time to over think everything. I’m kicking around the idea of using Arduino boards linked together using the rails as a sort of DCC system. That would give all my locos the on-board capacity to read RFID so I could embed small tags along my track. It would also give me something productive to do while I wait on my Purchasing Department! Has anybody here worked with something like this before? I would love to hear any concerns you may have or any input at all for that matter.

Looking at it myself.

CTI has an RFID system already and incorporated into their TrainBrain software using DCC.

http://www.cti-electronics.com/dcc.htm

http://www.cti-electronics.com/news.htm

Looking at using this on my new railroad.

I played with some RFID from Parallax a couple of years ago. I tried several different size tags. The largest one worked the best, but they are about the size of a poker chip. But they (or my setup anyway) were just way too slow. A train at any kind of speed wouldn’t get a reading. The reader was also too expensive for anything other than home projects.

It’s a great concept. Unlike a magnet which at best can just tell you “left or right” side of the track, RFID can tell you which station stop you are at, warn of an approaching grade, all kinds of stuff.

Like everything else, it just keeps getting smaller and cheaper.

Dennis- Thanks for the link. I will have to look at what they are doing. Seem a lot easier to buy a turn-key system rather that start from scratch.

Del- I am hoping the tech has evolved enough to get past those issues. I sent an email to a sales rep at HID. I know the tags have gotten a lot smaller which is good. Can’t really hide poker chips on the track! Thanks!

Silly thought… they have those tags in DVDs which are smaller than a piece of trident gum. I bet they could be embedded in the cavity under a tie. Even if all you could encode was “MP102” and you set each 1ft section as a milepost (or however you want to break it down) you could have a system which told your trains where they were as exactingly as we have on the real ones.

I’d think you’d want the tags in the loco and cars and sensors in a few places on the layout, and it looks that is how CTI is thinking.

But, I guess if you put a sensor in the loco and in the caboose and you could feed back this information then you could have really precise location reporting too.

It would depend heavily on how you organized your layout and also how many locos you have.

Greg

It would also depend on what power system you have.

A sensor on the engine would work regardless of power supply. A trackside reader would only work with track power, analog/DCC

The working theory at this point is to embed tags ever foot or so and put a reader in every loco. The loco control board would then send the tag ID to the master control board and use the position from there. I’m hoping to work out a system for controlling right-of-way for multiple trains on the same track automatically. I’m working on a proof of concept right now to put a control signal through track power.

Mark: I have been working on using the RFID tags in one of my Trains to activate a whistle when it gets to certin points. With the Keyfob type tags imbeded in the roadway, as the train passes over it, the onboard RFID tag reader reads the tag and depending on which engine type or train it will activate the output of the reader which is connected to a Sound module and then blows the whistle.

The RFID Tag Reader I am using is one that is designed to open a door and has a relay built in. So when the correct ID tag is read, the relay is activated, which is usualy connected to a solanoid to unlock the door. In my case I use the relay as a switch to turn on the sound module. The unit I have has a keyboard so I can program which tag operates the sound module and which don’t. I could also have it designed to work with the onboard speed controller to slow down and stop at a station for a preset time and then startup again if I have it connected to a PICAXE processor.

The one I am using is this first ebay item. The only problem I have with it is the size. It is hard to fit into a boxcar, but it is good to test with. The seconf ebay item is another one but it smaller and should fit in a boxcar without much trouble, I am going to get one and see how it works out.

The last two ebay items are a couple of things you might look into as one is for the arduino and the other has a USB interface.

I had a thought of using one of the USB version and using a USB interface with a picaxe processor that was hooked to a XBee wifi unit so that when the reader reads a tag, it send the information via wifi to a computer and then the computer plots where the train is along the route, like a real dispatchers board.

I see these little RFID tags along with picaxe chips and ardunio boards and the xbee wifi units automating a lot of things in the near future.

Ebay Item # 280685710446

RFID Card Reader Keypad Access Controlle +5 Cards &TagsEbay item # 160453176755

Digital Keypad /RFID Card Reader Access Control S50 S

Ebay item # 121057801628

Mifare RC522 13.56Mhz RFID RF ID Card Reader Writer Arduino SPI InterfaceEbay item # 271165261787

Rfid Module Reader Writer Mifare USB Interface,SDK, 3 Cards

Never know what you will come across when you not looking.

Dan S.

Dan S.- Thank you! It’s good to know I’m not only crazy one out here trying this. I will look into these in a few days as other projects have popped up. Mainly the kitchen sink somehow exploding. Have you had issues with getting a reading at speed? Del T. said that he had problems with that.

Not really, since I am a narrow gauger, I tend to operate my trains and low speeds. The one thing that I look for in these things is the read distance. Some are real close and some are as much as 4 to 5 inches away. The greater the read distance the better off you are, that way you have a much better chance of reading the card or Tag while passing over it at speed.

Also the larger that antenna that the reader has the longer the range that it will pick up and read the tags. I have seen some that will read from as far as 180mm which is 7 inches. Most however read in the 3 to 5 inch range, which is more that adaquite for our needs.

Dan S.

I understood everything you just said, except for the narror gauger reference. I’m new to the hobby lingo. I was going to try for shorter reading distances so I didn’t double read and whatnot since I plan on placing my tags as close together as possible.

Mark: Got you. The Narrow Gauger reference was intended to convay how narrow gauge railroaders operate thier trains. Which is a nice slow speed, usually no more than 12 to 15 scale miles per hour. This was in reference to your question about reading the tags at speed. I don’t think you will have a problem reading the tags, unless you have your engines going full tilt. If your looking for short read distances, then I don’t think you will have a problem with that. Any one of the readers you see for sale on evilbay or elsewhere will tell you what the max reading distance is. but usually in metric measurements. As a reference measurement you can use 12mm as a half inch, so you can figure out what the distance they will read at.

Dan S.