SimRail Controller hardware we've built.

[Gazz292]

On 12/27/2023 at 1:52 PM, Pitek said:

So here is also my controller (EU07 etc.) and I'm still waiting for data output. 

 

 

very jealous, 

I wish i could find someone selling the driving desk parts from an EU07 style loco,  got a couple of grand for the right bits,  just finding someone who could sell to me that's proving impossible (me being in the uk dosen't help, might have to take a road trip to Poland with the trailer on the car. 

 

[Deadlost]

Currently in the process of making some controls inspired by the traxx. I'm making 2 modules for now, one for the left hand (throttle) and one right hand(brakeside).
I'm trying to limit my functions to 1 usb joystick card per side. (using 12 buttons and an arcade joystick )

Been using joytokey to give key commands, and worked flawless before(before the last big update). When I use it now, it gives commands I don't have control over, can it be the gamepad support messing it up? is there a way to deactivate gamepad?

Waiting on the case to get done printing and continue design of the right hand side if it works out as intended.
Also have bigger module in progress, with housing for saitek throttles with notchplates etc, but on hold until native joystick support is here.

 

[Gazz292]

the new 'input' system with new control animations seems to have made the controls 'sluggish' to those of use using controllers it seems.

I really notice this when i use a rotary encoder to turn the EU07's wheel,  the encoder sends out 1 keypress for every click it's moved, and before the update i could spin the encoders knob as fast as i could, and the wheel in the sim would match the speed i was rotating the knob.. i could move from notch 43 to 0 faster than the fast move button combo did.

but since the update, if i rotate the knob too fast the wheel in the sim misses a lot of steps it should have moved,
on my arduino boards i've added a 70 millisecond delay between repeated keypresses so the controls do not miss steps., 

 

Not sure if this is the case with your controllers, 

I only have a button box using JoyToKey, and haven't noticed any difference in how that is working, 

I don't think the gamepad thing can be disabled, but i do know there is a 'gamepad switch sensitivity' slider in the control menu, i expect this adjusts how much the analog controls on the gamepad have to move to activate a switch,  but i could be wrong. 

[Deadlost]

I'm not sure, but I feel the throttle on the traxx is also more fiddly to change positions also(from throttle to 0 to braking.

I'll test some more when the box is complete.

Here is what simrail reads the buttons:
button 2 stand up/sit down

button 3 acknownledge/deadman

button 4 panto up

button 5/6 zoom in and out

button 10 is menu.

It's not joytokey ruining it, as no keyboard keys are sent when pushing buttons, so seems to me its something in simrail.

Tested in the "other" sim and I have similar issues there, so I think the sim engine mistakes my generic usb joystick for a xbox/ps controller?

So my request to simrail team is a possibility to disable game controller.

 

EDIT:
My issues was releated to Steam settings. Steam was set to emulate xbox controller, turned it off and voila, my device behaved as intended!
It only became a problem once simrail added game controller support 🙂 
 

Edited January 1, 2024 by Deadlost

[Howky]

 

Ideal would be support from the creators if a communication protocol via IP Address, Port com.

Where for example Simrail would send a message at a configurable interval from speed, pressure, voltage, amps etc.

And vice versa I could send him a message via arduino for example.

For example to change direction I would send a command:  Directions0, Directions1,Directions2
Directions0 - Backwars
Directions1 - Neutral
Directions2 - Fowards

But even better would be if I could set in simrail via a configuration file for example. That the Directions element is the letter A

and then only send the message A0, A1, A2

I use a similar system with Open Rails and TS22

 

[Deadlost]

Both sides up and running, enjoying some test drives and trying to drive hudless.

 

Edited January 3, 2024 by Deadlost

[Gazz292]

Not sure if anyone is interested, but i've made my Radmor style USB microphone a project others can build. 
Downloadable from Printables:

https://www.printables.com/model/869509-simrail-radmore-style-usb-microphone

 

You need to be able to 3D print a few parts and buy some electronics, everything is listed on the printables page above (no need to sign up to download) The electronic parts cost me around £30 from amazon (so should be cheaper elsewhere) and the 3D printed parts used about 150 grams of filament.

