Model Railroading: Animating multiple lights in multiple buildings using an Arduino Nano

[@Musecrafter]

This is perfect!!! Just what I was looking for. Thank you!

[@TheSwitchList]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching

[@melkitson]

I have just finished a trial run of this for my N Gauge railway and I am completely blown away with the results. This is EXACTLY what I have been looking for. The instructions are easy to follow and it is so easy to make appropriate changes if you have more buildings or a different lighting set up. Thank you so much.

[@TheSwitchList]

Melville - I am so glad it worked for you and you are happy with the results! Thanks for letting me know how it went and I would love to see the results if you have the ability to take video and send me! All the best, Rick

[@poruatokin]

If you used TLC594 shift registers, you could use one arduino to control literally hundreds of independent lights. 32 outputs per shift register and they can be daisy chained together. You can even introduce random flickers to simulate oil lamps or candles. you can even add photo resistors to bring the lights on automatically as the room gets darker. I did this is a very large model of the Black Pearl to simulate oil lanterns.

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks for watching and commenting Paul

[@seanpacificrailroad3700]

Thank you rick your video’s help me out so much

[@TheSwitchList]

Glad to hear you are finding my content helpful and useful Sean! Thanks for watching and commenting

[@FrogandFlangeVideo]

Very cool stuff here. Thanks for sharing it James/Frog And Flange Video.

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks James - really appreciate you stopping by to watch and comment. I am going to go check your channel too.

[@FrogandFlangeVideo]

@@TheSwitchList That would be terrific, thank you. My particular passion is aerial railway videography. I hope that you enjoy it. cheers. James.

[@pdrrengineer1404]

A very interesting project Rick. The Nano is a wonderfully affordable platform for animation on our layouts. Also, I want to applaud the organization of the code in your sketch. Thanks for sharing your efforts with the community. Art...

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks a lot Art! I have to figure out how to make the code bigger and more readable in my videos. I know it can be done from watching some other videos, but maybe not with my combination of OBS to capture and Shotcut to edit?? Really appreciate the view and the comment.

[@HumancityJunction]

Nice use of video chapters!! I got some DCC decoders for my lighting, but I am starting to think it would be much easier to go the arduino route.

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks Heath. We can create a whole Arduino lighting protocol so you have the addressable control like you do with DCC decoders (and 10,000 man hours later it will finally work!). Thanks for watching.

[@EmPtySworld1]

Amazing job Rick.. Keep it up and thanks for sharing

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks so much for watching and leaving a comment. Glad you found it enjoyable.

[@ModelTrainOutsider]

Wow, Rick... that is fantastic stuff! Very cool and well played! Thanks for the lesson and demo!

[@TheSwitchList]

Hey thank you so much Anthony for the nice feedback - really appreciate you watching and commenting. Glad you liked it!

[@PaulAFulcher]

Very informative video Rick many thanks .

[@TheSwitchList]

Hi Paul - glad you found it interesting. Thanks for watching and commenting.

[@DruSteel69]

You’re da man, Rick. Excellent job. Probably won’t work with battery operated stringed lights from dollar tree, right? That’s what I have as my interior lights. Ha ha. Thanks for sharing. Maybe you can make the lights dance with music for Christmas. 😀😎👍🏼. Take care , brother.

[@TheSwitchList]

if they are LED lights and run on 5 volts we can probably make it work! 😁 I will get to work on making the lights dance to music... Thanks for watching Drew!

[@DruSteel69]

The Switch List - Ahh. Not LEDs. Oh well. Thanks. Ya, would be cool to synched with the music by TSO. 😀😎👍🏼

[@LaytonJunction]

real nice video very interesting have a good week all the best from the Uk cheers for now al 🙋‍♂️😁👍👍👍

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks Al - really appreciate the view and the comment. Take care.

[@StanFerris]

Awesome tutorial Rick!

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks so much - really appreciate the support.

[@sonysnapper]

I'm doing the same thing however I only use 3 wires and one nano pin to control up to 40 lights. If you use neopixel lights the center wire is the control and the first pixel is #0 the last is #39. Each is controlled individually via the number. If you power them via a separate 5V supply you can control over 100. It is a little harder to figure out the light sequencing. I plan on doing all the buildings on our club layout this way. A demo is here kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWnMdIKXZdifjtE

[@TheSwitchList]

Very cool stuff Edward - thank for the info and for watching.

[@SFRATON]

Very good video Rick. ; kevin

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks so much Kevin. Hope all is well with you there in NZ. Take care.

[@scottbaldridge1092]

this is exaclty what I am looking for to add to my N scale layout. I am relatively new to arduino but with the help of this video I am pretty certain I can make this work. Where can I find a drawing / sketch / Picture of the breadboard circuit wiring?

[@TheSwitchList]

Hi Scott. I do not have any kind of diagram of the wiring. It is pretty straightforward in that the LEDs are each attached to the digital output pins of the Arduino board through an appropriate value resistor (I think I used 470 Ohm resistors to get ~10mA of current through the LED). Other than that there is no wiring - you can see my Nano plugged into a small breadboard with the wires running off to the resister & LEDs at about 19:00 in the video. Good luck and if you want the Arduino sketch I created just send me an email (email address listed in the About section of the channel) and I will send it to you. Rick

[@CM-ARM]

Thats cool 😎.

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks Chris!

[@hdtraincam]

neat..

[@TheSwitchList]

Thanks for watching

[@keithenglish3776]

I decide to get back into model railwaying after retiring (now 68) after some 40 years. I am quite interested in automation so I looked for sites to help me. Yours looked just what I wanted. Everything you said sounded very interesting and what I wanted to do, regrettably I gave up half way through as I lost interest because I could not follow you on screen. The video was so poor I could not read the text. What a shame, I tried watching it on all three of my computers with screens from 1080 up to 5K and they were all the same. I don't want to be negative but it was such a let down. I assume you have done more videos which I will attempt to look at and hope the quality improves.

[@TheSwitchList]

Hi Keith. My apologies for the poor video quality. It looked fine on my computer when I filmed it but it did not come out good when uploaded to KZbin. I had not yet learned how to do things like zoom in on the code so it would be more readable, and doing it over just was not going to happen. If you are interested in the source code then follow the instructions in the video description. I try to comment everything in the code to Make it understandable so that may help. Thank you for watching and for the feedback. And welcome back to the wonderful world of model railroading! Rick