Electronics SIG Zoom meeting 27th July

[Graeme Dunbar]

The next meeting will be at 8pm on Wednesday 27th July.

Hugh will be telling us about the PICAXE microcontroller. He uses them for animations on Angst Lesspork amongst other things.

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009 Zoom Host is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Electronics SIG - Graeme Dunbar

Time: Jul 27, 2022 20:00 London

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[Hugh Norwood]

Note to self - put brain into gear....

[Graeme Dunbar]

Note to self - put brain into gear....

I think synchromesh on my one wore out years ago...

I am making slow progress on the old one I was given. I'll see if I can get it working before the meeting.

[Graeme Dunbar]

There were four of us at the meeting: Hugh, Stephen, David and myself.

One of the first topics we discussed was file sharing of our work and copyright exempt material. I mentioned that I had seen resources on the Society web page but could not find them at the time. (The reason being that I was in 'public viewing' mode and had not logged into the members' area.) There is some material that can be found (when logged in) in Resource Pages for Members, under 'Parts Lists':

https://009society.com/news/resource-pages-for-members/?v=79cba1185463

To date, when we have had something to share it has been done by direct 'round robin' emails. All present at the meeting were happy to share email addresses within the SIG.

The main topic for the evening was Hugh's presentation on the PICaxe microcontroller which is a range of small inexpensive integrated circuits (PIC microcontroller) which are programmed in a version of the BASIC language. Aimed originally at school technology class users it is a very good choice for building into model railway control and animation applications. A big advantage over other systems (such as Arduino) is that it is available as 'bare' ICs (from 8 pins and up) rather than more bulky and complex boards and can be programmed with an inexpensive cable and connector.

Hugh illustrated the presentation with several examples from his Angst Lesspork layout ranging from simple lighting effects to animations using servos and stepper motors and interaction between the PICaxe and a computer keyboard.

Another part of Hugh's presentation focused on his bespoke model railway controllers (DC), some of which also use the PICaxe.

This led to a discussion as to the possibilities of home-built DCC decoders using a PIC or PICaxe by way of talk about H-bridge motor controllers. I recalled that there were designs published, but could not find them at the time. I have since tracked a couple down:

http://mrjones.id.au/html/dcc_loco_decoder.html

http://g-zi.de/Decoder/ATtiny15/desc2pinNpwmR_e.html

Stephen showed his A1 models boxcab loco from the Society sales that he is working on and this led to a discussion of Kato tram chassis.

I mentioned a small geared stepper motor that I had bought from the 'PiHut', unfortunately, out of stock now, identical or similar ones are available elsewhere.

https://thepihut.com/products/micro-metal-geared-stepper-motor-12v-0-6kg-cm

Having a 100:1 gear ratio means the motion should be smooth even though individual steps are quite large. My intended application is for a rotating turntable for my pizza layout. I understand the motors were intended originally for applications such as motorized central heating radiator valves.

We settled on Wednesday 21st September at 8pm for our next meeting. This will be confirmed when the Zoom booking is made.

[Dave Cooper]

Hi All - sorry I missed the last Zoom - crisis meeting with the house builder !

I hope to be able to make the next one using my wife's lap-top, which she assures me is 'Zoom equiped'.

Cheers for now,
Dave

[Graeme Dunbar]

Thanks for the update Dave. I hope the builder situation is resolved. My sympathy -it is not a situation I want to repeat! Our next meeting is a bit of a way off and will try to remember to put out an email reminder in good time as well as posting the details on the forum.