Unlisted Railroad Links
This page is unlisted. If you want to find your way back to it someday, you'll need to bookmark it. There is no way to navigate to it from the main site.
DCC++ and JMRI Presentation - NMRA Western Heritage Division
Click Here to download a PDF copy of the “slides” from October 6, 2018 - this is the original presented to the NMRA.
Click Here to download the updated version presented to OLUG on November 6. This version contains some additional information on Model Railroading to give non-hobbyists some context about the problem to be solved.
Click Here to download the “Car Cards to Switch Lists” presentation from February 6, 2021.
Click Photo to Download PDF
LED Presentation
Click on the image to download a PDF copy of the "sides" presented at the NMRA Western Heritage Division meeting on May 5 and June 2, 2018.
Many of the photos are linked to short example videos hosted on YouTube. PDF readers all have their quirks, so your mileage may vary on the success of following the links.
Reference Links
If you just want the reference links, you don't need to download the PDF. Here are all of the links from the reference page.
LED Tutorials
Adafruit has an excellent general tutorial on the use of LEDs. This page, by Mark Gurries, is focused on the use of LEDs on a model railroad.
Resistor Size Calculator Apps
No links here. Go to your app store and do a search. Adafruit's "Circuit Playground" app and Digi-Key's app are both excellent. You'll likely find several others. If you're looking for something to use on the desktop, Google "LED resistor size calculator." There are several. This one is pretty good.
NeoPixel Links
Adafruit's Tutorial on NeoPixels
Online Calculator to convert Color Temperature in degrees Kelvin to RGB values.
There are links in the PDF to suppliers pages on the WS2812 NeoPixels. They are available at Adafruit, Sparkfun, Amazon, Digikey, Mouser, Jameco and several others in various forms. Just search for Neopixel or WS2812 at your favorite sources' web page. For your first order, Adafruit and Sparkfun are probably the easiest. They make forms easily used by the model railroader. Once you have a little experience under your belt you can find them in bulk, for a less at the other suppliers.
Items Mentioned in the Slides
Resistor Substitution Box - This is the box I had at the meeting. You can find it from $15 to over $25, so shop around. Be careful, some versions are kits that require soldering all of the resistors. There isn't anything special about the Elenco. You'll find several different types if you look around.
Resistor Assortments - I just purchased a $17 "Joe Knows" assortment from Amazon. Nothing special. If you search, you'll find many assortments at different prices. I've purchased from Jameco, and Mouser. I've only purchased this stuff from Amazon because it's easy and I have a Prime account.
Adafruit Parts Pal - A nice combination of parts for the budding electronic experimenter. About $20. If you buy anything from Adafruit, just put it in the shopping cart and wait until Wednesday evening at 7pm. Go to their YouTube page and watch the first few minutes of the live show. They'll announce a 10% off discount code. The code is good until 11pm our time.
NCE Light-it and Illuminator. You can order from the NCE web site. The folks at NCE tell me that they would be glad to sell direct (at full retail), but prefer you buy from one of their dealers.
Arduino Starter Kits - Again, Google will turn up several sellers at prices that hover around $50-$80. I've purchased kits made by Vilros and Adafruit. I can vouch for the educational material that comes with those. Canakit's kits are also very good, but pricey if not on sale. All of them follow the built-in examples from Arduino.org.
Tinkercad now has a free circuit emulator. So you can experiment with all of this electronic stuff, even Arduino programming, without spending a dime.
Those Cheesy Looking "Stand-in Signals" from ISE - you should find them on this page. They work just fine. If you're driving them with NCE Light-its, you don't need to connect the resistors. Just bridge the solder pads with a short piece of wire. I hope you have a good magnifier, all of the components are surface mount devices. Digitrax makes a similar signal.
A Great Book that will help you get started with electronic and Arduino projects is "Arduino Workshop." Even if you never get to the Arduino section, this is a good starter book on basic electronics. Once you get finished with the basic examples that come with your Arduino Starter Kit, the 65 example projects in this book will form the basis for many useful, maybe even railroad, projects. This is the book I used with my 12-year-old grandson. I'm sure you guys can handle it.
Another great reference, more complete, is the Electronics Cookbook by Simon Monk. Of the two, I prefer this one because it also contains info on the Raspberry Pi.