Hogwarts Express Command Upgrade

finding good sound clips is the hard part!!  I made the ones I used, watched the movies several times so had good ideas of the sounds I wanted.  The problem was, some sounds had the movie music in the background.  I really didn't want any music in the background to be playing in my sound clips.  That made some clips un useable to me.  I also realized that some scenes were much longer than I thought they were (my where is platform 9 3/4 is cut way down from the movie length) which means you need to chop and put pieces together and still have some flow.  It probably took me longer to cut the sounds for my Hogwarts projects then it did to plan and build the cars.  All part of the fun though.  I've been trying to convince my brother to do the hot chocolate song from PE in his PE set....he has not yet been sold.  Next up on audio for me will be some Mickey mouse hopefully to be completed in 2015 when my budget starts over.

You posted the sound clips in three different audio formats.  How exactly did you use them?

 

John, you did a great job.  Thanks for posting.  I have the set and was kicking it around.  I love stories like this.

Thanks Marty, I always liked the look of the locomotive, so I figured it deserved an upgrade.

 

I actually put a "two-speed" switch on the smoke so I could tone it down some for extended running.  It gets a bit out of hand in a smaller room with full smoke.  Since I drive it from the R4LC smoke output, I just string a few diodes in series with the smoke output and have a switch that shorts them for full output.

John,

I'd like to talk to you about how many different controls we can have. E.g, can we control 3 audio clips or 10?  Are there limits on the duration of clips?  I toyed with the idea of using a cheap microprocessor and MP3 circuit but not sure how to control with TMCC.

 

It might be fun to try to find some PE clips.  I'm putting that on my list for any free time I have over the holidays. I like the idea of doing the Hot Chocolate song.

 

I saw that pile of incoming work you had, so maybe we can chat about this after the holidays unless I bump into you again at Henning's.

Ron L

The number of clips is a factor, in the future I want to have a decoder for the serial data so you could potentially trigger many unique events.  Right now, I'd be happy with a few.

 

If you used the R2LC (or similar), you have two couplers, smoke. and lights that you could use to trigger an event.  Since the motor speed is a simple PWM stream, you could decode that for some interesting effects as well.  Just have to use your imagination.

 

       
       


I sent them to George at ITT products. He put each one on its own sound module that I fire with the mini commander acc.

OK, so he did the translation, that makes sense.  I converted them all to MP3, that's what my sound card uses.

 

would you be willing to post a price list for us to look of the different things that can be done?

Nice job john

Thanks Marty.

 

bigdodgetrain, if you're interested in the mods, drop me an email.

 

John: you are incredible! Thank you for showing how the ERR cruise lite board can convert the conventional Hogwarts Express to command control. I will try this upgrade over the holiday break without smoke (due to allergies, I can never use smoke on my trains). 

I used the little tethers from Minitronics to go between the tender and the locomotive.  If you're happy with simply motor control, you might get away with one, I needed light control and of course the smoke, so I needed two.  I use seven of the eight wires for my installation, so I have a spare wire if I think of anything else.

 

It's a bummer you can't use smoke, I could fix you up with a dynamite package for smoke.

 

 

Thinking about it, I don't have a Hogwart's but my daughter, who is a HP nut, has one.  I might think about upgrading hers.  Are those audio clips available someplace?

Thanks for the enlightening info.

Ron L

John,

Brilliant upgrade and amazing smoke.

Did you have to modify MTH smoke elements to work with the cruise lite smoke output connection?

I separate the elements so there's only one 16 ohm element.  Then I add a "2-stage" switch that inserts a few diodes in series for lower smoke when desired.  With the low setting, you get decent smoke, but not what you see on the video.  That's with the smoke switch at the high setting.

Hey GRJ - I know you talked about adding a backup light. I just finished adding mine this morning. I'm quite happy with how it looks. I'll be curious to see if you do something different or mount differently.

That's pretty close to what I have in mind.  Nothing that fancy, just want a light.  I'm looking to see if I could add some markers as well, I like lights all around the locomotive.

 

A little off subject but I opened up a coach for lighting and saw that there is a hard inner window plastic that is covered by a semi transparent film on the car itself.  So I cut away the hard white plastic on the roof that covers the windows, and put some people in crudely as you can just barely see in the windows.   Now you could put clear plastic in and do a fully detailed interior which would be very neat but this just adds a little detail.   

As original on the left, modified on the right.  I was planning on painting the roofs black as it appears they are in the movie also.  

 

Very neat, I haven't started hacking the cars yet, but that gives some ideas.