Slashdot Mirror
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."
Well...went and visited the site...took a whack at controlling the train...
Q: What's more boring than controlling an electric train from a website.
A: NOT controlling an electric train from a website.
Yup...doesn't seem to be working. I went to check this out expecting to be unimpressed, but now I'm unimpressed and disappointed.
I need a beer.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Crashing a server and a train!
Something tells me with a post to Slashdot this train is about to get very scitzo, very quickly.
And regardless, how many sadists would be trying to crash the train like myself?
Has anyone found the controls to their webserver yet?
Eric Barch, I would be angry at you for posting a story for the all the multitudes of /. to control this poor man's train, probably causing it (and the server) to crash. Fortunately, it doesn't work!
Worst... Site... Name... EVAR!
100 Change Thrust [Enter]
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Ooops..., the Slashdot effect!
Crunch!
Slashdot + Internet controlled trains == Gomez Adams reincarnate zombies
Yay, a smouldering heap of shiny things!
--
I wasn't always like this, till I found Slashdot.org
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 :-(
Remember the guy who posted a website where you could control christmas lights from it? Turned out it was a hoax.
Call me skeptic, but I think this one's a hoax, too.
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'm supposed to believe I can control this?
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
To whomever thought up that websites color and menu... god damn you. god damn you to hell.
I remember a web controled model train set several years back, does anyone remember where it was or what happened to it?
.NET powered by PHP?
.NET just make an aspx and control things that way... if you're not there's half a dozen ways via PHP (perl+XMLRPC springs to mind).
If you're using
Mixing them just seems to be a headache, since making MS code integrate with non-MS code is always harder than just sticking to one or the other.
Wow, it's extremely difficult to send data on the serial port of a PC to control a couple of servos.. and a web interface..
:) but I don't think this is one of them.
Maybe it's interesting for some train geeks, but I think that's about it. The camera isn't even mounted ON the train. That might at least make it mildly more entertaining. Yeah, some internet controlled hacks are cool (especially the christmas lights one, doubly so because it was fake
Sorry, but this is old news. If you guys have ever explored the mini r/c desktop rover's site (product description/photo at: http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/5776/ ) they had an online tech demo (through java of course) where you stood in line and got to control the rc car. It was stuck in a box with a bunch of ramps and obstacles that you could see with the camera attached to it. You were able to steer and push objects within the box. They even took off the top of the box and let you see the crummy living room that it was hosted in! The tech demo isn't working now, but I remember using it over a year ago.
The voice of the next generation. "In this tower, in my mind..." Babble - Tower
nada -- put in a bunch of numbers, no movement. Of course soon the site itself will be completely down if it isn't already.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
10 motor 1 20 motor 0 30 goto 10
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.
Whenever somebody hooks something up to be controlled over the web I have to wonder why they bother? I mean, I understand the geek fun factor and everything, but why make it available to the public? It's just going to suck. Something like this is only fun to control if there are only a couple people on the site at a time and well, it's something so cool that there's no way there will only be a couple people on at a time!
(Sorry, I just couldn't resist mentioning one of the most famous 4chan memes. It's what instantly came to mind.)
Please help metamoderate.
..... Pictures it took to do this this time *grin* Unfortunately .... I can't seem to get the pictures to change...
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
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.)
not millions of regular users, either.
hell, not even a million all time users. UIDs are up in the 800,000's.
slashdot isn't as big as everyone seems to think it is. the fact that we can take down a web server running on a home dsl line proves nothing.
There has been for several years now a digital standard http://www.dcc.info/ for controlling trains: it would have been far more impressive had they implemented this instead of a servo turning a crank. They could have even done this with off the shelf hardware. http://www.digitrax.com/menu_computercontrol.php
But at least you can still control it! Use the Cell Phone Interface
WASTE - The Secure P2P
Speaking of model trains, what do breasts and model trains have in common? They've both meant for kids but it's adults who end up playing with them.