There are 2 solder joints for the MX keyboard switch, then everything is 'plug and play'  as the internals of my mic are based around a small USB hub that a mic dongle and single button microcontroller board plug into, that then plugs into a coiled USB extension, and it all fits inside the 3D printed mic housing. 

Pictures below show the internals of the mic, the electronic parts and the 3D printed parts, and the finished microphone.

 

Edited May 6, 2024 by Gazz292

[Conrad]

EN-57 version alpha

3D model - concept for 3d print

[Maciej_ZG]

Home cockpit play with Maszyna while waiting for I/O support in Simrail...

Edited August 21, 2024 by Maciej_ZG

[Gazz292]

Just posting a "little" update about what i've been doing with my controller project for the past year (my last post in may 2024 was just the Radmore style microphone being uploaded to the printables site) 

Basically i've done nothing much...
i have of course been using my controllers whenever i drive trains in SimRail, just i haven't been doing that as often as i wanted, and i hadn't turned my 3D printers on for over 8 months, let alone fired up fusion 360 to work on any models. 

The reason for this is some medication i am on can work a bit too well at times, it's supposed to reduce the adhd hyper states where i start loads of different projects at once and never finish any of them before starting another load of projects,
or deciding i want to sell the house and live as a hippy in a teepee in the woods.

So it basically made me enter a 'can't be arsed' stage where i lost interest in pretty much everything in life (on the plus side... it's amazing how much weight you can lose when you only eat 3 crackers with cheese a day) .... other medical issues compounded things, it's been a miserable year weather wise where i live, and cold damp weather just causes me more pain than usual. 
Pretending to drive trains in SimRail helped me stay relatively sane... and i still managed to annoy people with my lengthy posts on the forum and discord.

Then it was found i was very low on vitamin D (oohh err missus 😜) and i've had yet another pill added to my daily meds to combat this... possibly it's this that's kind of woken me up and got me back into wanting to make controllers again. 

.

So here we are, near the end of 2024, and today i finally started the 3D printers up again and fired up fusion 360, then started playing about at making a new SimRail button box. 

My current button box was built to screw to the edge of a tiny overbed laptop table i used to have, that's why it is vertical when it should be horizontal, with the buttons and switches spread out across 5 rows.
A change of bed to one with legs this time last year allowed me to get my much larger hospital overbed table out of storage, giving me much more room for controllers, but i simply placed the button box on the table to the left of my laptop and used it for a year. 
.

So my next project is to make a more realistic button box that better resembles the switch panel found to the left of the power controller in the EU07 type loco's... below is the basics of what it will be, this one is going to be sized to fit in the 260 x 140mm space i have between the left side of my laptop and the edge of the laptop desk, without blocking the GPU exhaust vents.
So again it's a compromise in size and the number of switches i can fit in, but the toggle 2 switches i've left out are for SHP and Czuwak light dimming, which do not have keybinds anyway. 
The push buttons i am using are 'only' 22mm outside diameter (the flat buttons having a 15mm actual button bit in the middle) so this is at least half the size of the real thing, but everything about this controller setup is sized to fit around a laptop on an overbed table, 
I will one day be making a full sized driving desk / cab after the input-output system is released for SimRail, that will be going in a room with my omsi bus driving cab and 3D printers.

I do want to share the model files for the controllers i have made somehow, sharing just the .stl files would mean it's very hard for others to modify anything, but i'm not sure on how to share the model files from fusion 360... and then there's the thing that i often go back and tweak things as the controllers are evolving, 
Also i have not got a specific scale for my current controllers, everything is a mix up to what space i have on my laptop desk, so the brake levers are larger than the power controllers regarding scale. 

Then the biggest thing, writing instruction on how to assemble everything, there's a lot of parts that all go together a particular way to make everything work, and i'd end up writing a 200 page instruction manual that covers every eventuality including what to do if an asteroid hits the earth whilst assembling the controller 🤪

 

Edited December 27, 2024 by Gazz292

[Gazz292]

I've now printed and assembled the new version of my main switch panel:

All switches and buttons work in SimRail except the brake delay mode rotary switch, and the train heating toggle switch, due to missing keybinds in SimRail... and as i mentioned before, i did not have room for the 'adjust axle forces' rotary switch, the SHP and Czuwak dimmer toggle switches, and the 'reserve' red mushroom button, none of those have keybinds either, so i'm not missing out on much right now.

