Love your work, Hans! Just purchased my first IOTT stick and purple hat kit. Going to test this in my G scale engine, hope to use it with magnetic reed switches and JMRI to implement block occupancy detection and automated control. So many possibilities!
For the moment it is just a distance/speed sensor. Once the IMU is supported, it will be able to report the location on the layout. To activate reed switches, you probably need an extra magnet on the car as the direction of the field of the sensor magnet changes. The reed switch could miss it, but you will have to try it out.
Hi Hans, Thank you for all the videos on the purple hat it is just what I need to profile my fleet of locomotives, As I am in UK the postal charges are prohibitive from the US so I have sourced the parts in England and I will be building my vehicle in the near future. The IoTT stick looks really impressive and I am currently watching all your videos on that subject. ...............John
Received my purple hat and iott stick yesterday. Installation was very easy and its working great. I'm going to try my first speed calibration today. The bent ends of interface pins sticking through the board seem to fit nicely in-between the simulated wood joints on a LGB 4010 2 axle flat car with the sensor right over the center of the axle. I'm excited for this upgrade to the purple hat. Up to this point I had a magnetic bicycle speedometer mounted to the car to measure speed and distance. The automated nature of the purple hat is going to save me lots of time.
Sounds cool. I never thought about using a bicycle speedometer for this. But then, for N scale it probably does not work ;-) Btw: Since you have plenty of space, you might think about using an additional battery to make it work longer.
@@IoTT Yes I am thinking of adding the battery. I did run out of power just before I actually got to do a calibration, although I did get alot of nice measurements before that. Do you have any suggestions? I think I saw in the video that you were using one.
Great stuff Hans. Just ordered the PCB from JLCPCB, well 5 actually as minimum order. Happy to supply to anybody in UK for postage costs As I only want 1 or 2.
I recently purchased the PurpleHat and I'm working on putting together an N scale set up. I didn't want to cut up a box car, so I decided to use a flat car. I can only seem to find N scale flat cars with metal decks, though. The one I bought doesn't seem to be ferrous, because I can't get a magnet to stick to it. I'm assuming the car is made of aluminum, since that's probably the most logical metal to use for something like this. Do you think the sensor will work properly through non-ferrous metal?
General question about the IoTTStick when using with PurpleHat. How long does it run on it's internal battery and how long does it take to change? Just wondering how many locos I can do before it runs out.
With the IoTT Stick Plus it runs about 20 Mins. Charging takes about twice the run time as the charging current is limited to about 80mA by the Stick BMS. To get longer operating times you can add an external 3.7V Li-Ion battery.
@@IoTT Thanks. Does one of the screens show the charging status? I see an info screen, but not sure if one of those lines is a good indication of battery state.
The info screen shows the battery voltage and the battery current. If the battery is fully charged, the voltage should be at 4.2V and the current is zero. When you discharge, it shows a negative battery current, and a positive value when charging. The cutoff is when the battery voltage is around 3.7V, if I remember right. That's when the Stick will shut down to prevent low voltage discharge of the battery.
looking forward to building this but I'm having difficulty sourcing the Hall sensor as listed - do you think I could replace with TLE493DA2B6HTSA1 from Infineon ?
There are good chances it will work. The pinout is not identical, but seems compatible as the PurpleHat does not use the interrupt feature. Should be easy to replace the TMAG driver by one for this chip and adapt the Stick software.
Really interesting. I look forward to making this in the near..ish future! Is there any way to get a screen saver on the IoT stick? I’m concerned that the screen may suffer from extended periods lit with text onscreen.
I tried dimming it in the software, but it was not convincing. On the other hand, it is all LED background light, so there is no risk. I have one running for more than one year without shutdown and there is no problem with the display.
@@IoTT I have just updated the firmware to 1.5.10 and I see all the hats in the dropdown including Purple Hat. However, when I subsequently load up my settings file that I saved to include my MQTT server details I notice that the purple hat option and a couple of the red hats (I think) are no longer visible from the dropdown menu in the first page of the configuration on my web browser. Would this be a bug or am I missing something....?
Looks like this is a bug. Here is a workaround: - Load 1.5.10 - Save just the node configuration to a file: Go to the Node configuration tab and hold the CTRL key down while clicking on Save To File. This will cause the Stick to only save the Config part, but not all the other data - Load your old data file - Load the newly created Configuration file The Stick should now have the correct config options and your data loaded. Please try and let me know the results.
This is absolutely awesome. One could build this into an LNER dynamometer car, and so have the car fulfil it's actual purpose!
Or combine it with a good IMU and you can actually use it to draw your track plan. Watch here: th-cam.com/video/xracbWHlD6M/w-d-xo.html
Love your work, Hans! Just purchased my first IOTT stick and purple hat kit. Going to test this in my G scale engine, hope to use it with magnetic reed switches and JMRI to implement block occupancy detection and automated control. So many possibilities!
