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I would recommend to wait a bit. We are not finally decided on unifying the MattzoTrainControllers yet. The ESP8266 based controllers work absolutely stable and without any problems. As you know, we are still struggeling a bit with the stability of the ESP32. Before we haven’t sorted out all problems, I am not willing to give up the ESP-8266 yet. Anyways, you can always use your ESP8266 for building layout controllers (sensors, switches, signals…).
I didn’t try this yet. At least the i2c connectivity will require some code changes, I suppose.
Be careful that your Wemos D1 mini doesn’t smoke off when you connect it to power. It does not cope with 9V. You need a step-down module between the battery and the microcontroller.
That’s a little bug in Firmware 0.3. Change it to L9110 and you’ll be fine. Will be fixed with the bugfix release 0.3.1 (presently scheduled for Sunday or next week).
Nikos, thanks for sharing your findings! This is indeed very helpful. We are interested in more feedback from the user base, so we are keen to hear more results from others as well.
Henk from the core developer team has pretty much nailed down the problem, we just need some more empirical basis for issueing the fix for the firmware.
Thank you all!
I suggest to read the documentation first:
Or for the other MattzoControllers:
Wiring diagrams are included.
Nevertheless I agree that some basic knowledge about microcontrollers, networking and IT is helpful when building MattzoControllers. I had no clue at least about microcontrollers a short while ago, but buying an Arduino starter set and watching some Arduino youtube tutorial videos helped me a lot.
You may start a topic in the forum for beginners yourself. Why don’t you call it “MattzoBricks Train Automation for Beginners” or something similar?
Don’t forgot to take the servo motors out of the casing first, else they could be damage with this test script. Safe angles are usually between 70 and 80 degrees for Trixbrix servos. After calibration, you usually end-up between ca. 60 and 90 degrees (depends on the specific servo, must be checked for every single servo).
Hi Lucas,
the IR LED is not connected to D5 and 3.3V, it’s connected to D5 and GND. I will compile an exact list of the components that I used. So far, I didn’t burn any of the controllers or IR LEDs in that setup, and it ran over several weeks. Overstressing components is not good, but the infrared pulses are extremely short, which may help a bit to protect the LED even if overpowered.Cheers,
MattzeThat might be because the Lego Infrared Receiver has only 7 power levels. That makes accelerating and braking and bit less smooth.
Arduino IDE has some built-in example sketches for servos. But be careful not to break your switch motors. It might be a good idea to take the servo out of the casing before testing with the standard sketches.
No, that is not problem at all. It even has the advantage that you can put the controller on the train and connect some nice LEDs as train lights to it!
Hi clyss,
your question is pretty good. Indeed I didn’t have time to add a dedicated wiring diagram for the MTC4PF with the infrared option yet. I will do that soon to make things a bit clearer.In the meantime some help for you: an infrared LED is nothing else than a LED, just that the emitted light is in the infrared spectrum and can not be seen by the human eye. That means: connect the longer leg of the LEDs to e.g. the i/o pin (e.g. D5 as in the standard configuration), and connect GND to the shorter leg. That is really all you need to do. Configure the firmware, upload it, power the controller up, and here you go.
Good luck!
Cheers,
MattzeHi Achim,
first of all: I like your WiFi SSID. According to the log, the controller did not connect to the WiFi correctly. Did you install a status LED on pin D8? That’s sometimes quite helpful. Flashing means: no wifi connection. Blinking means: no mqtt connection.Good luck!
Cheers,
MattzeHi Ulrich, thanks for the heads up. I fixed that in the wiring diagram. Now it should be at least a bit easier to get going without the need if understanding every little detail in the code and configuration.
Cheers,
MattzeYour observation is correct. The Powered Up hubs must be connected in exactly the order they are listed in the configuration. The reason for this are technical limitations in the Powered Up and Bluetooth libraries that we use to connect to the Powered Up hubs.
I am quite positive that we will find a better for this in the future.
Cheers,
Mattze