The blue mushroom button on the front of the panel is the sanding button... these controllers are mounted on my overbed laptop desk, as i spend a lot of my life on my bed due to medical issues, i can't operate foot mounted switches on this set of controllers.

The panel lamps are not functioning yet... but they can be illuminated when a 5mm LED that fits in them is powered, below is one of the early versions of the panel lamp being tested on the electronics bench,
When we get the I/O system in SimRail, i will add another controller board and make the panel lamps functional:

I hate how the camera shows up light reflecting off the layers that you don't notice with your eyes, it's even worse when zoomed in... these indicator lamps measure only 18.5mm square!

I'm currently working on the design for the lighting switch panel, the main thing i'm stuck on is getting the angle is sits at right (TBH i think it'll look better at a shallower angle than reality to match my laptops screen angle) 

After all, these laptop switch panels are not 1:1 copies of the real thing, they are sized to fit in the space i have available on my laptop desk, and i've worked out the switch panels are about 1/2 scale (a real flat push button is ⌀46mm overall, with a ⌀30mm button, the ones i use in these panels are ⌀22mm overall, with ⌀15mm buttons) 

My brake levers and wipers button panel are closer to full size, and the power controller wheel and the EN57 controllers are sort of in-between somewhere, the main thing i wanted was to drive the trains at my laptop desk with controls that resemble those in a train, instead of using the keyboard and mouse. 

I have started modeling the full size buttons and switches, and the size difference really shows up here:

But a 1:1 size driving desk is what i had a 'simulator room' built for a few years back, it's currently housing my Omsi bus driving rig... which is still a work in progress 12 years after i started it, and about 5 years after i started re-building it 😞 
It's also got parts of my BR111 train drivers desk in it (that project is on indefinite hold, as i much prefer driving the wheel controller trains like the EU07 more than the lever ones) 
And that room is where the 3D printers, electronics bench, and my many plastic tubs of 'things i can't throw out, as they may come in useful one day' live, so it's not sitting empty whilst i play about making mini controllers, but one day it will have a full sized EU07 style driving desk in it.  


A panoramic shot to show how many containers of junk **important stuff** i have stored on the high level shelving around the room 🙈😬

[Gazz292]

 

The next switch box is finished and working : 

It's another 'compromise' box, utilising the space i have available around my laptop and is around half the size of the real thing.
i was able to include all the toggle switches found on this panel in an EU07 / EP08 of the older type with individual switches for the headlights, but i placed the 'Cab Activation' rotary switch a lot closer than it should be next to the lighting switch panel,

And i decided not to model a horizontal lift up flap to house the battery switch even tho i really wanted to (i need the space clear between these 2 switch boxes for my laptops GPU air vent) so the battery switch i mounted on the lower vertical panel ... that lower panel would not be there in the loco anyway.

i had to add that vertical part to raise the bottom of the angled switch panel to be at the bottom of my screen... i was hoping to make it look like the panel extended away from the edge of the panel on screen, but i think the view in SimRail makes that panel seem like it is at a much steeper angle than it is IRL (but i also chose to have my panel lean back 'only' 30 degrees)

.
I also had to buy a 0.15mm nozzle for one of my 3D printers to print the text on the switch labels, the text on them is rather small and i couldn't get the detail with the 0.25mm nozzles i had (which most people think are pretty tiny, the main box body is printed with a 0.6mm nozzle, and the switch panels are printed with a 0.4mm nozzle)
It took some tuning of things to get the text to print clearly, as 0.15mm nozzles are not 'mainstream' so there's no ready made profiles to use them, but i managed to work it out in the end and got the labels looking half decent i think :

The text labels are printed separately and glued into depressions in the panel, except the on/off 'Zał. / Wył.' arrow label, i couldn't put that where it should go on this panel as it would be under the 'handles' due to me compressing the width of the panel to make it fit in the space i had, so i printed that label at 0.2mm tall and glued it where it looked best, hence why that one looks raised. 

