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Handhelds Hardware

Model Train Control Using Your PDA 127

Posted by michael from the obsessive-compulsive dept.
VP writes "Forget that crap about PDAs making you more productive by keeping useless contact lists and appointment reminders. Here is the real reason PDAs exist: locopalm.com. You might want to check out the TechTV spot as well."
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Model Train Control Using Your PDA More

Model Train Control Using Your PDA

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  • Hmmm... OK, now that I see it in print, maybe it's not such a great pick-up line after all...

  • But ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:03PM (#5859363) Homepage
    I want to be able to drive my car with my PDA/Cell phone.

    I want to be able to fly a remote control helicopter, too!

    • Re:But ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by papadiablo ( 609676 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:18PM (#5859427)
      I want to be able to drive myself with my PDA, creating an infinite loop of me controlling me through my PDA controlling me through me controlling me through my PDA through controlling me through me controlling me through my PDA....

      • Re:But ... (Score:3, Funny)

        by B3ryllium ( 571199 )
        hahah :) That's ten times better than mine.

        No, wait ... infinite times better! wee! :)
      • Remind me of a scene where Fry gets a Lucy Lui bot. Scenes goes like

        Fry: "I Love you"
        Lucy "I love you"
        Fry: "I love you"

        Professor: "Oh my God she's stuck in an infinite loop and hes a blithering idiot"

        Class :)

        Rus
      • replace yourself with a very small shell script?
        • Piece of cake. Sure, it might not be a shell script per se, but it is a script. And very small.

          <?php
          function control_me($command)
          {
          return control_pda($command);
          }

          function control_pda($Command)
          {
          return control_me($Command);
          }

          control_pda("post slashdot");
          ?>

    • If you're gonna fly a plane using your PDA... For God's sake, don't use Windows CE or PocketPC! Worms/Virii could do massive dammage there :-)

    • I'll be interested when PDAs are given the ability to flush my toilet. Since 90% of the time I'm using a PDA I'm also on the throne, that will truly be the pinnacle of usability.

      click *here* to flush.

      plugged up. do you want to flush again?
      *yes* *no*

  • 0 posts and already slashdotted... (Score:5, Informative)

    by overbored ( 450853 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:09PM (#5859390) Homepage Journal
    Here [overbored.net]'s a mirror.

  • direct links (Score:5, Informative)

    by shird ( 566377 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:09PM (#5859392) Homepage Journal
    The direct links which seem to work better than the main page: (couldnt post anon for some reason, excuse the karma whoring)

    LocoPalm [locopalm.com]

    LocoMon [locopalm.com]

    LocoConfig [locopalm.com]

    LocoProg [locopalm.com]

    Adapter [locopalm.com]

    • (Score:4) --- (couldnt post anon for some reason, excuse the karma whoring)

      I guess you are excused ^^. anyway, i don't think that many people will be bitching about karma whores, since it takes effort to post anon.

  • Slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)

    by Snoopy77 ( 229731 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:11PM (#5859406) Homepage
    Was he running his website on his PDA as well? Did we crash his train too?
    • And the award for worst reference to a slashdotting goes to...

      Snoopy77 (229731)

      The material was there, but the delivery sucked. Next time try a little harder :)
    • Hehehe,
      This reminds me of a little competition a dutch sience magazine once wrote.
      I believe it was the universety of Hamburg that had a web controlled rc train.
      One of the editors of that magazine did a little stroy about the RC trains and mentiond as a sidenote that anyone who would send him a picture of the trains derailled or otherwise crased would receive a free subscritpion till the end of the year.
      Next month 4 people had actually amanaged to make it crash (on 3 separate occasions) and they were kin

      • I believe it was the universety of Hamburg that had a web controlled rc train. One of the editors of that magazine did a little stroy about the RC trains and mentiond as a sidenote that anyone who would send him a picture of the trains derailled or otherwise crased would receive a free subscritpion till the end of the year. Next month 4 people had actually amanaged to make it crash (on 3 separate occasions)

        I can just see the security advisory on this:

        Denial of service attack against model train

        Risk

  • Sad... (Score:3, Informative)

    by c0dedude ( 587568 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:14PM (#5859415)
    Yeah, here's the google cache [216.239.57.100] Jeez, were they hosting the server on the Palm?

