here we go with more questions and
answers and some useful information from
our viewers so let's see what we could
learn today I'm Tom Kvichak and this
is Toms Trains and Things this channel
was created to help other modelers who
are in need of guidance in pursuing
their dream of building a model railroad
and we have a lot of questions and even
more answers in this Q&A session but
before we get to that I want to say
thank you to everyone who has
contributed on patreon and on PayPal me
I'll have their names listed right over
here that's a big thank you to all of
you these videos would not be possible
without your contribution now let's get
to the Q&A here I did a series of videos
on the Raspberry Pi and DC c++ and j MRI
and a lot of these questions and answers
pertain to that there's a few more that
are on older videos but the first one is
from Guzzi alpha I hope I'm pronouncing
that right how do you configure the
resolution with the Raspberry Pi now I
did a video using the VNC and I showed a
little bit on there about how to do it
to change the resolution on the
Raspberry Pi I have this connected up to
the VNC
right now so we'll just go over here to
the main menu go down to preferences and
see Raspberry Pi configuration and when
you bring that up resolution you could
set your resolution in here and in this
drop-down see I have it set as 1280 to
720 by 720
now the default on air 720 by 480 which
makes things really big
to be able to see all the menus in there
that the very top of the menus I had to
change it to 1280 by 720 okay this one's
from Russ rats Minh where do you get the
motor shields for the DC c++ everybody's
been out of stock of the good motor
shields except for Pulu Lou I'll give
you the link for Pulu Lou in the
description but Arduino now has the
motor shields back in stock to 22
dollars u.s. so you can get them there
I've been reading up on users claiming
that they were able to use the DF robot
motor shield for DC C++ I've been
reading into it a little bit I went and
ordered one it's only 1650 from DF robot
from the description it looks like they
use the same pins as the arduino motor
shield for their for the PWM and the
output to the motors so I think that one
will will work now the other one was
deek-robot now I had a couple of people
tell me that they got it and they used
it even back then when I had this
comment about four months ago I told him
that they had the 293 instead of the 298
293 is left less amperage but they could
but both of them claimed that they had
to 298 I couldn't even find it onto deke
robot back then or now they only missed
one and that's the the 293 chip but
Pololu Arduino deke robot with a reduced
amperage and I'm gonna be testing out
the DF robot one pretty soon as soon as
I get it in Troy's Simpson can the
Raspberry Pi do no keyboard and monitor
like the PI sprog I wasn't familiar with
what the PI sprog could do but I went
and checked into it and from what I
learned since then that and this will
come up in
other questions yes you can do that
without a keyboard without a mouse and
without a monitor how you use VNC to
hook up my tablet so I can operate it
you can also start J MRI when the
Raspberry Pi boots up and I'll do a
video on that coming up pretty shortly I
have a follow-up question on or a
follow-up comment on that I'll leave
that one for last that's the real good
one with the good really good
information on it okay the next one is
Mike Peterson how many trains can be run
on DC C++ and what I told them on the
arduino motor shield it's rated at two
amps the pallulah motor shield has one
rated at three amps one rated at five
amps per channel regular DCC they have
systems that run at 3 amps at 5 amps and
you could get boosters adding on to that
there's a lot of factors involved and
I'm right here I got a withrottle
setup I got my DCC on the Raspberry Pi
mm-hmm I just need an engine driver on
here so I got a new icon on there so
we'll open that up and we'll bring up
leaking Creek will select and I don't
have an address on this one yet so I'll
just put in 3 come down here aquire
just to make sure we have it there we go
okay so we're going to go in forward now
we're going to watch over here if I turn
the withrottle off let's just turn it
off right here and we can watch the
amperage okay so you can see the
amperage drops down as soon as we turn
it on
we have 0.09 so what I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna run this forward but I'm gonna
hold it and we're gonna see how many
amps it draws right now it's at point
ten so we're gonna go bring it up to
about 20 and I'm holding it and see we
got about point two one I'll just put a
little bit of pressure up on the top say
they may be 0.25 in an amp at the most
so if you had four locomotives like that
running with a load on it you're only
gonna be drawn about one amp so I'd say
you could easily run eight locomotives
on there and still be within your limit
of two amps on this raspberry pi right
here on the motor shield I have it set
at 12 volts
usually you would set your H o scale on
