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Internet-Controlled Train Set
Eric Barch writes "Using a servo connected to a Mini SSC II and wired into a dedicated server through the serial port, the Control Our Junk team has created a working train set controlled from any computer on the Internet with a few ports open and Java installed. The trains speed can be modified on the control page, which uses a PHP script to send commands to a .NET application sitting on the server. When the .NET application recieves the PHP command it sends the data to a serial port, and in turn, changes the speed of the train. The train set is running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and is quite fun to operate from the dual webcams mounted on a top down and side view of the train set. If you would like more information, or to control the train set visit controlourjunk.com/ and take the train for a spin."
DriveMeInsane.com was featured here a few years ago now. I believe the guy who started it is a Slashdotter himself. He basically hooked up all his lights to the Web, as well as a number of webcams, his sprinkler system, Christmas tree lights, etc. It was pretty hardcore back in the day. He's kept it going too, although it's up and down, but pretty much was "the" great example of this genre. Only seems to have two lights now though :-(
The real-time programming course at the University of Waterloo has a model train set we write a control program form.
It's a lot of fun for the first couple of days until it sinks in how hard it's going to be to write a real-time OS and a GUI-based train management program for it in 3 months.
One of the tests is to keep adding trains to the tracks while it's running to see how much it can handle. If your program crashes, the trains crash.
I took the course in 1999 so if any of what I said sounds wrong, it's because it changed since then.
I remember a web controled model train set several years back, does anyone remember where it was or what happened to it?
How come nobody or at least from what I have found modded a computer into a train?
Pull the power from the tracks, wireless card for networking, put a controller on the locomotive for the onboard computer to controll, as the faster the train moves the more cooling power it needs. Tie train speed and cpu speed or some other stat into trains control.
Thinking would have to go with a flash card based filesytem unless you can handle powering a hd. Could just put hd in a seperate car from the main computer.
I assumed everyone with a train set did this. My own train set (a Märklin Digital HO set of C track that I take out and build into various layouts when I get the inclination) is run by a TCP/IP server speaking a custom line-based protocol, and I've written a Web interface and an IRC bot interface to speak to it, as well as a couple of perl scripts that just run the trains around on specific schedules (using sensors in the track to detect when the train gets to a particular station).
So when I have my layout out people can just come to visit with their wireless laptops and immediately can control everything on the layout (trains, points, decouplers, etc).
I'm in Norway. I once had someone try to play a simplified Timesaver layout from Sweden, over IRC. That was not a pretty sight.
Admittedly I don't have a Web cam, which I assume is the attraction here.
(It's actually really hard to run any train set remotely, simply due to latency issues. Two seconds can easily be the difference between a neat arrival in a station and overshooting and hitting a freight train doing operations in a nearby yard.)