  • Ah, memories (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheBracket ( 307388 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:25PM (#5859450) Homepage
    This reminds me of when I was young. My father and I built a trainset controller from Maplin Electronics; each train had a small circuit board added (with a unique ID number), and we could give each train individual commands. Once we had that running smoothly, we used an old Dragon 32 to build a complete train management system (in 6502 assembly, if I remember rightly; the Dragon was a bit limited, so we ended up writing the programs on graph paper, validating them, converting the notation to hex and poking it - before saving a memory dump). I remember being particularly happy with our simulated inertia system, even if it did make crashes more likely!


    Projects like this are a lot of fun, and a great way to get into electronics.

  • Sorry, but ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by DogIsMyCoprocessor ( 642655 ) <dogismycoprocessor@yah o o . c om> on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:27PM (#5859461) Homepage
    this won't be cool until you can use a Palm to make 2 model trains collide and explode like in the Addams Family.
    • Reading stupid /.ers trying to talk about model railroading is like reading about a bunch of normal people talking about computers.

      "Yeah but it wouldn't be cool unless the scroll wheel makes the two windows collide and the screen explode like in Star Trek!"

    • Re:Sorry, but ... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Skater ( 41976 )
      Actually, you can. Having used a DCC system, you'd be amazed at how quickly and easily things can get out of control, even with only two trains! The good news is that the Digitrax system has a "panic stop" button that stops all the trains. The bad news is that sometimes that's easy to forget when you need it.

      Last time I visited my parents, I had to catch one of my dad's engines as it rolled off the platform from just such an incident. (Fortunately, he was controlling them at the time; I just happened t

  • My experience with model trains.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When I was in public school my friend's dad had a model train set up in one room in his basement. We were never allow to go in there, he was afraid we'd break something. You might think this kind of "forbidden fruit" would be beyond temptation to two young boys, but you'd be wrong. I never went in that room, and I never wanted to either.

    Moral of the story.. even though you think model trains are great, most people don't give a shit.
  • I've always wanted to build a really detailed diorama with model trains and a little city. In fact, I'm gonna do that when I retire ... some 40 years from now. I just hope I'm going to find my bookmark for this story when that time comes ...
    • a lot of people do some realy detailed stuff, the wife wanted a layout in the garden in G gage (45mm track) the scale is 1:24 for wide gage, 1:22.5 for narrow gage, until she saw the price for rolling stock, box cars go for $80.00! The Nice thing is the scale is 1/2 inch to the foot so you can build realistic stuff from scratch if you want; I've seen trestle bridges 6 feet above the ground on the web. This scale is normaly used out doors, you can get steam locomotives, and I really mean steam loco's not jus
  • What goes around comes around.

    --- and around
    --- and around

  • What about other electrical devices? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:48PM (#5859554)
    It's great that someone has figured out how to control model trains with a palm pilot, but think of how useful a Palm could be to control various appliances and circuits in your house. This has been done with computers, but it isn't too practical. But with a Palm, imagine... You wake up in the morning, find the Palm Pilot on your night stand, and push a button to start the coffee maker. Did your kids leave the lights on in a dozen rooms in the house, and you've just settled down to watch the game? Turn 'em all off in a snap with the Palm Pilot by your side.

    • Re:What about other electrical devices? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Palms are great for reading in the dark at night or in the morning under the covers. The palms with green backlighting are actually especially good at this, since the lighting is so soft. Recently I've been thinking about hooking up some bluetooth connectivity to my desktop which I leave on at night to mask out background noise (I live in LA.) With bluetooth I could browse through the library I have on the desktop and download whatever I feel like reading.

      Similarly, a bluetooth enabled palm could make hous
  • Does it wheelslip? Bails-out? Puts-it in the 8? Allows you to put 5 pounds of brakes only? Isolate a traction motor? Has a ground relay?

    And, most importantly, can you do a 14L with it???

    • Does it wheelslip? Bails-out? Puts-it in the 8? Allows you to put 5 pounds of brakes only? Isolate a traction motor? Has a ground relay?

      Wow. That was a heck of a lot better than the, "Does it run Linux?" that I expected from the subject. Now, if only I knew what any of those questions meant . . . :-)

      • Wheelslip: the name explains it all; the wheels start spinning 'cause you put too much power.

        Bail-out: releasing the engine brakes but keeping the train brakes on (they are braked separately).

        Put it in the 8: full throttle. Throttles (normally) have 8 notches, plus "Idle".

        5 pounds of brake: trainline braking effort is measured by the number of pounds you decrease the air pressure (no pressure = full emergency braking).

