Dtsteam
G Scale, Travel, Steam Boats, Mechanical Music
Half of my train set runs on DCC, usually an NCC handset & a bachmann booster. A few years ago I bought a SPROG box and connected it to the booster and a laptop. Since then I have been tinkering with different types of throttle. First off was the Shouty Throttle using simple voice commands, which does work, but you need some self control to stick to the 12 word vocabulary - chatty it aint ! Next was the Clicky Throttle, which is a local html page (.hta), but the laptop can be accessed remotely to use it. Both of these interfaces are still a bit nerdy though, and the 50 odd keys on the NCC handset scares the hell out of most visitors. More to the point, I now need to wear my glasses to see all the buttons on the NCC and then peer over the top to see the trains. So, the final incarnation was the simplest one - the Mk II Pointy Throttle :
Basically a Logitech wireless numeric keypad, which has a range of at least 15m. The Mk I was based on the PCB out of a wireless keyboard, but I struggled to solder onto the PCB tracks, so it was unreliable. The Mk II leaves the gubbins untouched, apart from re-labelling the keycaps. A simple input screen on the laptop captures the keystrokes and converts them to JMRI DCC commands - still
, but you don't see that bit. Although its limited to a choice of 5 vehicles and three speeds in each direction, the software can control some of the functions at the same time. The chips have a little inertia just to smooth out the three fixed speed steps. Fortunately we've switched to the Swiss set this year, which has one vehicle in each of the colours:
next year I could be stuffed - the next set is nearly all DR black :crying:
Finally, I had a quick rewrite of the clicky throttle so it looks like the keypad:
Basically a Logitech wireless numeric keypad, which has a range of at least 15m. The Mk I was based on the PCB out of a wireless keyboard, but I struggled to solder onto the PCB tracks, so it was unreliable. The Mk II leaves the gubbins untouched, apart from re-labelling the keycaps. A simple input screen on the laptop captures the keystrokes and converts them to JMRI DCC commands - still
, but you don't see that bit. Although its limited to a choice of 5 vehicles and three speeds in each direction, the software can control some of the functions at the same time. The chips have a little inertia just to smooth out the three fixed speed steps. Fortunately we've switched to the Swiss set this year, which has one vehicle in each of the colours:
next year I could be stuffed - the next set is nearly all DR black :crying:
Finally, I had a quick rewrite of the clicky throttle so it looks like the keypad:
