Nice, warm and sunshiny weather this saturday. So first day of this year to proceed working in the garden. So I did a little planting and extended the rails by another 5 feet. After I finished, I made a little trainride. Yeah – I know – running the Christmas Train in spring time sounds a little weired, but why not?

I’d like to share a summery of my little photo session from today with you….

My new platform edges arrived! I ordered 6 pieces, 60cm (24 inch) each. Plan is to place three on each side of the platform and fill the middle with concrete. Maybe I also involve some power plugs into the concrete in order to plug some lights onto the platform later on.

First day of spring in rhine-main-region, germany today. After a short testing period, I installed the rail joint controller at its final postion. The power supply is simply taken from the rails. The other two cables are connected to the joints – one for each joint. The case is completely water proof. The cables are hidden by some gravel. I fixed the case beside the rails, fixed to the stone below by using some silicone.

So no long cables have to be laid to a central control point somewhere in the garden. Digging in the garden is now able to be done without any risk of damaging one the of the cables.

Yesterday I investigated again some time in order to get the WIFI relays running again. The problem was, that due to the explosion of the bridge rectifier, the voltage regulator got damaged as well. So the board got a voltage of 15VDC instead of 5VDC. This is solved now and running as expected.

One step forward again

That might be an excelent alternative for an ESP8266….

Just found this interresting ESP8266 project in the web….

First connection between one of the new WIFI relay boards and the power supply board. Well – it didn’t take long until the bridge rectifier ends up its life in a little smole cloud. OK – there is no problem – only improvements! I replaced it by a new one with higher load.

The change of the seetings turned out to be a little difficult. I didnt get it working with my smartphone. So I had to take my laptopn instead. I swicthed the WIFI board from being an accesspoint to a server in order to get it integrated into my local area network. That worked fine.

In the meanwhile I build the DelTang transmitter in combination with the channel multiplexer as given from DelTang for switching the joints and tested it. The result is not really good. The relais rattled while pressing the key on the transmitter. That was not, what I was looking for.

So I started searching the internet again for other solutions and found a WIFI controlled relay boards. If you are interrested for further information, please search for “Aptinex IOT 4 channel relay module”. I found it on eBay for less than 20 Euros including shipping. Each board contains a micro WIFI webserver, but it is also possible to send get/post command to the board. It is possible to control two joints with one board (J1 left, J1 right, J2 left, J2 right). It is also possible to change the IP address. So it is possible to use several of them.

Last night we had some snow falling. It turned the railway into a very nice scene…..

It feels a little weired to run a train ourdoors without any power supply – but – it’s working fine. The locomotive just get its power by some batteries in the waggon behind. As usual it is getting controlled by the “BlueRailTrains” app on my smartphone.

Great stuff!