Little things that go wrong...

Who has shorted the 5Vdc supply to GND on the Nano?

And now it does not even show the power LED, or it is on very dim?
You simply destroyed the MBR0520 diode, labeled D1 in the "+5V Auto Selector" circuit on the board.

How to fix?

Either order another replacement MBR0520LT1G, 0.5A, 20V, Schottky Diode, or promise yourself to never, ever short Vcc to GND again and solder a jumper in!

Diode labeled B2

Getting less expensive Arduinos from Ebay?

Well, a lot of times the USB connector is not soldered properly and you get intermittent power or data to the ATMEGA chip.

How to fix?

Touch all the pins up with a solder iron and flux.

Not RRRduino, unless you have an MQTT connection via Ethernet or WiFi

JMRI code to connect to an MQTT broker, to publish and subscribe to the messages for signal masts. Of course, we agree to a standard for the MQTT topics, and since you were not here, we settled on "mast.xxxx" where xxxx is a number starting at zero. This MQTT topic is used as the User Name in a JMRI signal mast. Created as a Virtual Mast with the Aspect used as the payload in the message. And, yes, the device under the real mast needs to be programmed with the same name and code for each of the "aspect" payloads to be implemented. A yellow and red LED'd dwarf signal can not do a "Clear" aspect, so make sure "Clear" is maybe set to yellow for "Approach" as well. Virtual Masts with agreed upon User Names. Comments are for the One Wire Signals on the NeoPixel string (see prior post) Virtual Mast The Jython (or Python) code shown here below, is to attach a Listener to each Signal Mast, and to publish a message

Pi Pico, we smell competition in the land of the RRRduino!

Pi Pico on an N-scale gondola Pi Pico, we smell competition in the land of the ‘duino! Our very favorite low cost microcontroller system is seeing some fresh competition. Everyone by now has heard about the Raspberry Pi, some fruity company in the United Kingdom, making single board computers! They run Raspbian (or other flavors of Linux and are capable of some Windows versions) for as little money as $10 for the Pi Zero W. The more popular Model 4, with 2 GB of RAM, retails for about $29. Add a $5 micro SD card and you have a real computer with which you can surf the internet, write code and even program Arduinos. It also runs our other favorite, JMRI. Of course, plug it into a small or big screen television with an HDMI cable and you can even stream Netflix. If you want a really cool computer built into a keyboard, also check out the brand new, Raspberry Pi 400 , you might just think you own a ZX Spectrum again. These are all “computers” with processors and now the Raspberry

The One Pin Signal System, using an Arduino

The One (RRRduino) Pin Signal System! Part I NeoPixels: Yes, you read that right, you can control a whole signal system with up to 200 lights by using a single Arduino pin. And this was not my idea, all the credit and the patent goes to my friend Tom, but since I already had something using the same technology up and running using only a Nano, I do not feel too bad telling you about it. Short video first! There is a tiny 8 pin chip out there called a WS2811 which is a three channel LED driver, and you might find them on the interweb as NeoPixel LED Driver Chips. They need power and ground, typically 5 Vdc, and data to be put in the three registers inside the chip, one for each LEDs it can control. So, in most cases out there today, the LEDs connected are Red, Green and Blue (RGB for short) and by setting the three registers each with an 8 bit value (which in English means a value from 0 to 255, since 2 8 = 256, but since 0 is an acceptable value too, the maximum is 2 8 - 1

Everything Model Railroad and RRRduino!

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