DCC to mop 16 well this ranges from 7 to
12 volts you could go up to 18 volts
safely let's go up to 16 volts on here
okay we got 16 volts 0.08 to begin with
and let's crank this up we'll go up to
20 100 20 20 20
so slightly less point point two at the
most
muskan a little bit of pressure on the
top of it
okay so point two so I would say if you
want to want it to be on the safe side I
would get the Pulu Lu which can handle
the three amps plus it can go up a
higher voltage on it this on the specs
this says seven to twelve volts on the
motor side but it says you could you
know you could push it all the way up to
18 I don't really like to push it I mean
I can if I want to and you could still
run eight locomotives on it easily
James Smith okay this is one I did on
the scale where I was using I used my
cell phone as a reference to calibrate
the scale okay
he says use a brand new nickel it's 5
grams and I said hi I said thank you
and what's the good idea is whenever
you're calibrate or whenever you're
doing a reference for a scale it's it's
a good idea to do a low reference and a
high reference George Gilliam now he
really didn't say what kind of problem
he was having he says the DF player
won't work okay well I you know I said
well if you're referring to the easy
sound effects he wanted me to send him a
diagram I says there is a reference in
the description like whenever I do a
video that has some technical
information in there I always put that
link in the description for whatever I'm
doing I have a link to my website on
there where I have Arduino Made Easy and
Arduino projects so you could always
reference it there and you can always
reference
go down in the description and see if
there's a reference in there for
whatever project I'm doing all right Joe
G has two of them can you use DC C++ for
just programming
with another system yes you can you
could use it for just programming and
it's really good at programming like I
did on my first video with it it does it
better than what I had set up for my
digitrax because with my digitrax going
through the pr3 and doing it on jmr i
trying to program something it would
just it was real slow but with the DC
c++ setup program track you don't need
to pr3 ya and hook it straight up to it
when your program doesn't that goes
right down the line
so it's really fast yes you could use it
that way and I would prefer programming
with the DC c++ rather than trying to do
it with the the throttle with the pr3 or
even through the j MRI with the pr3
because the DC c++ is a lot faster a lot
more reliable okay his second problem he
he's trying to get into the DC c++ he
bought himself a new arduino uno a
generic one and a generic motor shield -
anyway he asked me the question he
bought it you know r3 atmega328 a with a
CH 340 chipset in it and he says every
time he plugs in the USB it crashes his
computer and I told him to go back and
look on the page where he bought it to
see if they have a driver for that
particular one because the CH 340
chipset is different than the regular
you know I had the same problem when I
had the Nano I had to get a driver for
one of my computer's I think my older
computer my newer my computer would that
had the Windows 10 didn't have a problem
reading it but my older computer with
Windows 7 on it I had to get the driver
for the CH 340 chipset and he wrote back
and he says that that did the trick
ok now my last one is a comment with
really good useful information it goes
back to Troy Simpsons can you do without
the keyboard the mouse and the monitor
like honest Prague just boot up and go
directly to your throttle now this is
from Steve Todd now when I first looked
at the name I didn't really recognize it
until he started talking a little bit on
the comments he's the gentleman the
wrote the engine-driver app and he has
on his web on his web page he has a
pre-configured image for the Raspberry
Pi that will work with J MRI and any DCC
system do you have even D C C++ he has a
configured that it will check for
whatever system you have and within a
few minutes you'll be able to use your
cell phone as a throttle with that
system and I'll put the link in the
description here for everyone to see
he says they use it at his club and it
works well they just turn a power on and
within a few minutes everybody is using
their throttle for that system so that's
what I have I think that was nine
comments questions and information
they're coming up I have I've been
working on this I've been doing a little
bit of painting on this and I you know I
got it to look a little bit better than
you know what it looks like out of the
box and this is almost finished I have
to do a little bit more weathering on it
and I had an issue with it and I'm gonna
show you in a short video coming up
sometime this week and also I'm showing
that on one of the model railroading for
beginners on how to do that so that's
all we have for right now so until the
next time
we'll see ya!   here's my list for today
it's not gonna take that long unless I
start rambling
