The Randall Museum in San Francisco hosts a large HO-scale model model railroad. Created by the Golden Gate Model Railroad Club starting in 1961, the layout was donated to the Museum in 2015. Since then I have started automatizing trains running on the layout. I am also the model railroad maintainer. This blog describes various updates on the Randall project and I maintain a separate blog for all my electronics not directly related to Randall.
2024-12-16 - Ambiance
Category RandallI’ve just installed “Ambiance” on the layout, a LED fairy light string which is controlled by the train automation computer:
I’ve been working on that little project for a while. It is built around an ESP32 embedded controller running a custom software. The automation computer can send configurable light patterns and animation to the controller, which in turns controls the lights.
The lights will vary depending on the season. For example right now I have a simple green/red pattern, whilst around Halloween I will have a yellow/orange pattern:
On top of that, there’s an animation that is triggered when one of the automated trains departs the station.
Here’s the current effect in action:
The ESP32 “Ambiance” software can be found here: https://bitbucket.org/model-railroad/ambiance