DCC++ Nextion Displays - Direct Base Station Control.

UK Steve Apr 14, 2017

  1. UK Steve

    UK Steve TrainBoard Member

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    Keith,

    Pleased it was of some use. If you need any questions answering, just fire away.
    What really surprised me with these displays, is just how powerful the interpreter, embedded in the STM32 really is. Hats off to the design team at Itead for sure. Having had around a year now to get to know the Editor software, I've been able to do some pretty cool stuff. Not that much of it has any practical use, but from a learning view point, it's been real fun and thought provoking:)
     
    Scott Eric Catalano likes this.
  2. esfeld

    esfeld TrainBoard Member

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    Steve/Keith
    Since you got it working, want to give me a hint about how you hooked it up to a base station? I’m confused, (as usual) are you then giving up on a wireless throttle?
    Steve F
     
    Scott Eric Catalano likes this.
  3. UK Steve

    UK Steve TrainBoard Member

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    Hi Steve,

    The simplest connection would be Nextion TX (Blue wire) to Base Station RX (Pin 0).
    However you could do 2 way comms if the return info was important to the user, would need BS code mods though.
    HC12 radio is another route as described in Dave's design.
    Simple ESP WiFi bridge is also possible and does away with any need to have programming knowledge of such.
    ESP01's usually come pre-configured to do WiFi-Serial

    No, I've not given up on my wireless (WiFi) design as it does so much more with it's remote updates and such as you know well:)
    The main point here, was that one can build a functional throttle without the thousand lines of 'C' on an intermediate MCU.
    The Nextion Instruction Set has after many hours of fun experiments, turned out to be a simple yet very powerful tool.
     
    Scott Eric Catalano likes this.
  4. esfeld

    esfeld TrainBoard Member

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    Got it ..... my next goal would be altering arduino throttle code to be able to access both an hc12 and a nodemcu base station .. then I wouldn't have to change base station stacks while experimenting with both throttle technologies ........
    Steve F
     
    Scott Eric Catalano likes this.
  5. UK Steve

    UK Steve TrainBoard Member

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    Hi All,

    Having had a little time to play around with interrupt code and finding some limitations in Nextions GPIO implementations, plus the rather impractical way of connecting to the pins (needs rather obscure and relatively expensive hardware), I've decided it is not the way to go for this type of design.
    I have to say that if a rotary encoder is to be included in a design, then the best way forward is with a $3 pro mini, to read the 'Gray code' and pass on the +/- instruction to the display. This can be achieved with some real simple code, and we get a bonus means of reformatting Base Station replies to forward to Nextion should a design require such features.
     
    Scott Eric Catalano likes this.
  6. Erik84750

    Erik84750 TrainBoard Member

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    Very interesting thread. I am so surprised this seems to have died. The Nextion display could serve in extraordinary ways, combining throttle, turnout command display, sensor feedback display....
    I hope somewhere, somehow, this may be developped further...
     
  7. Erik84750

    Erik84750 TrainBoard Member

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    In case UK_Steve is around:
    what changes are needed in the Arduino DCCpp ino file?
     

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