My New Super Chuffer Board Demo

Wow, I think I really want one of these now.

BTW, one of my co-workers does PBC design on the side, and has a pick and place machine.  Not sure if he'd stuff boards for you or not, but I can ask if you'd like.

Wow great job John. I think maybe a new OGR FORUM SPONSOR in the works?

Can't hurt to ask.  Of course, to justify loading up the machine, I suspect it'll have to be a pretty large quantity.

I have to make enough money to be able to afford that.  Right now I'm well in the hole on this project.

GRJ:

can these boards be used stand alone on williams steamers with a lionel fan driven smoke unit

specifically the one that you made the Mars light for

John, Count me in for 3 maybe 5.  Bob

A small delay is forthcoming.

In downsizing the components for the production, several parts don't make the cut, specifically my driver transistors and I need a better voltage regulator.  Looks like a second spin of the boards will have to be done.  It didn't help that the library connections for the transistors were wrong, so the pins were in the wrong place.  I have it working, but the regulator gets really hot, and the transistors don't have the "oomph" to do the job.  Since the board had some free real-estate, I may be able to stick to the 1.0 x 1.1 size.

Been there

Thanks for doing this. It's gonna be great.

I'll get there.  I figured it might take a couple of spins to sort out the components.  It's easy when you're pulling them out with size and surface mounting not being an issue!

I'm shocked that the astute among the OGR readership didn't pick up on one error in my video demo!  I was looking at the test subject slowly running and it dawned on me that the chuffs and smoke were perfectly synchronized, just not together!  I inverted the sense of the chuff output and all is well.

John,

I've seen some videos both here on the forum and YouTube where the video and audio were out of sync - just figured that was the case with your video.  The big thing is that you caught it; apparently fixed the issue; so now we wanna see another video!

Best,

Dave

I'm busy trying to get a quote to build some of these now.  I think my engineering is pretty much done.  That was a simple thing, but I totally didn't see it before!  I guess I was so pleased that it all worked when I put it in, that I didn't look that close.

Parts and boards are all ordered, so it's out of my hands.  Version 2 added dynamic braking to the motor to "sharpen" the appearance of the chuffs.  It also added variable length chuffs, based on the speed of the locomotive.  When the chuffs are coming faster, the ran running interval will be smaller.

When I get the boards, I'll have to drop one into that Camelback and do another video.

So how long before you get the boards?

Can't wait to see the finished product.     Steve

It takes the board house a couple of weeks to turn the boards, and then I have to kit up all the parts and boards and send them to the assembly guy, that's another couple of weeks.  In the middle of that I'll hand build one, just to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks and put it through it's paces.  I'm also building a little testset to verify them on the bench.

You do know that microprocessor control of smoke units is patented?

That seems a bit broad...

Link to the pat. #?

Since Lionel, MTH, TAS, and a host of HO folks use it, who holds the patent?

He might be referring to these two patents which include synchronizing sound, smoke, and wheel rotation on model trains using microprocessors.

http://www.google.com/patents/US6655640

http://www.google.com/patents/US6457681

I think these two patents were used as a reference when MTH filed a patent violation lawsuit back in 2009 against Broadway Limited in regards to their Paragon2 system which supposedly was claimed to use a mechanical method to syncronize the smoke with wheel movement and chuffing sounds but actually used an electronic method.   Having said that, BLI won that particular lawsuit in a summary judgement a couple years later.

It looks like most locomotives that smoke would be violating that patent.

One would be inclined to think so, yes.    But I seem to recall that BLI was able to punch some holes in MTH's claims, something to the effect of MTH not being able to specifically prove that the patents in their entirety were violated or something similar to that.

HOw could mth patent a smoke puffer when lionel did it back in the 40s and flyer in the 50s. 

If you read the patents, it's about controlling smoke output electronically, not mechanically as was the case with the Lionel/American Flyer trains back in the postwar days.

It seems to me that Lionel controls the smoke output electronically.

What a great project John.  The smoke and sounds are just what these locomotives need.  I can't wait until you have the boards in production. 

Steve, Lady and Tex

John just looked at all the blue prints shown for each paten from 2000-2014 on smoke and chuff.

none of the ones I have seen come close to what you are doing.

I was wondering when somebody was going to play the "Woof" card. 

We'd all be better off if someone threw that one out of the deck!

In the Broadway case the District Court granted judgment of non-infringement to BLI, for  the two following reasons (quoted from the court's opinion where MTH challenged the judgment):

Plaintiff first addresses the Court's judgment with regard to claims 6–13 of the ′640 patent, which describe a model train that “outputs a volume of smoke based on the model train's speed,” among other things. The Court previously found that the accused trains did not infringe these claims because they vary the volume of smoke they emit according to their motor load rather than their speed over the track.

Plaintiff next addresses the Court's judgment with regard to Claims 1, 2, and 14 of the ′640 Patent and claims 4 and 5 of the ′681 Patent, which describe a model train that, among other things, accepts speed commands from the user. The parties have construed speed command to mean “a user input corresponding to an actual desired speed of the train over the track (in scale miles per hour or other units of speed).” The Court previously found that the accused trains do not infringe these claims because they do not allow a user to input commands that correspond to a specific train speed.

Well, I don't actually vary the volume of smoke, just how often I spit it out.   And of course, TMCC doesn't actually have "scale MPH" capability like MTH.

I think that is the way to go with the smoke, just puff it in time with the chuffs.

Gunner, this is why I go to you for my electrical/electronic questions/problems! I don't have any steam, but it sounds like a fantastic upgrade to systems already available.

I'm thinking of doing a small board like the one that I hand-wired for diesel power, it gives you cab lights, Rule 17 lighting, MARS light, and can also turn off the smoke when you stop.  Adding a processor, I can expand it's features a great deal over the hard-wired one I built.

Stay tuned Paul, I may have something for you yet.

The development is done, at least the hardware work.  The bench test of the new Rev. 2 boards was outstanding.  All the power issues were solved by changing to a switching supply, and the bench test is awesome!

The boards go out for assembly this week, and there will be an announcement for where you can buy these.

John...great news and the board looks really nice!  I bet I already know where I can buy them!!....

Alan

You are making a very educated guess.  They'll probably be back in a couple of weeks and then I suspect the announcement will be made.

John;

Nice work, very impressive.

this should be the solution for all those TMCC engines that came out before Lionel got with the puffing smoke program.

Definitely count me in for 4 of them.

Have you got a price established yet? (I guess that is the next logical question! )

Rod

Thanks guys, that info will be forthcoming.

Here's my latest board on the test bench driving an MTH smoke unit.  I start at idle stopped, slowly increase to over 10 chuffs/second, then come back down to 1 chuff/second, and finally back to idle.  You can see that even over 10 chuffs/sec you can still see the pulsating smoke stream.  That's the benefit of the dynamic braking over the first version.  This is the Rev. 2 hardware and software that will be the "final", at least until I get working on some software enhancements.

I didn't demo the lighting, it's the same as the previous version.

Looks good John. You must be chuffed.

(cue the groans) 

Pete

Very Nice!