Let's learn together - Loconet Control Panel! (DCC model railway with Arduino 8)

Let's learn together how to control a DCC model railway with Arduino.
In this eighth episode, , how to build a digital panel to control turnouts, connected to the Loconet bus.
SOURCE CODE
- Github repository: github.com/luc...
STL FILE TO 3D PRINT THE PANEL
- Blog post: www.lucadentell...
SOFTWARE
- JMRI: www.jmri.org/
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Music: Brighter Days by Markvard is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
creativecommon....
Support by RFM - NCM: bit.ly/2xGHypM
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[@roydom5]

Luca, you are a great source of information- this is just what I am looking for! Thank you 🙏

[@lucadentella]

thanks for your comment, I'm glad that my tutorials are useful!

[@friedrich-karlholting2774]

Great, that's what I was looking for ... really straight forward implementation .. tks

[@lucadentella]

Thanks for your comment, glad you liked the video!

[@wimbletrain]

Hi Luca, I just built one of your Loconet Interfaces (ordered the circuit board). All working great, just need to modify the sketch for my layout and multiple turnouts. Thanks very much for sharing this as it's exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for to add to my layout 👍👍John

[@lucadentella]

Thanks John, glad you found it useful!

[@g0935260205]

thx for series of very helpful video!

[@lucadentella]

thanks for your comment, glad you liked them

[@RichardFrenchRacing]

Luca, This is a great sketch and very easy to follow. I am implementing this on my layout. My only problem is that I have 9 turnouts. I'm using a Mega so the number of pins should not be an issue. My only issue is how to convert the sketch to include 9 turnouts (1-9). Do you have an example of 2 or 3 turnouts and LEDs where you've changed the sketch to use functions and just pass repetitive info to the function.

[@lucadentella]

Hi Richard, give a look to my "LNControlPanel" project, it can control up to 32 turnouts / LEDs via Loconet...

[@svm.a.6563]

gracias por el video, . gracias por el gran trabajo

[@lucadentella]

Thanks for you comment!

[@Oldwoddy]

Hello. Many thanks for this nice video. I would very much like to expand this loconet control panel so I can switch more turnouts, but I'm new to audrino programming, so I have not been able to make more than one turnout work. Can you please show me how to expand the program to more than one turnout. Thank you in advance

[@lucadentella]

Hi, you can use the project in tutorial 9: it's a fully programmable control panel board with 32 I/O channels. You may also give a look to its firmware to understand how it can control more than one turnout

[@Oldwoddy]

@@lucadentella Hello. Thank you very much for your answer. This is exactly what I'm missing. But I had hoped that it could work with an UNO or a MEGA, even if your project provides a lot of input-output. Now I just need a gerber file for a print. Many thanks for the help so far.

[@roydom5]

Just starting to learn Arduino to work with my DR5000 - this tut is excellent! How would you upload a sketch to address more than 1 turnout? Would you upload a sketch for each one at a time or do you have to upload a sketch detailing each turnout all at once? I would like to use your example for a small panel controlling 5 turnouts. What is the maximum number of turnouts controlled like this for 1 Arduino? Thanks

[@lucadentella]

Arduino can run only one sketch at a time, so you have to develop a sketch that will control 5 turnouts. The maximum number depends only on the number of Arduino pins you need to control a turnout. Let me explain: Arduino (Uno) board has 16 available I/O pins (not considering two pins for serial communication and two pins for the Loconet interface). In my example, you need 3 pins (button + 2 LEDs) for each turnout, so 5 turnouts max. But if you don't need LEDs you may control up to 16 turnouts or if you want only one LED per turnout you may control up to 8 turnouts. And yes, you may also consider an I/O expand module to increase the number of available pins (but this is a more advanced topic)

[@alandance9154]

will this work with a Mega

[@lucadentella]

Hi Alan, it should (the Loconet library is compatible with Arduino Mega)... I never tested it, if you do, let us know!

[@alandance9154]

@@lucadentella I had a problem compiling but I upgraded the library to the latest version and now compiles Ok. Will need to test with Loconet later in the week.