26 - 31 Aug
A new Raspberry HAT and some more servos arrived Monday. The Raspberry Pi and its five HATs is now ridiculous! The bottom HAT is an AdaFruit 16-channel servo PWM board. This board will in the end control 16 of the 60 semaphores. The next three board are the same thing, just smaller and called a bonnet; another AdaFruit product. The top board is a 16x16 array of small tri-color LEDs for fairly nice graphics. This Unicorn HAT is as much for troubleshooting the signals process as anything.
With the extra servos double check ability to address each one and discovered that 4 AA cells can NOT power 3 micro servos. So took the bench power supply out of the box. When used everything is rosy.
Refined the layout adding "ease" to the track transition from curves to straight. SURE wish the back ordered turnouts would arrive. Hate to glue cork in place before double checking the layout with real parts not just pictures.
Got the web server updated and TrueType Fonts installed to include in the simulator graphics. Added a menu to the train-thing section of the web. All stubs except "Documentation" (this thing). Harbinger of things to come. Wasted the day trying to install phpBB. The real objective for today is to build the mod for the 16-channel PWM/servo HAT
Got phpBB installed (another day) some forums setup. More work to do on that. Despite apprehension started gluing down cork "roadbed." The plan is to install all the cork that will not be affected by the turnouts.
Had an epiphany regarding the Train Thing simulator display, so restructuring that while waiting for the turnouts. Hardware bits and pieces schedule to arrive Tuesday so can build redesigned boards.