Rail Router: model train routing with a PC （2）

Published:2011/8/8 20:45:00 Author:Li xiao na From:SeekIC

By Ray King

... and a dual-purpose circuit board

As already suggested by the circuit diagram, the circuit board designed for the Rail Router system can act as a master or a slave, depending on how it is populated. The two different component stuffing plans are given in Figures 3 a (Master) and 3b (Slave). Carefully study the parts list and the component overlays to avoid hard finding problems. If necessary, refer back to the circuit diagram. All components on the two boards are regular-size devices and construction is therefore not expected to cause any difficulty if you take your time and pay attention to polarized components in particular (ICs. transistors, electrolytic caps). We recommend using a good quality socket for the PIC device(s) as it (they) will the most expensive part(s) in the circuit.



The PIC software

We can be very brief about the software run by the PIC micro(s) used in this project. Do-it-yourself programmers among you will be pleased to know that the complete annotated source code files supplied by Ray King are available free of charge from our website under ref. 030403-11. Simply download them, compile and then program your own 16F877 chip. Alternatively use the hex code directly. Those of you without the means or wherewithal to burn your own PIC chip may resort to our Readers Services who supply ready-programmed PIC chips for this project under order code 030403-41.

Rail Router for the PC



A screenshot of the Rail Router software running on a PC is shown in Figure 4. Any number of track layout designs may be stored on the PC and loaded when the Rail Router program is launched, or at any time during a session. The software written by Ray offers the facility to design and alter the railway layouts before saving them to disk. The baud rate to the master router is 9600 bits/s. The PC software was written in Visual Basic 6 (VB6). The source code (.VBP and components) as well as the executable version are included in the ’software package’ for the project, ref. 030403-11. Simply run the railrout.exe file and the program will be installed on your computer.

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