Arduino and Raspberry Pi Projects Thread

[Madsing]

21 minutes ago, gavino200 said:

I'm going to return the "ice-tower" for the "low profile ice tower". That will reduce the height. Also, it means that I don't need to keep the GPIO side of the case free for the airflow. The air can enter on the other side and leave through the top. That way I should be able to make space with a panel door to hold the break-out board and ribbon. Hopefully that will cut down on the ugliness. This will be my "Learning node", and will sit on my desk, so I'd like it to look good. 😜

Tell me what you think of it. I have used multiple Raspberry Pis without any fan for years and never had an issue. I just purchased a very small fan (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32854919874.html) along with my new Raspberry Pi 4 (the one that now runs Rocrail), and I am not sure if it makes any difference...

[gavino200]

2 minutes ago, Madsing said:

Tell me what you think of it. I have used multiple Raspberry Pis without any fan for years and never had an issue. I just purchased a very small fan (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32854919874.html) along with my new Raspberry Pi 4 (the one that now runs Rocrail), and I am not sure if it makes any difference...

 

Yeah, I'm not convinced it makes any difference. This guy basically confirms that. It seems that heat is only an issue if they're overclocked. Even still it's not clear that anything more than a heat sink is necessary. 

 

I'm gong to use the fan anyway. (I think it looks cool)  🤣

[cteno4]

We’ve stuck them in exhibit walls with just a nice big heat sink with fins to get rid of any potential noise or death. Even the bigger, faster solid state computers which are like 5x wattage only use a nice big heat sink the size of the board.

 

jeff

[gavino200]

3 hours ago, gavino200 said:

 

. This guy basically confirms that.

 

Oops, actually Jeff Geerling says the exact opposite......but only about the Pi4.....and only if using it as a desktop substitute, with multiple simultaneous apps, and video. This is unlikely to be the case with most train applications. I'm guessing I'll be using older Pi's for actual train projects, so I'll probably be fine with minimal  small Lego cases with or without a fan. 

 

 

Some of the main active and passive heat reduction solutions tested and compared here by the explaining computers guy. Interestingly he measured a significant heat reduction in this video simply by updating the software. I don't know if this was just an awesome software update, or if it is likely to happen with other updates. At 12:20 he reviews a clever heatsink from Adafruit that also functions as a case. 

 

 

Of course, for the Rolls Royce of Pi Cooling there's this "Totally unnecessary but pretty awesome", single Pi water cooling setup.

Edited June 8, 2021 by gavino200

[cteno4]

I’m sure there are some that require fans now, they have been growing in power and speed in the last couple of years. Last ones we used were 2-3 years back. Mainly they do looping videos and some simple interactivity so pretty low power activity. They guys using them did it empirically just attaching a heat sink to the processor and it stayed cool. We never bothered with stinkin boxes as just heat traps.

 

one exhibit that’s been going 12 years now has passively cooled Mac minis in small cabinets along with a hd video digital playback unit. I put vents i the top and bases for conductive cooling in the cabinet and a good quality 5” computer fan in each cabinet just to be safe, but never bothered to check to see if needed. Damn if the fans started making noise after a couple of years and replaced them. Then again 3 years later and then I put a temp recorder in the cabinet and checked a few days without a fan and damn if it wasn’t within a few degrees of the ones with the fan. Jettisoned the fans! Really the only thing that’s gone wrong with the systems in 12 years except one touch screen going after 10 years, but to its credit it was an Apple 24” that had a touch screen added to it and those screens were not designed for touchscreens.

 

jeff

[KaiDon]

My first automated layout with Arduino using IR sensor block detection.

The second version , replaced all IR with current sensor.

Sucessfully,running 5 trains on the same layout.

 

https://youtu.be/t0pDCdazFrs

 

Edited June 12, 2021 by KaiDon

[Madsing]

Really interesting. I like to see the trains moving around automatically.

Can you tell us a bit more about this project? Is it DCC?

[gavino200]

That's awesome! That's exactly what I'm hoping to achieve!!! How does it all work. Spare no details!!!!!

[KaiDon]

First , I must say that this layout has some limitation , it’s one way layout. If you need the trains running in two directions , you need two separated loops. FF and RV. Also, it can not detect train ID.

 

The layout is DC layout , Following list are main components for the project.

1. the main controller is Arduino UNO.

*due to I/O point limit on Arduino , you can have maximum 16 block per board.

2. Track occupancy using Current sensor module. (Not,recommended IR sensor)

3. Bi-direction Motor control module for Turn-out control

4. IR sensor for detecting train head position at station.

5. Power IC (UN2003) for track power control using PWM.

6. Power supply for all all train and controller.

 

The program are separated into two parts

1. Train detection and track power control program

    Basically, if the train is on an N track , the N-1 track power must be at lowest level that stop the train but still has enough current to detect the train.

    This can be achieved by using two voltage levels, for normal speed and parking. You can program voltage level by using PWM setting in arduino. So base on your layout,you can program speed of train in any track for example when climbing up hill that want more power or slow down when passing station.

2. Station control program

    This is actually the way you want the station to response to incoming train (from the nearest connected block)

in my case, I programmed the train to park at 1st platform for 20 second and let another train pass the station at 2nd platform track. 
     I plan to make 2 - 3 different train parking pattern in my next layout.

 

Sorry, for my broken English, hope you can get some idea.

I will post all hardware I used in my test layout tomorrow.

 

***********************************************

13 Jun 2021

 

I put all electronic stuffs here so, It's not borthering original post. 