 The dimensions of one of the labels and letters to show how tiny they are... sizes are in millimeters :

And as usual, 'only' 8 of the toggle switches do anything in SimRail due to missing keybinds, but ones that do nothing are mostly for dimming functions, and i'd love to have all switches working, the internal light dimmer switches won't be much of a priority for getting keybinds (we need the heating switch keybind first for sure 🫠)

.
Next i am going to remodel my wiper switch panel, that one is pretty much full size... as i used an industrial switch and button similar to used in the real loco, so it looks odd now, i'll make it to match this switch panel, then mount it next to the other side of the screen. 
then i plan on re-making the flat switch panel, it is actually bugging me a lot that i have a missing rotary switch (adjust axle forces), 2 toggle switches (SHP and Czuwak dimmer) and a mushroom button (reserved... i.e. does nothing)

But i figure if i make the rotary switches a little bit smaller, and let the box hang over the edge of the table as much as the microphone hangs off the side of the lighting switch panel, the slightly larger box will allow it to all fit on. 

And finally i can get to making the half height radio i wanted to make ages ago, to give me the correct place to store my microphone and get rid of the cheapie 6 key plus rotary encoder thing i use to operate the radio atm.

 

Edited January 25 by Gazz292

[Conrad]

I would like to present a working element of the czuwak/shp lamp for EP/EU07.

The project runs on python and reads the pixel value and sends it to arduino to control the LED.

 

3d print

Case with acrylic 3mm and led module with dome.

 

How it works

 

 

 

[Gazz292]

I remade my wiper switch panel... the old one used full size industrial switches and was way out of scale with the rest of my switch panels, they look similar sized below, but they are 2 separate pictures taken at different times.

             

I took full advantage of the 0.15mm nozzle in one of my printers, and re-created the Spamel switch plate and knob that is used in the real trains, the real switch measures 64mm square, my version is 42mm square, and the comma's at each end of the Spamel text are 0.232mm wide by 0.5mm tall. 

I really wanted to include the power outlet for the timetable light, but i just didn't have the height on this panel to do that without making the switch far too small, but every switch panel has some compromise to make it fit into the space i have available and match the others roughly with scale, especially as the wiper panel is a copy of the lighting switch panel on the other side of my laptops screen.
I will make things without compromises when i make the full size versions one day.

.

An overview of what my laptop driving desk looks like today:

I had to lose the small tablet that used to sit where the lighting switch panel is now screwed down, that was mostly used with Touch Portal to give me stream deck like shortcut 'buttons' when designing things in fusion 360... i now have a real stream deck that i mount on one of my dovetail mounts on the front of the desk when i am using fusion and other programs that i use a lot of keyboard shortcuts with.

I did also use that small tablet with a live map showing multiplayer train positions in the sim when driving, 
I'm trying to drive 'more realistically' without using the livemap to show me what's ahead, but if i really want it back i can mount the small tablet above the switch panel maybe, or use a split screen with the larger tablet on the right that i usually show my laptops parameters on... GPU and CPU temps, FPS and so on,  (here that tablet is showing the camera feed for my 3D printers, as they are in another room, so i like to keep an eye on print progress whilst designing more things to print) 

.

Right now i am redesigning the main switch box:

i've added 30mm to the width, this makes it hang over the side of the table by that amount, but the microphone holder mounted on the side of the lighting switch box hangs off by that amount too, (The mic will be stored in that holder when i'm not driving a train, i will be making a 3D printed Radmor radio later that will slide onto the left hand dovetail mount when i am driving the EU07 style loco's, and when i drive the EN57 it will slide onto a mount on the front of my EN57's power and reverser controller, so the mic will sit in a holder on the front of the radio in the proper location when i am pretending to drive trains)

I've made the rotary switches more to scale with the rest of the parts, so i can now fit the correct 3 rotary switches on the panel (even if 2 of them have no keybinds in the sim (yet?)).... the panel is still a compromise, it needs to be about 75mm wider so the push buttons and panel lamps could be spaced out correctly, but i just don't have that much space on my desk.