        Isolate a traction motor: remove the power from 1 axle, because the motor is damaged.

  • ... the real thing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hopscotch ( 55221 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:54PM (#5859580)
    The locopalm is nice, however ...what is really amazing are the goals my 9 year old met to be able to Rent-A-Locomotive [ggrm.org] at the Golden Gate Museum Railroad! [ggrm.org]

    His face was full of delight as he drove an actual locomotive (under an engineer's instruction, of course).

    Sometimes there's nothing quite like the real thing.

    --Hopscotch
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • When geek cultures collide... pda's and model trains? throw in linux and its a geek paradise...
  • Forget that crap about PDAs making you more productive by keeping useless contact lists and appointment reminders.

    I've known better about that sort of thing ever since I discovered ZShell for the TI-85.

  • Can't read the article, but ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by siliconwafer ( 446697 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @12:41AM (#5859763)
    Computer controlled model trains have been around for awhile now. It's known as direct command control (DCC) and it's a well known standard among serious model railroaders. I believe its specification is also defined by the National Model Railroading Association (NMRA).

    Basically, the flaws of regular DC model railroading are as follows: Each locomotive picks up DC power from the rails, and therefore, it is not possible to have two trains moving in different directions or different speeds unless the sections of rail are insulated. DCC was brought about, which allows each locomotive to be addressable, and "command controlled". A "decoder" is installed in each locomotive, which receives the command. The decoder is really just a PIC.

    I wonder if this the technology discussed in the article (which I can't get to right now) is a DCC derivative of some sort?
  • why do all the screens look poorly pasted on in photoshop except for one? particularly in this [locopalm.com] one. i wouldn't think they should need to do that.

  • My model train story :( (Score:4, Funny)

    by l810c ( 551591 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @01:49AM (#5860053)
    Got a new train set and several buildings, etc for Christmas many years ago. Spent weeks building a 4'x8' table. Used the green bag-o-grass and glue instead of the paper, Huge Paper mache mountain with bridge, roads, buildings, street lights. Had everything installed, but not completely wired. That upcoming weekend I was going to finish everything. Hard Freeze in late February and a pipe in the Kitchen upstairs bursts. It must have been 2-3am and many, many, many gallons came down right on my mountain and then on my trains and then on the floor. The mountain melted, trains and track rusted, base was brown and the carpet was green.

    Just thought I'd share...

  • A real train simulator (Score:4, Informative)

    by zutroy ( 542820 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @03:07AM (#5860272) Homepage
    Reading this story got me interested in what kinds of railroad simulators are available online. BVE [trainsimcentral.co.uk] is a cab-view simulator that has a decent collection of real-world trains and tracks for you to try out (sorry, it's windows only). If you've ever wanted to drive a train on the London Underground, here's your chance.
  • After all these years I found the reason my father wouldn't let me operate my minitiature trains. I guess he was affraid I was too young to own a PDA ;-)

  • Real reason (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zakabog ( 603757 ) <john.jmaug@com> on Friday May 02, 2003 @05:01AM (#5860541)
    Forget that crap about PDAs making you more productive by keeping useless contact lists and appointment reminders. Here is the real reason PDAs exist

    This isn't the reason PDAs exist, it's just the real reason why most geeks will never get laid.

    Geek 1: I can either save that girls number on my PDA, or free the memory up so I can use it for my train controlling app.
    Geek 2: There are girls, and phone numbers all over this planet, how many train controlling PDAs are there!?!?
    Geek 1: You're right! Train controlling app it is!
  • Undergrad Computer Science Students [washington.edu] were creating, from scratch, in 10 Weeks, technologies such the ones mentioned in the article [washington.edu] in the days of NT 4 over Serial connections.

    You can do better than that guys!

    Dolemite

  • This sort of mass produced hardware for 200 or so, total, is going to put a lot of process plant control manufacturers out of business.
  • "Here is the real reason PDAs exist""

    And all this time, I thought the purpose of PDAs was so you could entertain yourself in boring meetings and yet, look like you were taking notes. I mean come on, with that IR port so you can play IR Pong with the person across the table??
  • If you really want to see something, check out http://www.marklin.com and http://www.marklin.com/digital/

    They've had computer controlled train mods since the 90's
  • Imagine a beowulf cluster running one of these! Get it? Instead of the other way around?
  • Look what my company wants me to play with.

    Life sized Remote Controlled Trains! [canac.com]

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