Quote Originally Posted by malc-c View Post
Thanks for the input

Yes I'm awear of the "digital revolution" that is now appearing in the model railway world, however its not a possibility here for several reasons.

1) - its a club layout, so we need to use "traditional" controllers so that members can run their own locos, and most don't use DMC

2) - we're modelling in N gauge, and most of the modules are too large to fit is the intended stock
So, you have member A, with his regular ol' analog controller (big transformer, big pot, reversing switch, etc) running his loco on the same length (electrically and physically) of track (only for arguments sake) as member B who has his own controller and his own loco...

And you want them to be able to control their 2 loco's independently...using those same controllers so the members don't have to go out and buy completely new stuff, but instead add new stuff to the output of their old stuff to make their old things do new things...

And be able to fit these controllers inside an N gauge loco...

Woof! Ya don't ask for much do ya

Or have I missed something...(I probably have). I've got a few ideas (as I'm sure others do), but each one of them would require some sort of PCB to be added to each loco so it could decode what it needs to do. A small PIC based decoder with a MOSFET using bidirectional PWM drive shouldn't take up that much space (maybe 1 or 2 sq.inches. at most). I've got a 3 channel driver board that'll handle a few amps on each channel, has a 16F628A onboard along with a few other things and it's almost small enough to fit inside an N gauge loco. Take off those 'other things', redesign the board and it should fit...but again, I've probably missed something...