Breasts, hackers, and model trains all in one post! It's like the Slashdot Triple Crown!
EvilCON - Made Famous by
"You will be able to do things such as... turn on and off lights,..." anything else then ?
I'm thinking it would be quite a trick to put even a Shuttle PSU in there and keeping it happy with the little power the tracks provide.
If they don't have 100,000 trains then there's going to be some really f*cked up action on those tracks. What the hell where they thinking? Three russian hacker groups are already fighting for control of the B & O Switch engine 5006 Diesel, and half of Berkley is trying to ram the American Flyer # 613 GN Box Car off the table.
Bastards.
It was meant as a joke; everybody's using "crashing the train" and "crashing the server" interchangeably. It's funny, because you can crash a train, and you can crash a server...
Oh, nevermind.
there's a company that lets you hunt using a remote controlled gun, with video feed, over the internet. google it.
(in case they get slasdotted...)
You insensitive clod!
If I were going to do a train set web UI, I would hope to make something at least as interesting and entertaining as this one. Its fun to control, easy to watch, and no .Net; just php.
many, many times.
I did it using C almost ten years ago, and I dobt I was on the fore front.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And soon we will be able to controll real trains form our homes.
Technology marches on
-2600, 22:1
Truth can be as strange as fiction:)
---PCJ
as an ex model maker ...tho of 1/72 scale airplanes (not railways!) i never built straight from kits but researched for mods and colour schemes to make an interesting model...guess i do the same now with the tech stuff and graphic design..come on geeks unite with those older scale railway buffs/geeks... the railway is a little lacking in any creativity (and the tech running it is a little to so so!)...a guy in the village where my M and D live has a track running round his garden with viaducts, landscapes and the marshaling yard/control centre in his shed! now to control that from the net might be something worth controlling !
... they aren't even bright, they can't drive him mad!
:(
If I want to play with a lightswitch, I'd throw a lightswitch rave here... those lights are totally unfulfilling
He should change the name of his site or find some way for us to put drugs in his coffee through the Internet, I say!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
'Back in the day', using a 14.4K modem and a 68k Mac, I remember a website (in Europe IIRC) which allowed you to control a train set with two trains, and 3 sidings. It only had one cam, and wireless wasnt in existance, but they included a clock in the background so you could tell you were truely controlling the train, and not watching a playback of pre-aquired images.
This was around the same time that the guys at MIT had the Pepsi machine wired so they could tell if it was empty, and whether it was worth walking down the hall or not. They also had a 24hr webcam pointed at the coffee machine for the ame reason.
I've played with an over-the-net train set for 3 years now in my free time. Try something new.
All your searching needs (and free money!) - 4Lancer.net
The two internet toasters (1988) by Romkey and Hackett evolved during the next couple of years. In on direction a network controlled LEGO robot was used to insert and withdraw the toast.
In the other direction an entire SNMP controlled trail layout was created by Peter de Vris of FTP Software.
These were all seen, working, at the Interop shows of the late 1980's and early 1990s.
What a trainwreck!
Solo keeps the trains from colliding, but the bad guy keeps cranking up the speed until Solo slips and puts the two trains on the same track, only the bad guy stops the trains because he is only trying to scare Solo at that point.
"...while the lights are real, nobody was really turning the lights on and off - the webcam and webcontrol don't really exist on the house, only on the website..."
I'm still waiting for the inevitable Google Earth hoax or prank (satellite-readable message).
Wow, it's extremely difficult to send data on the serial port of a PC to control a couple of servos..
This gives me an idea. Remember those old "control circuit LEDS with your computer!" experiments?
I wonder... there has got to be some electronic kit or something with USB, any ideas?
I wonder how many zombies now? might you check? but how?
For windows users you might rely on other to tell you no lies. *nix admins are reading their files, in a minute.
RE: to this to tell what you know.
Thanks.
\/.
Model railroading has gotten quite a bit of tech to it.
Used to be that you plonked the engine on the track, pushed some DC, and off you went.
