DCC in PBP

[boroko]

BTW,

Alain:
MERG is an excellent resource for such things. I'm building a MiniDCC as a base to start testing. (I will have to get back into Model Railroad, so it will have a use after testing). The problem is that it is so well done, no one had needed to write in PBP, they just use it.

Dave:
Thanks for the link to your site. Very nice info, I will mine it further. Maybe tune up my X-10 system.

bo

[mackrackit]

Dave:
Thanks for the link to your site. Very nice info, I will mine it further. Maybe tune up my X-10 system.

I was meaning your yard light system would be like X10. Modulating a signal over DC like the trains should be pretty easy. But that was only an example... right?

And the site I linked to is a different Dave.

[malc-c]

Not sure if this is any help

http://www.trainelectronics.com/miniDCC/index.htm

It has some code and the site is about DCC

[Acetronics2]

Hi, Boroko

I found this tutorial ...

In French, ... yes, FreeBasic, yes ... but everything needed explained .

http://www.train35.com/dcc1.html

And easy to port to pbP !

Alain

[boroko]

Thanks Alain for the suggestion. I will look and see what I can learn from there.

Current plan is to use DT-Ints to capture and measure the width of the incoming pulses to determine weather they are short (58uS :"1") or long (100uS: "0") or standard AC power (16.7mS) and generate a level of 1 or 0 if it is data. If Std. AC I can jump to a fall-back and pick one of a few basic modes by cycling the power. The data pulses, once decoded, could be simply fed into the USART.

[Meriachee]

Bo, have a look at JMRI. Currently "decoders" which is the standard moniker for DCC assemblies that go into engines are run by pics. The latest crop have some interesting features, including "programmable" PWM. You can move the frequency range around to quiet noisy motors. It looks, programs and acts like NVRam. Quite cool, actually.

Hope it helps
Gary

[boroko]

Thanks Gary,
From what I can tell, PICS have been used extensively in decoders. The specific issue that I'm trying to nail down is all of the code that I have seen is in assembly. I can muddle through assembly, but in this app, the timing is very tight, and I haven't mastered the skill to mimic the code in PBP. I have been refining the attack and will whittle away at it. I DON'T want to specifically duplicate the existing function, if so I could just burn the available .hex. I'm trying to accomplish comm over 2 wire in a similar way that is done in DCC. That's why I need to have control of the code.
I appreciate all of the feedback that everyone has offered. It looks like I'll just have to upgrade my skill set a bit.
Thanks
Bo