I've made the new rotary switches so far, below they are mounted in a test panel i printed to check the alignment of everything:

They are 43mm diameter here, i am not sure the size of the original 'Unitra Eltra' switches as they are no longer made, so there's no company website with the dimensions of them listed like there is with the Spamel rotary, and Promet brand toggle switches and push buttons, so i am assuming they are around 65mm diameter like the Spamel square text plate style modern switches are. 

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And for the past few days i have been printing panel lamp lenses : 

On the right are ones printed with the cooling fan on, this makes the translucent PETG filament cloudy ☹️, the red ones to the left are printed with the cooling fan speed lowered until it's totally off, then the print temp raised to 250°C.
This gives a much clearer lens that you can actually see through, hence you can see the light diffusion dimples that are on the inside of the lenses.... just like you can on the real glass ones, but i am struggling now with supports fusing to the inside of the lens at this temp,

The last one on the left is printed without supports and the right side deformed as i was expecting (these get printed standing on their sides to produce a nice round curve, a great tip from Conrad who has been 3D printing his own near full size EU07 driving desk...  the image below is the lens in prusa slicer with no supports added yet)
 

So right now i am doing a test on my 5 head tool changer printer using PLA for supports, and the transparent PETG for the lens, these 2 materials print at different temperatures and do not stick together, so the supports will just pop off when it cools down leaving virtually no scarring, but PLA really needs the cooling fan on, so i'm trying to find a combo of no fan for the PETG toolhead and just enough fan for the PLA supports toolhead, 

The other 'issue' i'll have is the smallest nozzles i have for the tool changer printer are 0.25mm, verses the 0.15mm nozzle i have for the single head printer, nozzles that small are not that common, so i had to make my own profile to get it to work before i could try it, the detail it can produce is amazing, as shown with the switch text labels i printed in my last post.

So i may not get the detail / resolution i want with the 0.25mm nozzle.

Of course a smaller nozzle means slower prints, it takes 33 minutes to print a lens that is 'only' 13mm wide by 5mm tall (in it's normal orientation), that would take 8 minutes with a 0.4mm nozzle, and 11 minutes with a 0.25mm nozzle.
But not many of the intricate features would print properly with a larger nozzle... the light diffusion dimples are 1mm square bottomed pyramids that are 0.8mm tall, spaced 0.15mm apart.. that's less than the extrusion width of a 0.25mm nozzle... this is all my fault for making these parts so small.

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And as before, the panel lamps are designed to hold a 5mm LED to be functional, but i need to wait for the I/O system to be released to get that part working.

As shown in the post above this one, some people have managed to get some lights responding to the sim, one person uses a program that picks up when pixels for a light in the simulated cab changes, and this then turns on or off the leds in his SHP / Czuwak box, 
For that to work the on screen view of the trains cab needs to remain stationary, so it won't work for me as i use TrackIr, so my view of the cab and out the windscreen is always changing as i move my head. 

Other people are playing with reading memory locations that change when lights are turned on and off, but those memory locations can change with every restart of the sim, We really need the proper I/O API to access the data properly, like we had with Omsi
I've been told the devs are working on the I/O system and an early version could be released 'soon', there are quite a few people building driving desks out there, or have the real parts from a scrapped train that are waiting for this to happen, and they are all wanting to get the lights and gauges working with SimRail. 

Edited February 4 by Gazz292

[Gazz292]

The re-designed main switch panel:

The last version of this switch panel i made to fit the size of the desk space i have to the left of my laptop, and thus i had to leave out the rotary switch for 'Axle Force Compensation', the 'Reserved' red mushroom button and the SHP and Czuwak dimmer toggle switches, 
I figured as they don't have keybinds anyway i won't miss not having them, but it actually bugged me more than i thought it would, so i worked out that if i let the side of the panel hang over the desktop left edge by 30mm and make the rotary switches slightly smaller, i can fit everything in,
I also took the opportunity to slightly rearrange the spacing of the push buttons and panel indicators to make them resemble the real panel better. 

