John, what a delight to see the end result! A very creative scene that goes far beyond the usual static scenery of a model! Bravo, sir! Although I have other areas in which my creativity is focused I can appreciate that you had to plan, design, test, tweak and work a lot to make the finished product. God bless you, John! Well done!!
Andrew, thanks for your kind comments. If you appreciated this video, I'm certain you'll like the next one that is going to be even more unusual and innovative. But it will take me about 4 months to make the new model.
Interesting to see this now. A few years ago, we used this system for a professional exhibit. But we used hall sensors and replaced the DC motors with servo stepper motors, so we could get synchronized travel, repeatable speed and just used one hall sensor per track as a reset point. Also used a fast Arduino Due.
For something basic you don’t need a fast microcontroller. The classic arduinos are slow but are definitely fast enough for models like this, people have even made drones with classic arduinos and they require a lot more precise timing and computation than a model. If you find you need a more powerful microcontroller for something basic it generally means you have inefficient or lazy code. You should also use everything available to you. Driving stepper motors directly from microcontrollers is a waste (not saying you did but just pointing it out). Just get a cheap stepper driver and then all you need is a signal to tell it the direction you want and a signal to tell it to step and the stepper driver will handle the actual motor movements and can do things like microstepping to get smaller steps or if using “silent” stepper drivers then the motor itself won’t make any noise.
@@conorstewart2214 For each level of micro stepping for example, you also need to provide double as many pulses to the stepper driver, for the same amount of rotation. So again having a fast micro is advantageous. Actually a lot of examples where the good old 8-bitters CAN perform, but DON'T particularly well. And there is no reason to optimize software to run on an underpowered micro if you're doing a one-off.
Hi folks, I suggest using needle nose pliers or similar to hold the reed switch wires between the bend and the glass to further minimise the risk of damage. This action model looks wonderful does n't it!
OMG ! John, thank you SO much for 'introducing' me to this ! - I had absolutely NO knowledge of Magnorail... I did some work for Gerry Anderson on Thunderbirds (a very long time ago!) and know he, as I am now, would have been stunned at how useful this could have been !!! Take care, Mike
4:55 You don't need the external pull-down resistor. The Arduino's I/O pins already have an internal pull-down resistor that's takes effect when you configure the pin with INPUT_PULLDOWN.
Earlier Atmega CPUs don't have that, just internal pull-ups. Of course he can just wire the reed switches to connect to ground and invert the meaning of the inputs.
What an incredibly beautiful diorama with Magnorail. Thank you for your explanations. Best model railway greetings from Germany and thanks for sharing!
First of all, this is a very good scene and takes Magnorail way further than I have seen before. Here's a suggestion though, something that would add a bit more realism would be to extend this concept to also control the speed of the Magnorail motor slowing it down so it's more realistic when vehicles go round corners.
No idea how or why I'm here on this channel, but thanks CZcams! This is just amazing! Mad skills on so many levels! Looks like fun, but no way I'd have the patience for all this.
Do you know about state machine programming? It's where you have a place in the code for every combination of events. So, the initial state would be "motors off". The next state would be "bicycle running before accident". The next state would be "bicycle stopped, rider thrown". Etc. The transition between the states is driven by the inputs, or a timer. So you would have a timer with a random timeout (so the scenario gets run at random intervals), which gets set when entering State 0 (motors off). When that timer fires, it sets the state to State 1 (bicycle running before accident) and turns on the motor for the bicycle magnorail track. It stays in State 1 until the reed switch fires saying that the bicyclist has reached his doom, then it enters State 2. Etc. It makes it very easy to make a script, because once you have created the engine that drives the state machine, the states themselves are like Lego(tm) bricks. If you want to change the script, just move the states and their actions and their triggers around.
Brilliant! You confirm the discussion I had with a model maker-integralist: for him the models shouldn't be mobile, but all fixed! Evidently ten years ago I could already see far! But your model; very nice... only ever seen such a curved short bridge!!! 😊
I'm starting work on a brand new model in the new year which I think will intrigue people! If you subscribe to my channel you will be notified when the video goes on line. Thanks for your interest.
