Building simple circuits
One of the joys of model railroading is it provides the opportunity and motivation to learn new skills. One skill many avoid though, is building electronic circuits. I admit circuit building is intimidating, and not terribly necessary since so much is available RTR, but it is particularly satisfying to turn on the power and see things light up (most DIY circuits involve lights) knowing you put that part together from scratch.
You do not have to go to engineering school to learn circuit building. In fact, many ee programs do not include practical circuit building-- all lab work happens on breadboards or in computer simulations. The best way to learn these skills is to get some electronics kits and put them together. If you are a guitar or bass player, an excellent sources for interesting kits is Build Your Own Clone, a company that specializes in classic and cutting edge stop boxes and effects. Their web site is a cornucopia of information-- especially see the "confidence booster" kit-- it doesn't do much (it's a simple volume control) but the instructions are a complete lesson in soldering and parts handling. Another excellent site is Adafruit, which has a section called "learn' with guides to simple and complex projects and topics for the glow in the dark, performance art, Arduino widgets crowd. Another goto resource is SparkFun, which slants a bit more to the robotics fan-- all of the parts needed to build a stepper motor indexed turntable can be found here. Finally, (Definitely not least) is Make, which is a magazine/ publishing house dedicated to DIY in many forms. Their Electronics PDF bundle is a perfect resource for the beginner.
In addition to these, the web has thousands of tutorials and projects including the hobbyprojects.com Model trains section and a site full of circuits from Mark Rollins.
My intent with these notes is to let you get a toe in the water by showing how to build some very basic circuits*, starting with a simple track power detector. I'm not going to teach any theory here, just the actual building skills needed to make a schematic into a board.
pqe
*Suggestions welcome
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IC circuit
I have seen those, I thought the IC circuit was going to be an expansion on the DCC track power detector, not something completely different. Thanks, good to know I haven't missed anything.
Use of 555's on DCC layout....
This post was deleted by its author, as basically irrelevant and inappropriate - my apologies.
marco
Noise and 555s
Hi Marco,
In my experience, 555s have usually been the originator of noise, not the victim. However, any threshold based switching circuit is vulnerable. This is particularly true if you are using large value resistors to get long time constants.
It sounds like you have done all of the usual things to attack the problem:
The only thing left is to use a voltage regulator (7805 or 7809) for each accessory board. It would help if you could get a scope probe on a board when it is in place to find the vulnerable spot.
pqe
Simple Circuit projects
I have just published a book of Model Railroad Electronic Projects. Simple circuits built on copper strip board.
Full construction details, component layouts and circuit diagrams for 16 simple projects using easily available components.
Book link: http://www.Issuu.com/roddem/docs/railelec
All pages are free and printable so link to it and browse.
...Rod
roddem on Skype.
Simple Circuit projects - links broken
Hello,
Unfortunately the index links are broken.
Could you re publish, please?
Best regards
re: Simple Circuit projects - links broken
Did a little checking it is likely Rod is not going to reply, while I can't see the last time he logged in, the last time he posted was his post here 2.5 years ago.
All the links translate to a homepages.paradise.net.nz, but that company has been bought, and they may well have eliminated user home pages.
Looks like some are available on archive.org, start here to see what you can find: https://web.archive.org/web/20181130013517/http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~rdmurg/index(2).htm
If you have a specific circuit you are interested in or a question I'm sure there is plenty of help on this forum to solve your particular problem.