That was then, this is now.
Digital Command Control (DCC) by Digitrax, EasyDCC, some pretty cool electronics interfacing stuff by Dr. Chubb (over at JLC Enterprises, or you can go with Protrak's system, Grapevine, and WOOT! WOOT! Some Open Source stuff from JMRI (and see the quote about controlling someone's layout from 600 miles away...)
You want sound with that? No Problem!
Yeah, model railroading has gotten high tech alright. No, you can't run my stuff over the internet, yes, I could if I wanted to let you. No, you'll have to come to an open house sometime. If you think you might like to get involved with it, check out The NMRA and find a club local to your area... but the hobby shop might be a better bet.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Slashdotters not only crashed the site, they crashed the train.
You are all the wrong kind of engineers.
I THINK I CAN, I KNOW I CAN...
This is a real-time system. Using Java, PHP, .Net to control the train speed? What a team!!
Our own layout is fully computer controlled, and can be operated over the internet (though for practical reasons, we don't let people run it through our web page, and probably never will). That includes over 600 feet of track divided into 120 independent blocks and 151 electrically operated turnouts. This control system was installed in January 2002, replacing an earlier system built in 1966 from surplus telephone relays.
Speaking from firsthand experience, there are a couple of problems with allowing general remote operation of trains (as opposed to running in small loop of track). The first is that it is hard to tell where the ends of the train really are relative to turnouts, block gaps, the ends of sidings and other things you don't want to run into. While we have block occupancy detection, it isn't good enough to park a train somewhere and be sure that you aren't fouling another track.
The other big problem is that you still need to have somebody there to deal with derailments. This isn't a big issue for a small loop of track but is for a larger layout like ours. Video from an onboard camera isn't much help either since it only shows one end of the train and may not be clear enough to spot gaps and turnout positions.
We've tried to let people run our layout remotely at recruiting events, with streaming video from an onboard camera (and someone back at the club room to deal with derailments and the like), but it never quite works right. One problem is that most streaming video systems (we've used Real) have a lot of lag. Even with video conferencing software (iChat) we had trouble with the available bandwidth at the location we were in. There were problems with bandwidth for the control software too, so mostly we could only let people run in a loop of track that they had to themselves which isn't much fun.
You can find information about our control system at http://tmrc.mit.edu/sys3/
Thomas O'Reilly
TMRC Governor
Cristmas lights remind me of the "chat live with this naked babe" videos. There is no live thing on the other end, it's just a set of pictures taken for each "dropdown-box" scenario. When your options can be fit into a dropdown box, then the tree of possibilities can be fully spanned and an image provided for. Now on the other hand, if you had a freeform text input, that would get displayed in the cam picture, that's a whole different ballpark.
sigh... my photobucket bw probably burst by now.
HD Trailers
If you know of a large LCD-type sign board that is USB and/or IP addressable, drop me a note - I would LOVE to hang this on the outside of my house for christmas 2005 and allow Internet folks to provide text inputs ... kinda along the lines of this site where you can enter text to show up on his screen saver.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Kids these days--thinking they're the first to do anything. A German university department had a web-controlled train working about 10-15 years ago. Forgot the name of the uni, unfortunately.
With articles posted like this one, people wonder why that previous article, the one about wasting time at work had such high statistics... we might be able to get more work done in less time than before, but with things like this and Google Earth to play with, is it any wonder?
And they said zombies weren't real!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262 072254/qid=1121264721/sr=1-26/ref=sr_1_26/002-1325 925-7826433?v=glance&s=books
This book is an interesting look at the differnt robots that have been controled online. It provides information about how differnt robotics experts created robots that are controled online.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
We did this in 1998 ! We had a b/w realvideo stream from the front of the train which users (we assumed would be thousands) could choose to stop at a time for any duration, it only went in circles. It also had an overhead webcam for those unable to use realvideo (probably windows users). This was on the Sun+perl+apache+real based BBC website so many years ago it's not funny.