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Archive for the ‘diesel’ Category

Feb
25

An electronic diesel engine controlled with Arduino Mega

arduino, arduino mega, Cars, diesel, Engine, mega, reverse engineering Commenti disabilitati su An electronic diesel engine controlled with Arduino Mega 

Diesel_Engine

A few years ago Sven and Juho started working on the same type of project without knowing about each other and only by a coincidence their paths crossed. They wrote me about their cool story and the successful experiment of upgrading a diesel engine using Arduino Mega:

There’s a prettty large community out there in the car/motorsports hobbyist world that loves their vehicle but the engine is getting old, worn out and maybe even too bad to renovate. What people do is to take the engine from a newer car with a modern direct injected diesel engine, with all the cables, sensors and motor controller (the ECU) and adapt it to their beloved old car. This is exactly what is going on with the VW buses (called vanagons in the US) where the diesel engines from the beginning is a bit on the small side and 20 years later their performance is not much better than a garden tractor. A “new” electronically controlled engine is used to replace the old worn out engine, and with that follows better power, less pollution and way better fuel economy.

Schematic_diesel

BUT, this takes time and is a complex project. You have to adapt the cablage, install the ECU (the motor controller) and must be sure that all the peripheral sensors sitting all around the engine is brought over to the new car and is working. You might also have to adapt the instrument cluster behind the steering wheel to make all the warning lights and gauges to work again.

The idea with the Arduino controller is to take the ENGINE ONLY and then let the Arduino manage the engine with the sensors that is on the engine itself. By doing this, the motor swap is reduced to a weekend project and everything in the bus is working as it was before. No instruments modification, no need for external valves and sensors, no adapted cablage. Just the Arduino.

You can find the whole documentations and the details of the project on Juho’s website.

Nov
10

Old Kit Review – Diesel Sound Simulator for Model Railroads

1992, chip, december, dick, diesel, DSE, Electronics, K3030, kit, kit review, model railway, review, silicon, simulator, smith, sound, tronixstuff Commenti disabilitati su Old Kit Review – Diesel Sound Simulator for Model Railroads 

Introduction

In this review of an older kit (circa 1993~1997) we examine the Diesel Sound Simulator for Model Railroads kit from (the now defunct) Dick Smith Electronics, based on the article published in the December 1992 issue of Silicon Chip magazine.

The purpose of this kit is to give you a small circuit which can fit in a HO scale (or larger) locomotive, or hidden underneath the layout – that can emulate the rumbling of a diesel-electric locomotive to increase the realism of a train. However the kit is designed for use with a PWM train controller (also devised by Silicon Chip!) so not for the simple direct-DC drive layouts.

K3030 diesel sound simulator kit

Assembly

The diesel sound kit was from the time when DSE still cared about kits, so you received the sixteen page “Guide to Kit Construction” plus the kit instructions, nasty red disclaimer sheet, feedback card, plus all the required components and the obligatory coil of solder that was usually rubbish:

K3030 diesel sound simulator kit contents

Everything required to get going is included, except IC sockets. My theory is it’s cheaper to use your own sockets than source older CMOS/TTL later on if you want to reuse the ICs, so sockets are now mandatory here:

K3030 diesel sound simulator kit parts

The PCB is from the old school of “figure-it-out-yourself”, no fancy silk-screening here:

K3030 diesel sound simulator kit PCB

K3030 diesel sound simulator kit PCB bottom

Notice the five horizontal pads between the two ICs – these were for wire bridges in case you needed to break the PCB in two to fit inside your locomotive.

Actual assembly was straight-forward, all the components went in without any issues. Having two links under IC2 was a little annoying, however a short while later the PCB was finished and the speaker attached:

K3030 diesel sound simulator kit finished

How it works

As mentioned earlier this diesel sound kit was designed for use with the Silicon Chip train PWM controller, so the design is a little different than expected. It can handle a voltage of around 20 V, and the sound is determined by the speed of the locomotive.

The speed is determined by the back EMF measured from the motor – and (from the manual) this is the voltage produced by the motor which opposes the current flow through it and this voltage is directly proportional to speed.

Not having a 20V DC PWM supply laying about I knocked up an Arduino to PWM a 20V DC supply via an N-MOSFET module and experimented with the duty cycle to see what sort of noises could be possible. The output was affected somewhat by the supply voltage, however seemed a little higher in pitch than expected.

You can listen to the results in the following video:

I reckon the sound from around the twenty second mark isn’t a bad idle noise, however in general not that great. The results will ultimately be a function of a lower duty-cycle than I could create at the time and the values of R1 and R2 used in the kit.

 Conclusion

Another kit review over. With some time spent experimenting you could generate the required diesel sounds, a Paxman-Valenta it isn’t… but it was a fun kit and I’m sure it was well-received at the time. To those who have been asking me privately, no I don’t have a secret line to some underground warehouse of old kits – just keep an eye out on ebay and they pop up now and again. Full-sized images and much more information about the kit are available on flickr.

And while you’re here – are you interested in Arduino? Check out my new book “Arduino Workshop” from No Starch Press.

In the meanwhile have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitterGoogle+, subscribe  for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column? And join our friendly Google Group – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website. Sign up – it’s free, helpful to each other –  and we can all learn something.

The post Old Kit Review – Diesel Sound Simulator for Model Railroads appeared first on tronixstuff.



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