Adding the extra switches meant i needed 35 inputs* on the joystick board (which i convert into key presses that work with SimRail using the program JoyToKey), 
That's 5 more inputs than the 30 input pins the STM32f Blue-Pill microcontroller board has, luckily the joystick program i put on this board (FreeJoy) allows the use of shift registers to add up to 128 buttons using just 3 input pins (you can also add more buttons than input pins by arranging the button wiring in a matrix)

As i already had some 74HC165 shift register boards from another project (i also used one in the lighting switch panel) i simply added one of these boards to give me 8 more inputs, using up 3 just individual button inputs on the STM board.
Need more inputs? simply daisy chain more shift register boards together and they still use the same 3 pins on the STM board... a total of 16 shift registers can be daisy chained together giving 128 button inputs in total for a single joystick board,

FreeJoy aslo handles joystick axis, rotary encoders and other things on the other pins whilst having 128 buttons on shift registers, but i'm not using any of that with these switch panels,
i like using FreeJoy and JoyToKey for switch / button inputs as they use simple point and click GUI type programs to change things 'on the fly', rather than having to change the sketch text on an arduino every time you change the behaviour of one button input and re-program the board, where when i miss one comma out the whole sketch stops working and takes me hours to find the issue (but i do suck at programing)
i do use arduino's in my brake levers and power wheel, as i run a sketches on them that convert the levers movement into keyboard presses per degree the potentiometer is moved, that's something a joystick program can not do easily (AFAIK)
i really hope when we get the input / output module for SimRail it will do away with all that kind of bodgery and allow the sim to read joystick axis inputs directly.
 

The inside of this panel:

The board on the right with the led's lit is the STM32f Blue-Pill board running FreeJoy, and the little red board in the middle is the shift register module.. 5 wires run between the STM and shift register board.. +3.3 volts, Ground, and 3 'signal' wires (Clock, Latch and Data)
The white round things with holes are the threaded part of the panel lights bodies, the holes allow 5MM LED's to be pushed in them to illuminate the panel lights to be illuminated with the panel lights of the loco in the sim one day.
And the unconnected toggle switch top middle is one of the 2 switches for the 'headlight dimmer' switch, the switch lever has a link bar between them, so only one switch needs to be electrically connected here.

The panel is angled slightly to match the slope of my laptop (hence the ugly steps on the panels bottom... these are hidden by the bottom cover tho), and the big hole on the side allows the switch panel to slide over the 2 USB C ports on the side of the laptop, one of them having this board plugged into it, the other has a USB U adaptor in it, so i can plug things into that port from underneath the laptop (as the laptop sits on risers and the switch panels are screwed down to the desk)

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* Why 35 inputs when there are only 21 switches / buttons (lone thing is that the rotary switches have a total of 7 positions amongst them) each toggle switch is double pole, basically this means it's sends a separate signal when it's turned 'on' or 'off', rather than a single pole switch which sends a signal only when it's in the on position (freejoy can read if a single pole switch is being turned on or off [rising and falling edge detection] but it can only output the same joystick button press each time a single pole switch is moved)

So with using double pole switches there are 2 inputs needed to read each position / state, hence double the number of inputs are needed, this is handy as a lot of switch inputs in SimRail have 2 separate keybinds like the pantograph switches, one for up and a different one for down, as double pole switches are used in the real train (sometimes multi pole switches)
So as i need to read both states of the toggle switches separately for some of the switches, i decided to do it for all switches in the hope that the devs will implement separate on and off keybinds for every toggle / rotary switch in the sim one day (right now some of the keybinds for latching switches like the compressor, converter, headlight dimmer etc only have single keybinds, meaning it uses the same keybind for both on and off positions.

That's ok when using a keyboard button to switch them, but when you have real switches it means they can be sometimes end up working opposite in the sim to on your panel, then you have to press the keyboard button (or sue the mouse) to move the switch in the sim so they match. 

A common one is the headlight dimmer switch, if i've left my switch off when i last drove a train and next day drive a train that has this switch on when i take it over, then my switch will be working opposite to the one in the train each time i move it until i correct it.
Also if the sim misses an input... (which occasionally happens if you move a switch just as another players train loads in and you get that micro stutter) with the single input toggle switch keybinds the real switch and the sims switch is now out of sync. 

