Hobby Update

In the vein of that most famous of lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m not quite dead yet”. No I’m not dead, I’ve just been brow-beaten at work and trying my hand at various projects all at the same time. This time of the year, here in the northern hemisphere, there just doesn’t seem like there is enough daylight to get stuff done. Throw in some seasonal and work depression and there you go.

I’ve been trying to focus on finishing one project at a time, it’s really hard for me as I usually have 2 or 3 in various stages at most times. To keep something going on days that I can’t get to the bench or waiting on paint to dry and cure, I’ve thrown myself into playing with electronics and the ardunio micro-controller the wife got me for recently past the Winter Festival! Mostly I remember that coding is 75% de-bugging.

I’ve been running through the kit’s basic sketches, and learning bits by bits. I have two projects that I really want to jump into from the model railroad – remote turnout control and automating a turntable. I think my real issue is watching too many YouTube videos and getting too “cute” with the coding and components. As an example, there is one guy doing a really nice series of videos and blog posts walking a turntable set-up from the basic to a really robust set-up. The problem is he never shows how he rigs the hardware to the Arduino. All the wiring is buried in a box. If he would have provided a schematic, I could at least have a shot at getting the wiring correct. Unfortunately, I’m not an electrician, so I need to scale back and build up slowly.

Okay enough whining, so here’s an N-scale resin car I quickly painted up, a 1950’s Chevy Sedan!

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