Bob does this mean your going to have power to the rails at the get together?
Richard
Richard said:
Bob does this mean your going to have power to the rails at the get together?
Richard
Eventually, yes. I think this next spring, I will have all the track replaced at Majestic, and over and around the big loop to Dead Rooster Gulch. I’m budgeting myself so much $ per year for this. The big expense will be the yards at both ends. Switches = $$
Bob, interesting thing about stainless, it is superior to brass for the integrity of the DCto allC signal due to the way “skin effect” works. The short answer is there is less “smearing” of the DCC signal with a less conductive metal for the rails.
You can swap the switches out last. I changed over bit by bit from brass to SS initially, as I had bought a bit of brass.
A few years later after swapping to all SS, I noticed a place where there was a temporary slowdown… walked over there and there was a 1 foot section of brass I missed. So even though it was more conductive as a metal, it was better conduction to the wheels.
Greg
Bob McCown said:
Switches = $$
No kidding but that is for another forum altogether !
Next experiment will be the wired and wireless throttles from Dave Bodnar’s site http://trainelectronics.com/DCC_Arduino/DCC++/Throttle/index.htm
I need to order some keypads and displays, but I have the RF and Arduinos already:
I really miss walking into Radio Shack so I could put my hands on stuff I had no clue I was after !
Yup.
I had the opposite issue with Radio Shack, What I needed they never had. Fortunately there were several great stores that had what I needed and now the Web has more than what I need.
Of course the West coast has Fry’s and if you can not wait for the mail you can get most anything you need.
Dan Pierce said:
I had the opposite issue with Radio Shack, What I needed they never had. Fortunately there were several great stores that had what I needed and now the Web has more than what I need.
Of course the West coast has Fry’s and if you can not wait for the mail you can get most anything you need.
RS had a few things I could use, but I usually ended up in You-Do-It Electronics to get ‘real parts’. Now half my stuff is from Digikey or Mouser, the other half from Aliexpress.
here is a company I have ordered from before and experience was good https://www.mouser.com/Electronic-Components/
X
There’s the DCC standard, while not perfect, it is a standard, and let’s you select decoders and other components to your liking. The Revo (non DCC one) is proprietary and does not interface with anything else. It’s also missing features as compared to DCC…
DCC has the concept of a “command station” which can know which trains are running and affect them all at the same time, like all stop. It can also facilitate the handoff of a train to different engineers. These are just some examples.
The new standards for reading back location of trains without a lot of additional hardware is nice.
In another sense, as Bob mentions, the fact that most of a locomotives settings stay with the loco means taking it to another layout or different throttle makes things easy and transportable.
It all of course depends on the features you demand and use. This should not start a “war” on this thread about what is best, we are in the DCC forum and Bob is sharing his “journey” in DCC.
There’s pro’s and con’s to all the different systems, otherwise they would not all exist.
Greg
I’m looking for suggestions for a new oscilloscope. Ive been hearing good things about the Owan SDS5032E-V scope, and its a reasonable price for what it looks like it provides. I mostly want it to help me mess around with DCC, and general Arduino-y playing.
You can buy some pretty inexpensive ones, I have a used Tek 400 MHz 4 channel, but for debugging DCC, I bought one of these, clearly fast enough for just debugging:
Greg
Bob McCown said:
I’m looking for suggestions for a new oscilloscope. Ive been hearing good things about the Owan SDS5032E-V scope, and its a reasonable price for what it looks like it provides. I mostly want it to help me mess around with DCC, and general Arduino-y playing.
Bob - if you want a serious scope this is my recommendation - I have had one for almost 2 years - very nice.
dave
Bob,
I recently bought this one:
So far I’m quite happy with it, yet I’m no expert. Just unboxed one of these today, DSO and AWG will play well together.
Arbitrary Waveform Function Generator
Happy Turkey Day all,
Michael
I have a Rigol, but still mostly use my Tek 2235. It’s so much more responsive.
For analyzing any kind of bitstream, I use a Saleae Logic 8. It’s a remarkable little gadget.
Eric Reuter said:
I have a Rigol, but still mostly use my Tek 2235. It’s so much more responsive.
For analyzing any kind of bitstream, I use a Saleae Logic 8. It’s a remarkable little gadget.
Eric - agreed on the Saleae Logic 8 - I think I paid almost $150 for the first unit some years ago - recently found a clone for closer to $10 that works with the original software -
or
Highly recommended
dave
Eric
Which Rigol scope are you comparing the Tex 2235 analog scope; 2 mV sensitivity, 5 ns/Div sweep rate analog scope too? The Saleae Logic doohickey is on my list, albeit I have to determine if the add-on Siglent 16 channel MSO hardware and software is a better option verses the Saleae at about the same cost.
Bob, the link below is helpful comparing specifications of current DSO offerings.
Oscilloscope side by side comparisons
Michael
I’m not sure which one it is. We have a couple at the college where I teach. They are in the $300 bracket. I just never feel like I know what I’m looking at on those things. I rarely use it at any frequency higher than audio. I’m sure the higher-end digital scopes offer a better experience.