Thanks!

I am committed (or should be) to battery power and honestly believe it will be the future of the hobby alone with wireless control. With the outrageous adoption of Arduino & Raspberry Pi in the schools, the open source control options will take the hobby by storm. Look at the ProtoThrottle as a perfect open source project using these components to provide realistic and flexible control of our “toys”.

@ Neil

You're welcome Neil. If you want to follow along on the other forum here are the direct links to those threads:

http://www.railroad-line.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=44611

http://www.railroad-line.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=50726

There's a British forum that has a R/C specific sub-forum.

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/forum/228-radio-control/

I'm sure it'll get there as more items become plug-n-play. Until then it'll be left to the experimenters of the hobby.

Bernd

Good read

Bernd:

I read through both threads and was surprised that this has been discussed for at least a couple of years. I just sort of dove in and made up my own config back after meeting Mike Pflub and Bob Snow at the NNGC years ago. Tam Valley was there so I got excited and have been making my own battery packs to add to my roster as needed. When Tam Valley came out with the controllers I ended up with three as the CVP T5000 works well but at a higher price plus Duncan explains stuff in a way I understand. Keith is brilliant but not patient with my questions (and his website really confuses me). He is really a cool guy and I sat with him for quite a while in Portland during the NTS. 

Somewhere in my stuff is a similar pair of charging coils and boards from Pololu? or Sparkfun. I also have a couple of Stanton's systems for charging from the rails but health and work have put all railroads stuff on a lower priority. I do have my 1:20.3 B’man Shay to wire and get in the garden. These are old RCS systems that seem fine for that scale. 

Following along with interest. ps I did post my 0-4-0 Porter on YouTube running on battery power and an NCE receiver if interested. Search my name or Umauma Railway. 

Half Way There

Hey Bernd!

Thanks for mentioning me.

I've been working, on and off, for about two years to avoid removing batteries from my RC locos. Most of the time was spent researching the subject and talking to Texas Instruments, IDT Corporation, The Wireless Power Consortium, and many other companies. I feel confident in moving forward with the systems I think will work.

The photo below shows a 3 Watt charging track which will be wired back to a transmitter pcb and power supply. This is the latest of three, the others being 2W and 1W charging tracks.  A receiver coil and receiver pcb will be installed in a GP35 which is battery powered and radio controlled. The engine has been operating for the last 2-3 years and is powered by one Panasonic 18650 battery.

A second loco, the one in the above video, is being rebuilt to include two Panasonic 18500 batteries, voltage regulators, a 1P/3T switch, receiver coil w/pcb and a battery management board for overcharge, over-discharge protection plus balance charging. This engine has been operating at shows, conventions, club layouts for about 5 years and was used for demonstration for 10 clinics given on this subject.     

To tell how everything is working, monitoring devices will have to be included. Wireless charging is a complex subject with a multitude of parameters that need to be taken into consideration. But I look forward to no longer having to remove body shells to get to the batteries, or using charging wires, so the effort is being made.

Dan

@ Dan

Hi Dan.

Just want to inform the members that wireless charging of on board battery's is being worked on along with R/C. Since you are further ahead of the BPRC system I figured I'd mention your work for any interested members. 

Thanks for posting.

Bernd