Controlling HO Scale Amusement Park Models

rileyv

New Member
Over the past year or so I've built a number of HO scale motorized Amusement Park rides manufactured by a German model company called Faller. Recently, I've been dusting them off and been using Picaxe chips to automate them and control LEDs that I've added.

The most recent one I've modified is a Flipper model. I ended up building two circuit boards.
One contains a Picaxe 18A chip to control a 7 character LED sign.
The other board also contains an 18A chip and controls various LEDs, the model's AC motor via a Relay switch and detects pulses from a Reed Switch to determine when to stop/start the motor. This board takes a 16vAC source (for the motor), converts the AC to DC (for the LEDs) and further down-converts this to 5vDC for the chip.

You can see various photos of the conversion (mainly done from the model builders perspective) here:
http://www.rileyv.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/faller_flipper_cb.htm
I've also created a video showing the finished model in operation. Here's the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usO9CvGAW0I

I'm currently modifying another model, called BreakDancer, which will be finished in a couple of days. This one will use three 18X chips - two of them will be synchronized to operate a 12 character LED sign, and the other will control other LEDs and an AC motor.
 

Andrew Cowan

Senior Member
Beautiful! After looking at your website for a few hours, I have to ask the question of what do you do with them all? Do you have a room where they are all on display? Also, what scale are they - I couldn't tell.

Andrew
 

rileyv

New Member
Beautiful! After looking at your website for a few hours, I have to ask the question of what do you do with them all? Do you have a room where they are all on display? Also, what scale are they - I couldn't tell.

Andrew
They are all in one room, but I wouldn't exactly say they're "on display". I'm currently attempting to revisit them all and create diaoramas for them, with the intention that the dioramas will all connect together.
As I'm revisiting the models (which are all HO / 1:87 scale) I'm seeing if they can be upgraded by adding LEDs, replacing motors and controlling them from PICAXE chips.

Vernon.
 

Michael 2727

Senior Member
Neat little projects, well done.

I'm guessing you have a generous pocket money allowance also.

Just out of curiousity, what program/package do you use for the
circuit design using the VeroBoard ?
They look a lot better than my home made AutoTrax template.

Reminds me I need to revisit my Shooting Gallery porject.

BTW welcome to the Forum.
 

rileyv

New Member
Neat little projects, well done.

I'm guessing you have a generous pocket money allowance also.

Just out of curiousity, what program/package do you use for the
circuit design using the VeroBoard ?
They look a lot better than my home made AutoTrax template.

Reminds me I need to revisit my Shooting Gallery porject.

BTW welcome to the Forum.
I use TinyCad (http://tinycad.sourceforge.net/) to design the flow diagram and then export/import this into Veecad (http://veecad.com/index.html) to produce the circuit (I arrange, and rearrange, and rearrange the components on the board myself).
 
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