Subject:
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Trains with the Control Lab or RCX - Some questions!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Sun, 10 Sep 2000 19:47:58 GMT
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Viewed:
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1003 times
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Hi Folks,
I've posted once or twice on this topic before, but now I'm getting serious :)
So if any of you can answer any or all of these questions, I'd much appreciate
it!
I've got an RCX and the Lego Dacta Control Lab. For those who aren't familiar
with it, it's an 8-input, 8-output serial-port based controller.
I'm putting together a large (for me, anyway) layout for my company's new
office. (In Toronto, Ontario, in case anyone's close enough to lend a hand!)
It would ideally be controlled from one of our servers, so that we could run
trains from workstation to workstation, or at least to selected areas of the
office.
I'd like to control the trains via the Control Lab; the RCX is a second-best
choice for me.
Here are some quick facts:
The Control Lab comes with some anaemic Logo-language software. I've discarded
this, since it doesn't offer much in the way for Intranet programming :)
Some fine gentlemen by the names of Charles Hiddleston and Douglas Troy
produced an ActiveX control for the Control Lab a little while back. It works,
except for the event-calling routines. But I don't normally code in C++ or VB,
so I'm also attempting to write a Java version of the driver.
Here are my questions:
Does anyone know why the Control Lab "stalls" intermittently while running the
train? I suspect a current-limiter or something, but I'm no electronics
expert.
Does anyone have a viable workaround for the stalling problem? Perhaps
oscillating the power level, or using 2 outputs on uphill grades?
I'm having trouble decoding the 'blue' sensors from the control lab. Does
anyone have experience doing this?
In order to conserve space in my layout, I may be building one or more helical
(spiral) ramps for the trains, consisting of vertically superimposed circles of
track. Does anyone have a lot of experience with this?
In particular, I've selected 1 brick per segment as my climb rate. This is
higher than my more usual 2 plates per segment, but any shallower and the
clearance becomes quite low. Anyone use a different climb rate? What issues
have you encountered?
How did you assemble the support towers for the track? I'm using a pair of
towers (inside and outside edges of the track) at the track join every two
track segments. The towers attach to a 2x8 assembly underlying the track via a
pair of technic pins, so that the towers needn't tilt.
How much inside / outside clearance do you normally give on these corners? I
use standard Lego 6-wide cars, but there are often handles and such that stick
out. Cargos could be as much as 8-wide. My longest cars are from 4561
low-rider bases, and a few custom jobbies which are a touch longer. I've given
clearance of 1 extra stud on the outside, and 2 on the inside. I find the
outside clearance is just barely enough, and the inside clearance rubs the
cargo on the low riders.
Any other advice folks have about Control Labs and train helical ramps would be
greatly appreciated!
As for my Java Control Lab drivers - apart from my inability to decode blue
sensors right now, it works quite well. In particular, since it uses
javax.comm classes for serial ports, I see no reason why it wouldn't work under
Linux (!) and Solaris (!!!!)... or any other rs232 port on a supported system -
check java.sun.com for more details. (I'm developing under Windows 98).
Thanks,
Jeff
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