Welcome to the second of six blog posts in support of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W Roadtest. The blog posts will explore different aspects of the product while attempting to engage the E14 Community members. Comments and questions to the blog posts are welcomed and encouraged. The blog posts will serve as the resources for assembling the RoadTest Review document.
The project objective is to pair a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W with a camera, assemble it on a HO scale model railroad car with a power source and stream or record video of the train in motion.
I confess I don't enjoy playing with model trains. My playing or rather making with model trains involves creating animation on model railroad layouts using technology. Since I don't do trains, I engaged the model railroaded community to come up with a design to transport the Pi2W and camera assembly.
The initial napkin design was limited. The railroaders just looked at a rail car to carry the load and are done with it. I suggested that their idea was short-sighted. A camera on a rail car would be cool to take to train shows. They could video record people as the train passed and display the content on a monitor. I suspect their initial design response was to just find a solution and go back to playing with the trains. I try not to create stuff that can have practical applications post-development. After some encouragement (i.e. another round of beers on me) the railroaders started throwing out ideas and came up with a more workable solution.
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IMAGE TITLE: Assembly 1 |
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IMAGE TITLE: Assembly 2 |
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IMAGE TITLE: Assembly 3 |
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IMAGE TITLE: Assembly 4 |
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IMAGE TITLE: Assembly 5 |
After looking at a number of different rail cars, it was decided the Well Car, a rail car that carries pup freight boxes worked best. My wish was to place the camera inside a passenger car or a locomotive. I know little about HO model scale. The locations I selected were not ideal because of the limited space inside the cars. Tandem Well Cars accommodated the load.
Did I mention the load has gotten bigger? The plan was to have just a PiZero2W, camera and power source. The railroaders asked to make the camera movable. Now the camera is on a motorized mount controllable from the Pi. The plan is to create a container shroud that will cover the load. Model railroaders are focused on making things look real. I will check in occasionally to follow progress while the model railroaders play with a physical implementation.
I have pointed out the need for physical access requirements for things like power and GPIO as they consider the finished design. You can see they have asked to incorporate a motor to reposition the camera. My focus will be generating image content. Rinding the rails is not my primary focus. I have no doubt the railroad community will make the load transportable. I suggested to the physical transport designers that if the PiZero2W is not up to the task may be the load will have to be a Pi4.
The next blog post will be Riding-the-Rails with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W: Introduction Model Pi Stuff. This will examine computer hardware/software requirements for the project, provide a short history lesson of the Pi Zero and explore the technical design decisions.
