Signalman's Panel is Progressing

This week I was struggling to get motivated to do much work.  I spent a lot of time watching replays from the Commonwealth Games during the day and live stuff at night.  However on Tuesday I started work on wiring in the wires from the first lot of rear RJ45 connections on my Signalman’s panel for CAT5 cables to be plugged into the signalman’s panel internals.  On Tuesday I spliced in Port 1.  On Wednesday I did ports 2, 3 and 4. 

While playing with the Signalman’s panel, it occurred to me that when I tried to set the B1 Signal to Held, no message was displayed on the signalman's screen.  I thought that the wire inside the panel had come adrift so I went looking.  I could not find anything amiss.  Then it dawned on me that when I last changed the Arduino code that I might have rationalised it too much and removed that message being written to the display.  I then checked the code and I was correct.  I just need to spend some time working out what the circumstances should be to display that message again.  I think I have adjusted the code correctly but I have yet to upload the code to the Arduino and test it in anger.  Maybe next week.

On Saturday I spent a small amount if time in the shed and cut up some thin MDF to form lids on two of my recently acquired storage tray frames.  I have now done a bit of a re-arrangement and placed two more storage trays frames into the shed.

Sunday included a trip to Jaycar to buy some more Rj45 CAT6 sockets so I can punch in the various CAT5 wires into the sockets ready to do the DOWN port connections.  However, they had only one.  I placed an order for another 10.  Hopefully I will get these in about a week.  It is now time to strip a few short lengths of CAT5 cable to allow me to punch them into the RJ45 sockets.    

I am yet to plumb the 5^th usable port into the first lot of UP port connections in the Signalman's Panel.  I will get around to it, maybe this coming week.  But I have wired up the next RJ45 socket to enable me to connect up my junction signal for signal U2 on the test track.  This signal has two route signals, a shunt ahead aspect as well as the normal 3 aspects (red, yellow, green).  I managed to feed all the wires for these down the signal post today and basic testing shows it working.  Again next week I will attach the signal to my test track, and wire that in, and then add the RJ45 plug to the rear of my Signalman’s panel and wire it to the internals of the panel.

This is the U2 signal for the UP track on the future layout which has 3 aspects, the shunt ahead (for access to the sidings) and 6 white 0402 LEDs wired in two pairs of 3 LEDs for the two diverging routes towards the DOWN Main and the BRANCH.