For the moment it is just a distance/speed sensor. Once the IMU is supported, it will be able to report the location on the layout. To activate reed switches, you probably need an extra magnet on the car as the direction of the field of the sensor magnet changes. The reed switch could miss it, but you will have to try it out.
Yep, another excellent demo and useful capability
Hi Hans, Thank you for all the videos on the purple hat it is just what I need to profile my fleet of locomotives, As I am in UK the postal charges are prohibitive from the US so I have sourced the parts in England and I will be building my vehicle in the near future. The IoTT stick looks really impressive and I am currently watching all your videos on that subject. ...............John
Thank you. Yes, the Stick has come a long way, and more is on the way ;-)
Received my purple hat and iott stick yesterday. Installation was very easy and its working great. I'm going to try my first speed calibration today. The bent ends of interface pins sticking through the board seem to fit nicely in-between the simulated wood joints on a LGB 4010 2 axle flat car with the sensor right over the center of the axle. I'm excited for this upgrade to the purple hat. Up to this point I had a magnetic bicycle speedometer mounted to the car to measure speed and distance. The automated nature of the purple hat is going to save me lots of time.
Sounds cool. I never thought about using a bicycle speedometer for this. But then, for N scale it probably does not work ;-)
Btw: Since you have plenty of space, you might think about using an additional battery to make it work longer.
@@IoTT Yes I am thinking of adding the battery. I did run out of power just before I actually got to do a calibration, although I did get alot of nice measurements before that. Do you have any suggestions? I think I saw in the video that you were using one.
Any 3.7V LiIon will do. See here: myiott.org/index.php/iott-stick/user-manual/iott-stick-core-2/installation
Great stuff Hans.
Just ordered the PCB from JLCPCB, well 5 actually as minimum order. Happy to supply to anybody in UK for postage costs As I only want 1 or 2.
Cool. Let us know when you have it working!
I would be interested!
I would be interested if you have a few pcbs spare!
Great work Hans. Looking forward to get mine and test it out.
It's on the way. Only a matter of USPS and customs ;-)
I recently purchased the PurpleHat and I'm working on putting together an N scale set up. I didn't want to cut up a box car, so I decided to use a flat car. I can only seem to find N scale flat cars with metal decks, though. The one I bought doesn't seem to be ferrous, because I can't get a magnet to stick to it. I'm assuming the car is made of aluminum, since that's probably the most logical metal to use for something like this. Do you think the sensor will work properly through non-ferrous metal?
That should not be a problem at all.
General question about the IoTTStick when using with PurpleHat. How long does it run on it's internal battery and how long does it take to change? Just wondering how many locos I can do before it runs out.
With the IoTT Stick Plus it runs about 20 Mins. Charging takes about twice the run time as the charging current is limited to about 80mA by the Stick BMS. To get longer operating times you can add an external 3.7V Li-Ion battery.
@@IoTT Thanks. Does one of the screens show the charging status? I see an info screen, but not sure if one of those lines is a good indication of battery state.
The info screen shows the battery voltage and the battery current. If the battery is fully charged, the voltage should be at 4.2V and the current is zero. When you discharge, it shows a negative battery current, and a positive value when charging. The cutoff is when the battery voltage is around 3.7V, if I remember right. That's when the Stick will shut down to prevent low voltage discharge of the battery.
looking forward to building this but I'm having difficulty sourcing the Hall sensor as listed - do you think I could replace with
TLE493DA2B6HTSA1 from Infineon ?
There are good chances it will work. The pinout is not identical, but seems compatible as the PurpleHat does not use the interrupt feature. Should be easy to replace the TMAG driver by one for this chip and adapt the Stick software.
Sounds positive, but could you recommend another alternative that does require a rewrite of software. Seeing as that is beyond my capabilities!
Really interesting. I look forward to making this in the near..ish future! Is there any way to get a screen saver on the IoT stick? I’m concerned that the screen may suffer from extended periods lit with text onscreen.
I tried dimming it in the software, but it was not convincing. On the other hand, it is all LED background light, so there is no risk. I have one running for more than one year without shutdown and there is no problem with the display.
@@IoTT I have just updated the firmware to 1.5.10 and I see all the hats in the dropdown including Purple Hat. However, when I subsequently load up my settings file that I saved to include my MQTT server details I notice that the purple hat option and a couple of the red hats (I think) are no longer visible from the dropdown menu in the first page of the configuration on my web browser. Would this be a bug or am I missing something....?
Looks like this is a bug. Here is a workaround:
- Load 1.5.10
- Save just the node configuration to a file: Go to the Node configuration tab and hold the CTRL key down while clicking on Save To File. This will cause the Stick to only save the Config part, but not all the other data
- Load your old data file
- Load the newly created Configuration file
The Stick should now have the correct config options and your data loaded. Please try and let me know the results.
@@roydom5 Problem is fixed, please get the latest 1.5.11
@@IoTT looking good. Thank you
Is there a way to do one in n scale?
Did you watch the video?