WLAN remote controlled H0 scale Interurban car

Dronization of Traction Modeling (4): first operational Interurban car

I shrinked the electronics to fit inside an Interurban car. From left (front) to right (rear) : WLAN dongle (green), 7,4 V LiPo traction battery (silver) WLAN controller (green circuit board), and the small motor controller (blue).

Battery charging is still a little complicated. I haven't yet installed a plug. LiPo batteries must be charged carefully. For a 7.4 V cell you need 5 poles, 2 for current, and 3 for balance charging.

Some improvements are needed to plug easily a battery charger. Time will tell me a solution.

The car is ready to run. In evidence, the free window view is lost because the car is now full of equipment. But it is funny to drive, regardless of current collection.

Budd RDC with Dension WIRC Wlan remote controller

HO scale RDC with traction battery, on board camera  and remote control

Not really "traction", but close...

Next step is to put all this stuff in an Interurban car.

For the earlier steps please look here and here 

Running outdoor on electrically dead rail

Selfie shot by the on board camera

Dronization of Traction Modeling (3): First run

Test car with two NWSL Stanton drives, remote controlled by a Dension WLAN controller. Battery powered, the rails are electrically "dead".

The test installation shows a large amount of excess or unused cables. Once wired "short", the modules can fit into a H0 scale car body.

Dronization of Traction Modeling (2): My kitchen lab

Have a look in my railway drone kitchen lab. I received all the necessary parts and made a test mount.

(1) Dension WLAN remote controller

(2) Lithium-Ion battery - 3.7V

(3) Step-up module - makes 12V from 3.7V

(4) Camera - optional

(5) WLan dongle connected to (1)

(6) Motor controller (type Thor 4s)

(7) NWSL Stanton drive (type 1210)

Remembering the goal: building an H0 Interurban car, remote controlled by your Smartphone via WLAN, battery powered, only using commercially available and reasonably priced parts. Avoiding reinventing the wheel...

Step Up module 3.7V > 12V

It works, it works! All parts interact together. Assembling just asks to mount the modules patiently step by step. No real knowledge of RC modeling is necessary. The Dension WLAN Controller acts as a WLAN hotspot.

After downloading a Dension WIRC iPhone (or Android) app, you can control your NWSL Stanton motor drive, running forward or backward, slow or faster. You can control your motor drive by a virtual joystick, or with the gyroscope of your smartphone, tilting the phone left or right.

Lithium Ion battery

NWSL Stanton

As an option, you can add an on board miniature camera, who sends a real-time video stream back to your smartphone. So you can really look out of the window of your car travelling. But this option is a little bit energy consuming, perhaps I must install two or three LiIon batteries.

Camera and microphone

The next step is to put in all the parts on a floor of on of my big wooden interurban combines. The parts could fit, but some excess of cables must be cut down. In any case, you will loose all interior space for batteries and circuit boards. Don't expect to modelise car interiors with this technique, at least in H0 scale. But if miniaturization goes on, who knows ...

Dension WIRC WLAN Controller

Also, the USB connectors are currently very big, comparing to the very small electronic parts. Soldering the cables directly to the boards after cutting the USB plugs may be an option.

The Dronization of Traction Modeling

Dension Wireless RC receiver and Wifi dongle. 

Currently, I am riding my H0 trains still "old school": analog, 2 rail operated, without overhead wire. As many, I am tempted to switch to DCC operation, with functional wire or not, but I am hesitating.

DCC doesn't like power interruptions, as they could be frequent with traction models.

And I felt that in the age of wireless phones, when you can do virtually anything with your Smartphone, there must be a way to go further. I am not so sure that DCC is still state of the art ...

My idea was to create a sort of "Traction Model Drone". An autonomous vehicle, radio controlled by your Smartphone, without any external power supply once the batteries charged. It could ran on 2 rail layouts, or with functional overhead, on DCC layouts or not, with clean tracks or not, anyway, you could even run it on plastic trackwork.

Folks, it may be possible, at least I will try out. Doing it in O scale would be possible in any case. But I want to do it in HO scale.

There are three request to achieve this :
1/ having enough battery power
2/ a Wireless Smartphone Remote Control system
3/ a small motor controller.

And two more requests: use only commercially available standard components, and use NWSL Stanton drives as motors

All conditions can be reached:

1/ Smartphone Lithium batteries are small, powerful and not expensive. But they have an output of only 4.2 Volts. But with a small "step up module" you can create an output of 12V DC.
2/ Dension WIRC is an Wifi based radio control for iPhone and Android. The receiver is small enough to be housed in an HO scale 61" Interurban car. The range of Dension WIRC may be limited to 50-100 meters, but for indoor H0 scale, this may be widely enough.  (http://wirc.dension.com)
3/ I found a small motor controller (Thor 4s: http://www.cti-modellbau.de/CTI-Fahrregler/-74-102-110-161.html)

All components could fit into one of my Cincinnati built Wooden Combines. And Dension WIRC give us the possibilité to install a micro camera in your model and to drive virtually in it. I will study this later ...

Failure or success, you will hear from me...