Marvellous stuff! Something to delight me as a 50 year old, but the 'magic' of it would have fascinated my (former) 5 year old self even more! Could vehicles designed for the Faller Car System work? Advantage being having working lights (though no doubt functionality would be limited versus a proper Faller road system), but maybe the front steering would function more like a real vehicle. Obviously the vehicle would need the motor to be removed or mechanically isolated. Problem with the Faller system seems to be that the vehicles need to be quite large to accomodate the drive system and battery, meaning that you are restricted mostly to commercial vehicles. With Magnorail, normal cars, as well as bikes and presumably motorbikes, could be used- but not as autonomously, since all vehicles on a chain would start and stop together. But I bet both systems could at least be used side-by-side.
Now Scale it up from a Mini-Miniaturwunderland to a Miniaturwunderland. This little piece really leaves you in awe of what the guys in Hamburg have created.
Would have liked to see more about the assembly, configuration, and operation of the track underneath. I suppose I should see if can look that up. Anyway, very charming scenario for the sequence.
This is very educational as we learn also how the vehicles move on the Thomas the Tank Engine model series. I was wondering myself how the make vehicles like Bertie the Bus move or how sometimes the trucks or lorries move. And this is how it's done!
I'd never heard of Magnarail before watching this, and I', so fascinated! :O The thumbnail looked particularly wild, like a robotic looking spin fossilised in stone :O Regarding Arduinos, I have a few genuine ones I got from Maplin years back (remember Maplin? :O) and I used those with the ISP program to problam bare chips. I can make incredibly miniaturised circuits that way
I used to run and get the maplins catalog of parts like it was my childhood comic 😊 Helped with tearing down vcr's and things for investigation. Loved brass and steel mechanicals in electronics.
@@luminousfractal420 I took apart an older model VCR a few years back, and the mechanism and arrangement of components compared to more modern VCRs is so much more wildly complex and satisfying :D The VCR really is the perfect marriage of electronics and mechanical engineering
Very cool. I can only imagine how many hours of work went into this. I did a project some years ago where we wanted to demo something at a convention so we built a slot car track and we wanted to time the laps and have a board with the information in real time. We started with reed switches but couldn't get them to measure the passing cars accurately. I don't know if there was lots of electrical interference from the slot or if the car just went by too fast but we had to go with another solution. I did not know at the time that the orientation of the reed switch was important. We had an intern at the time doing the electronics and I wonder if he knew, he was really smart so he might have. If I ever bump into him I will have to find out. Maybe that was a reason for the problems we encountered.
Magnetic reed switches are most commonly used as part of a stainless steel float, that sits in a gas tank. When the float (which contains a magnet) drops to a certain level, it causes the two parts of the reed switch to stick together, completing the circuit. So it’s a low-fluid level warning device. This guy is using reed switches horizontally! That’s new.
Coming from experience, any unsealed wood or cardboard creation will eventually succumb to humidity and will suffer warpage and breakdown, unless you live in a desert or a salt mine of course. You can use paper and cardboard but the trick is to paint it and seal it from the elements with a doping agent like a varnish of some kind.
Use a pair of fine needle nose pliers (plastic if you can get them) to pinch about 1/2 mm away from glass, and then you can bend beyond the pliers as needed.
WRT using photopaper as the running surface, polypropylene poster paper is pretty widely used in print for outdoor posters, it's similar to the stuff the new banknotes are made of, and I'd imagine it would work well as a replacement. If you had it printed on a suitable UV printer it would get a nice scale-accurate-ish matt finish for tarmac etc surfaces.
Hi John, I know I'm 3 yrs late in getting to the party, but what you've created is amazing. I'm now looking at doing something similar to my railway. Would there be any chance of a glimpse of your schematics and arduino sketches.?