With 2 input toggle switch keybinds none of this matters, if the headlight dimmer was on and it missed the input when you turned it to off, turning the switch to on again will not move the switch in the sim as it's already in the on state, but it till move to off when you move the switch again to off. 

 

Anyway, i'm ranting now, and i've spent the last few weeks messing about with these switch panels, now i want to get some driving time in and get to use these switch panels.

[GoppelPL]

If you're looking to save space, you can skip the "REZERWA" buttons and switches - they are there for backup, if any other switch malfunctions - you simply lift the whole dashboard assembly, unscrew the button/switch and place it instead of the broken one. It won't look as complete, but will save you some space 🙂

[Gazz292]

i was wondering why there were 'reserve' buttons and switches in these trains,  i figured it was either for some feature not all versions of the train has, or just to fill a hole in the panel , thank you for the explanation... built in spare parts, these trains have everything🙂 

With the first version of the main switch panel i left out that rezerwa red mushroom button to save space,  but i put it in this one just to make the panel look complete, and i may end up using it one day... maybe emergency brakes or something until i 3D print an ackerman flap valve.

On the lighting switch panel, this has a 'rezerwa' toggle switch between the left and right tail light switches, and i ended up using it as the 'all headlights on / off' switch that SimRail has a keybind for.
i use this switch when driving EP08-013 which has rotary switches for head and tail lights which do not work with the keybinds for the individual toggle switch headlights in EP08-001,   when i have been sent on the left track i use the mouse to switch the left headlight to red, then when i'm back on the right track i will flip my 'Rezerwa' switch off and on to turn all headlights off and back on... instead of using the mouse to change the left headlight back to white... as i really hate having to use the mouse to operate things as it kills immersion big time 🙂

[Atoka220]

Your ingenuity and creativity is amazing. Besides being useful, it also looks great aestethically

Also your workshop is like every man's dream 😁

[Gazz292]

I really didn't like the anodized mushroom buttons and red and green sticky discs i was using to colour the flat buttons, so i decided to finally do something about it,
initially i tried 3D printing the mushroom knobs and flat button discs, but i just couldn't get them to my liking without having to sand and paint them, and in the end it made more sense to just paint the metal knobs and button discs (thankfully they pop out of the button bodies with a little persuasion from a spudger, as painting is something i hate and always make a mess of)

Photo taken with flash to show the shine on the buttons, but it over emphasises the texture of the switch box top, that is printed with a silk filament (silver black) on the textured print sheet to try and make it look like old metal. 

Edited yesterday at 12:04 AM by Gazz292

[Gazz292]

Soon after i started making controllers for my laptop table, i wanted to have the timetables displayed next to my laptop's screen so i can drive with the HUD turned off.
Of course simply printing the timetables out was too easy, so i chose to display them electronically using an e-ink display,
Why an e-ink display?  using a device with a screen that uses a backlight is not great when driving at night for showing a white paper timetable, it's like shining a torch in your eyes unless you use dark mode, and that destroys the illusion of there being a paper timetable present i think. 

At first i tried to use an old kindle paperwhite but i soon gave up with it, it had poor resolution, was a pain to send it .pdf files and display them how i wanted, let alone sort them in folders by advancing service number.
And the biggest problem... i wanted to mount it upside down, but after a forced update the 180° screen rotation option was removed, that update also removed the option to turn the frontlight totally off as well 🤬

So i chose to use a 6 inch 'Kobo Clara HD' black and white e-ink reader instead, i run the open source 'KOReader' on the Kobo which does all sorts of things like easy drag and drop .pdf files in folders with the sorting you want, and it has a great reflow feature to easily alter the size of everything on the screen to make the timetables fill the screen perfectly, 
Thankfully to get KOReader running on the Kobo was as easy as dragging and dropping a file to it when connected to USB, something i can just about manage to do 😊

I mounted the Kobo in a cheap universal phone holder that positioned it to the right of my laptops screen, behind my 3D printed train brake valve, in sort of the position it would be in the EU07:

