Skip to main content

Electronics 2

 On Sunday Davy Dick ran an online version of his Electronics 2 course.



Normally he runs them at his home with around six or seven attendees which gives plenty time for questions and the opportunity to see and touch the circuits

The course was divided into three sections covering

  • Numbering systems - decimal, binary, hex - how do we use them in our projects
  • Digital signals
    • How do we store numbers (e.g. inside a DCC decoder or inside the Servo4 module)
    • How do we pass numbers (e.g. from a command station to a loco, CBUS, etc.)
  • Serial / parallel connections
  • How transistors work
  •  Using transistors as switches and operating high power devices.
    Integrated Circuits
  • Examples of ICs, PICs
  • Demonstrations of popular ICs.
    • Driving a 7-segment display
    • LED chasers
    • Route selection
    • Power drivers, including motors
    • Comparators (DCC TOTI)
  • 555 timers - and how they are used in Pocket Money Kits
  • How this very popular (and cheap) IC works and its three operating modes:
    • Bistable – as in the shuttle
    • Monostable – one shot timer as in the automatic lights kit
    • Astable – as a LED flasher and a pulse generator
A great insight into how some of our most popular kits are constructed, and as always clearly explained.

The whole session was recorded and it is hoped that this will be edited into 3 separate videos that will eventually be made available on the West of Scotland Area Groups own website.

Davy has a future session planned on PICs. More details later.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Train sequence / timetable using Arduino

                              Following discussions in a MERG Zoom meeting about potential projects for the Cumbria virtual area group I have started this blog to share my ideas for building a train sequence / timetable system based on an Arduino UNO. The trigger for this project was Andy Robb's article in the MERG journal (June 2020 edition). In it Andy describes using an UNO with a OLED display to produce an electronic station display board.  Having tried out Andy's version I started thinking about expanding the idea and have come up the following list of possibilities: 1. Replace my card index train sequence with an electronic version. 2. Have the train sequence synchronised with the on platform displays. 3. Display an analogue clock on the station display and have it display the train times. 4. Store the position reached in the sequence so that it starts where it left off on power up.  To mak...
8 comments
Read more

Push button Ezypoints

 A few months ago I produced a batch of Ezypoint kits for our local members to overcome a shortage in the Kitlocker.  At that time the kit was produced on stripboard which some members find problematic. An additional PCB board normally available from MERG was not available either.  Alan Turner ( the PCB designer) had only a few boards available but graciously provided me with the gerber files to allow me to order PCBs directly from China . Having sourced all necessary components, the kits were duly made up. I find this simple kit is really useful for automation projects. A toggle switch provides either a HIGH or LOW on the PIC input pin to determine which of the two servo positions is selected. For a particular application, I wanted to use a push button to toggle the position on alternate presses of the button. This involved a rewrite of some of the code in the PIC. I initially developed the program using an Arduino as a means of testing the logic. When this was successfu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project Updates

My apologies for the shortage of posts this month due to shortage of writing time while I've been  focusing on other projects. Speaking of projects, at the last Cumbria Group meeting we were updated on two very interesting developments. Firstly Mark Bradley has made great progress on his operator messaging project which was featured in September 12 A timetable of train movements has been created initially on a card system so that operators were aware of which trains to expect or prepare for the next sequence. The movements are now recorded on  a memory card and each record is sent by the Arduino Mega via it's I2C bus to the relevant display or displays. Different display types have been tested and the records can be advanced or reversed in single steps or in tens. The code is available from Mark for those interested. A second project this time from Tony Hoath, featured a complex scissor crossing with route switching using Arduino controlled relays to ensure the relevant polari...
Post a Comment
Read more