 

 

 

Edited June 13, 2021 by KaiDon

[gavino200]

I'm making some progress with the Ras Pi. It's running with Raspberry Pi OS. I attached the "Ice Tower" fan and heat sink. I removed the fan for a while as I was curious and was surprised that the heat sink warms up a bit. So I put the fan back on. I'm sure it's unnecessary but the LEDs look nice. 

 

SSH is activated and I'm controlling it through VNC. Currently it's on my home wifi. It took me a while to work out how to install iTrain, but I was able to do it with the help of an old post on the iTrain forum. Laughably, I'm stuck at an embarrassingly basic step now. I can't launch the installed iTrain. Apparently, I need to run a command called a "bash script" to launch it, but I can't find out what it is. I have posts up on both the iTrain and RasPi (beginners) forum. And I'll continue searching. 

 

Right now I'm going to take a break and open up a parcel that came from Japan today. 

 

 

 

 

 The RasPi - "Pi One". 

 

 

 

 

 

So tiny in comparison to my giant home-built desktop.

 

 

 

 

iTrain installed but lying dormant inside the Pi somewhere.

 

Edited June 13, 2021 by gavino200

[chadbag]

16 minutes ago, gavino200 said:

 

 

 

 

iTrain installed but lying dormant inside the Pi somewhere.

 

 

 

 

Is there a /opt directory?

 

% ls -al /

 

 

[gavino200]

3 minutes ago, chadbag said:

 

 

Is there a /opt directory?

 

% ls -al /

 

 

 

I tried cut/pasting what you just wrote.

 

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ % ls -al /
bash: fg: %: no such job
 

[chadbag]

Just now, gavino200 said:

 

I tried cut/pasting what you just wrote.

 

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ % ls -al /
bash: fg: %: no such job
 

 

 

Don't put the % in.  That is just a placeholder for the prompt.  Some older shells used % as the shell prompt (yours has your path and a $ as the prompt)

 

So what you type is

 

ls -al /

 

But you know it is a  a shell command due to the %

 

[gavino200]

Now lots of stuff.

 

drwxr-xr-x  18 root root  4096 May  7 11:23 .
drwxr-xr-x  18 root root  4096 May  7 11:23 ..
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root     7 May  7 10:39 bin -> usr/bin
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root  3584 Dec 31  1969 boot
drwxr-xr-x  17 root root  3760 Jun 12 19:28 dev
drwxr-xr-x 120 root root  4096 Jun 12 15:53 etc
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 May  7 10:42 home
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root     7 May  7 10:39 lib -> usr/lib
drwx------   2 root root 16384 May  7 11:21 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 May  7 10:39 media
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 May  7 10:39 mnt
drwxr-xr-x   6 root root  4096 May  7 10:56 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 207 root root     0 Dec 31  1969 proc
drwx------   4 root root  4096 May  7 11:23 root
drwxr-xr-x  29 root root   880 Jun 12 19:28 run
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root     8 May  7 10:39 sbin -> usr/sbin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 May  7 10:39 srv
dr-xr-xr-x  12 root root     0 Dec 31  1969 sys
drwxrwxrwt  19 root root  4096 Jun 12 20:47 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  11 root root  4096 May  7 10:48 usr
drwxr-xr-x  11 root root  4096 May  7 11:23 var
 

[chadbag]

Ok  One of the lines shows  "opt"

 

"opt" is what some versions of Linux and Unix use as a place for all externally added packages (software added by the user and not included with the system)

 

Try

 

% ls -al /opt

 

 

[gavino200]

 

This is the "full" install of the OP. It has a lot of bloatware. Once I know what I'm doing I'll probably re-do it with the lite version. 

 

 

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ls -al /opt
total 24
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root 4096 May  7 10:56 .
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4096 May  7 11:23 ..
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root 4096 May  7 10:56 minecraft-pi
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 May  7 10:49 pigpio
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root 4096 May  7 10:43 vc
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 4096 May  7 10:54 Wolfram
 

[chadbag]

None of those look like candidates, right?

 

Try

 

% find / -name *train* -print

 

I think that will work.  It should give all sorts of stuff back, mostly errors about permissions, but hopefully it gives us a clue.  This is the brute force search of the whole machine.  It will take a while

 

[gavino200]

A massive amount of stuff.

 

[chadbag]

 

Here is a better version

 

find / -name *[Tt]rain* -print 2>/dev/null

 

[gavino200]

/home/pi/iTrain
 

The file location. That seems positive. I still don't know how to open it. 🤔

[gavino200]

[chadbag]

1 minute ago, gavino200 said:

/home/pi/iTrain
 

The file location. That seems positive. I still don't know how to open it. 🤔

 

 

ls -al /home/pi/iTrain

 

 

BTW  thht other command you used to find it

 

"find" is the command

 

/  is where you start.  /   is the über root directory of the machine

 

-name  matches.  We wanted to match against anything that had the word "Train" or "train" in it

 

-print means to output the results to the screen

 

2>/dev/null     There are multiple "filehandles" for the shell and 2 is "STDERR" which means the normal place to output errors, which defaults to the shell.  You redirected it to the "null" device which basically spits it into an empty nothingness

 

[chadbag]

1 minute ago, gavino200 said:

 

 

so

 

% cd /home/pi/iTrain

 

% ./itrain.sh &

 

 

see what that does

 

[gavino200]

4 minutes ago, chadbag said:

 

 

so

 

% cd /home/pi/iTrain

 

% ./itrain.sh &

 

 

see what that does

 

 

Awesome!! That launched it!!!

 

 

 

Edited June 13, 2021 by gavino200

[chadbag]

Just now, gavino200 said:

 

Awesome!! That launched it!!!

 

 

 

 

You might just be able to double click it or something in the GUI.  Don't know how the linux GUI things work with shell scripts.