Then i started to make my own timetables in excel just before SimRail.express released their timetables that are shown in the cabs of the trains in the sim. 
I really struggle at this sort of thing, but thankfully my dad used to use excel every day and helped me a lot, and i eventually managed to make a few sets of timetables for the trains i drive the most.
I made my own versions of the timetables for 2 reasons, the main one being so i could size everything to fit on the small 6 inch screen and still be readable, to do this i did not include the repeated columns on the right hand side that show the trains weight, length, brake % etc (i show this once on the front page of each timetable instead) 
I also display it as if the timetable paper has been folded in half, again due to screen size, i just tap the right or left side of the Kobo's screen to display the next or previous page in the timetable, and tapping at the top of the screen allows me to access the main folder to select the timetable for the service i am driving.

And the second reason for making my own version of the timetables,  i wanted to included the temporary speed limits that are not shown on real timetables (they would be shown on a seperate paper, as IRL they change quite often)
I added the temporary speed limits because i have memory issues, and i just can not memorise the route and speed limit locations even after 2 years of playing SimRail.

:

So that's how i displayed the timetables when driving in the sim for well over a year, but all along i had an idea to make the Kobo look like it was a piece of paper on a timetable stand in the cab of the train.
Over the last few months i'd been playing about designing a 3D printed case to house the screen from the Kobo, so it looks like the timetable stand found in Polish loco's with a cutout for the screen to show through as if it was a page of a paper timetable sitting on the stand.

Unfortunately the screen is larger than the cutout, and has electronics on the sides and top, so it has to sit behind the front panel and will always look like a screen behind a hole in a piece of plastic, but if you squint your eyes it can almost look as i hoped it would:

I'd already made a slightly larger version of my wiper control panel to include room for the timetable light cable gland.
The wire from the gland to the light is a white headphone cable, the 3.5mm stereo jack plug is hidden inside the 3D printed cable gland, with a panel mount 3.5mm socket mounted in the wiper switch panel, so i can unplug the cable if needed.

The inline switch housing is again 3D printed... my laptop controllers are about half the size of the real things, so an off the shelf inline switch would be way out of scale, the actual rocker switch in the inline housing measures just 15mm x 8mm
The ebay listing had lots of feedback from people moaning they are a lot smaller than they thought, one even said it melted when they used it to switch 50 watt bulb!! 🤯 But it was the perfect size for my needs, and is only switching half a watt at 5 volts.

And of course the timetable illumination light works:

For now all i've done is take power from the arduino inside the wiper switch panel, +5v runs up one wire in the cable to the switch, which interrupts the power when off, and when the switch is turned on it sends the +5v to a 75mm length of warm white COB LED tape that's fixed inside the lamp shade, the return from the LEDs goes down another of the wires to ground.

But i also connected the 3rd wire in the headphone cable to the switched terminal of the switch, so later on i can connect that wire to an input pin on the wiper panels arduino, Then this can turn the timetable light in the sim on and off with my real switch (if we get a keybind for the timetable light that is)
I will also then connect the ground wire via a mosfet to an arduino output pin, and when we have the I/O system i can have the timetable light turn off with all the other lights if the loco's battery is turned off and stuff like that... for once in my life i'm actually thinking ahead 😮

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You may have noticed the train number on the timetable in last 2 pictures says 14143, i have yet to update them for the timetable update we got a few months ago, the important info is there like the positions of the speed limits and stations, but of course the times are off due to tightening up of the schedules etc, and the service numbers have changed to reflect that SimRail now shows the actual start and end stations for the whole timetable as it is done IRL.
But i've forgotten how i made the timetables in excel, so need my dad's help again to change them.

Edited 2 hours ago by Gazz292

[jodbara]

There's a spelling mistake in the word 'WYCIERACKZA'. Other than that, it looks amazing.

 

 

[Gazz292]

5 hours ago, jodbara said:

There's a spelling mistake in the word 'WYCIERACKZA'. Other than that, it looks amazing.

 

Thankyou for pointing that out.
it took me a while to even spot which letters i'd transposed, but eventually i found i'd got the K and Z near the end mixed up.