Has anyone bought this e-book? I am wondering if it is worth the money. I have been learning arduino and was curious what this book as to offer?
http://www.modeltraincontrols.com/
Chris
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Is this available in paper? Anywhere?
Truthfully, I think it's a way to separate you from $40 quickly, but maybe that's just my opinion. If you are working with the Arduino, there are a host of places to get free ideas/software/help/etc. I sure wouldn't pay for someone to tell me how neat automation is for model railroads.
Chuck, it is only available in ebook format from what I can tell.
John I do agree that there are a ton of resources for the arduino. I am just curious what is actually in the book.
Chris
For only $40 you can find out. 
I figured it would have samples of the coding so as to make it easier to do projects for model RR and modify rather than starting coding from scratch.
$40 to open, eh? 
I'd be curious to have a look at the table of contents. If there was working code for several dozen projects, it might be worth the money to someone that can not write their own code. Especially the way folks throw money around on things like socketed relays and specialized signaling options.
On the other hand, learning how to use Arduino is pretty simple, and there are examples of working code for free everywhere. If there is something you can't figure out the tech forum are also very helpful, but honestly 90% of the things someone might want to do for trains are really simplistic.
I wouldn't completely knock the idea of this book, however, After all everyone here is nuts for a book that sounds like everything in it can be learned for free by looking online, or in the instruction manuals that come with the products that book addresses. Sometimes a handy reference in a single book might be useful for some people at any cost.
JGL
It could be useful for a certain type of person. I have personally found that I do most of my learning on a topic by actually jumping in and actually doing the project. As the project proceeds, I learn what I need to do the job.
If there were a "single book" that had all the great ideas in it, I'd be lining up to buy it.
John and JGL,
I agree with you both. I have learned arduino on my own and t has also taught me some electronics along the way. I am still learning the electronics, so I figured this would be somewhat of a good resource in that aspect.
Chris
It might be a decent resource, it just seems expensive for what I think you'd get.
crood58 posted:John and JGL,
I agree with you both. I have learned arduino on my own and t has also taught me some electronics along the way. I am still learning the electronics, so I figured this would be somewhat of a good resource in that aspect.
Chris
I'm lazy...so...
I'm wanting to buy it just to see...
Better your money than mine. 
OK, I'll bite. What is Arduino?
Dennis
If you go to the arduino website they have a forum that seems pretty helpful. Lots of free information for the novice or pro.
Looks interesting.
Sean
Dennis posted:OK, I'll bite. What is Arduino?
Dennis
Dennis, what rock have you been hiding under?
Well now that I have been insulted by an electronics wizard, I still don't know what it is after reading the Website you linked me to. I am not a programmer either.
Dennis
Sean007 posted:If you go to the arduino website they have a forum that seems pretty helpful. Lots of free information for the novice or pro.
Looks interesting.
Sean
Yes, I have found a lot of useful information on the arduino forum.
Dennis posted:Well now that I have been insulted by an electronics wizard, I still don't know what it is after reading the Website you linked me to. I am not a programmer either.
Dennis
Dennis, Arduino is a microprocessor that can be used with electronics to interact with the physical enviroment. People use them for sensors and a lot of other different things. A lot of model RR people use them to create custom accessories, sensors, or even to send commands to the Lionel Legacy base. Unfortunately the main thing to use these is the code.
cjack posted:I'm wanting to buy it just to see...
I hear you there.
Chris
I was going to answer but I thought the website would. It's an Italian (original source) micro computer on a small PCB that you can program to do almost any function you want. The simplest is to program it to operate two LEDs wig wag for a crossing. The programming is done with an app on your computer with the PCB board plugged into the computers USB port, and the language used is generally a programming language called c+ for one. It's kind of like a recipe...do this, then do that...if this happens...do the other thing, etc. There are also apps that will facilitate programming using block functions. Like say for example click on a block that will turn on an LED and automatically it will write the code necessary to turn on an LED.
The book mentioned above is probably at the novice level and might be good, but if you browse the bookstore, you might get some better choices.
Dennis posted:Well now that I have been insulted by an electronics wizard, I still don't know what it is after reading the Website you linked me to. I am not a programmer either.
Dennis
If you hang around here long enough, you get a handle on when a poster is smiling or not. That post you referred to had to have a smile, but it's so hard to show that with text. That's why emoticons were invented, but even then, they barely help some times without a friendly arm around your shoulders.
Dennis, as others mentioned, Arduino is a small, easy to use, micro-controller.
There are other similar devices as well, but the Arduino is currently the most well known, and in my experience, the easiest to work with.
One thing that wasn't mentioned is that the entire Arduino project is open source. This means that the board schematics and boot code are free for anyone to use and modify. This has led to insanely inexpensive boards (as little as $1.50) that have the power to do any number of tasks.
For model trains what this means is you can program the board with some fairly simple code to take input, and give output based on whatever conditions you set.
As an example you could program it to say "if an insulated rail is triggered, then turn on a red led"
The standard Arduino is best suited for fairly small programs and simple tasks, Because it is designed to do different things it is hard to compare it to other devices, but it is somewhere along the lines of an IBM 286 in power level. Not bad for a couple bucks.
If you need a lot more computing power there is also the Raspberry Pi micro-controller. this is a fully function PC computer that is half the size of a Cab1 remote.
Here is a simple task accomplished with Arduino: Flash a pair of LEDs and have them fade on and off. total parts: one Arduino, 2 resistors, 2 LEDs. The code was about 10 lines.
And here was a much, much more complex task, Reading TMCC data and translating it into a form LionChief engines could use:
The bridge program is the most complex thing I've done with Arduino, and it takes up about half of the memory, and uses about half of the Input/Output pins on a standard Arduino.
If you really want to learn the basics of Arduino I can not recommend enough that you watch the tutorial by Jeremy Blum on youTube. Part one of the 15 part series can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCxzA9_kg6s
There are several folks here on the forum that can help with Arduino projects, and I'm happy to write code for simple things when I have the time. The Arduino forums are also very useful for questions from beginning through super advanced and are regularly visited by the developers of the Arduino project.
JGL
Dennis posted:Well now that I have been insulted by an electronics wizard, I still don't know what it is after reading the Website you linked me to. I am not a programmer either.
Gee Dennis, it was a joke! 
The hype for the book is quite good, but I think $40 for an e-book is a bit much. Especially when you can get print copies of other books that are probably just as good (possibly better) for nearly half that price. There's also the possibility that it's an ebook only, because no publishers were interested in printing it?