There are tiny (less than 2mmx2mm) RFID tags that you could either embed in the chain or attach to a vehicle and attach a reader antenna to the track like the reed switch and use that to trigger vehicle specific actions along the track
That is adding too much complexity for a simple system like this. Everything along the chain moves at the same time and at the same speed in a very predictable motion. If you had pieces not on tracks and moving autonomously then maybe RFID tags would be a good idea, but in most track based system they are unnecessary.
The sequence that I saw was quite funny; the “magnetic” cyclist appears to cycle out of the barn > along the road and between the chevron signs and crashes > the ambulance appears and drives to the crashed cyclist, picks it up and wizzes off and the camera panned to the church yard and “there is the cyclists grave being dug” 😄
You mean the bike that goes of the road, flies through the air and skids to a halt on the grass are not all the same bike? And there was me thinking he'd done something clever. It's brillliant. This is the kind of thing that bring models to life.
This is outstanding and very clever. I want to build a variation of this idea and wonder if the script for the Bicycle Accident is available. It would be a good starting place.
Polycarbonate is a higher temperature plastic than many that people generally work with. If you’re warping it with lighting then you’re probably going to have plenty of other problems too.
I'm currently building a small railway and incorporating magnorail. I thought I would mention how I plan to handle the warping / disintegrating photo card due to moisture issue. I've chosen to snip off the mounting points on the "track" and I'm gluing down strips of 8mm foam around the entire track area. Similar to how the cork is done in the video, but snug against the track. When I'm ready to plaster, I plan to remove the magnorail system, and cover the foam not with the photo card, but with some styrene sheet I have on hand. When plaster and maybe even landscaping is all dry, I should be able to slice out the styrene, fit magnorail and glue down the photo card. Even still I worry about the card. Is yours still holding up OK I wonder? I would love to use an arduino or two for triggering events along the bike path. Really fun idea and execution. I love the accident videos for inspiration. Thanks for sharing it.
Make sure the plaster is completely dry if you are using photo card or it will delaminate with the moisture. I prefer styrene or polycarbonate sheet. Good luck.
@@johnsminiatures8955 Ordered arduino starter kit today. Should arrive tomorrow. My magnorail channel in 8 mm foam is almost all glued down. It's tricky since it's all new construction and it's also my first time working with all of these materials and components. Fun times. Now here I am considering adding more to it.. will plastering ever get done? Is there a place I can check out your code by any chance?
John, what a delight to see the end result! A very creative scene that goes far beyond the usual static scenery of a model! Bravo, sir! Although I have other areas in which my creativity is focused I can appreciate that you had to plan, design, test, tweak and work a lot to make the finished product. God bless you, John! Well done!!
Andrew, thanks for your kind comments. If you appreciated this video, I'm certain you'll like the next one that is going to be even more unusual and innovative. But it will take me about 4 months to make the new model.
@@johnsminiatures8955 Can't wait!
Interesting to see this now. A few years ago, we used this system for a professional exhibit. But we used hall sensors and replaced the DC motors with servo stepper motors, so we could get synchronized travel, repeatable speed and just used one hall sensor per track as a reset point. Also used a fast Arduino Due.
For something basic you don’t need a fast microcontroller. The classic arduinos are slow but are definitely fast enough for models like this, people have even made drones with classic arduinos and they require a lot more precise timing and computation than a model. If you find you need a more powerful microcontroller for something basic it generally means you have inefficient or lazy code.
You should also use everything available to you. Driving stepper motors directly from microcontrollers is a waste (not saying you did but just pointing it out). Just get a cheap stepper driver and then all you need is a signal to tell it the direction you want and a signal to tell it to step and the stepper driver will handle the actual motor movements and can do things like microstepping to get smaller steps or if using “silent” stepper drivers then the motor itself won’t make any noise.
@@conorstewart2214 For each level of micro stepping for example, you also need to provide double as many pulses to the stepper driver, for the same amount of rotation. So again having a fast micro is advantageous.
Actually a lot of examples where the good old 8-bitters CAN perform, but DON'T particularly well.
And there is no reason to optimize software to run on an underpowered micro if you're doing a one-off.
Hi folks, I suggest using needle nose pliers or similar to hold the reed switch wires between the bend and the glass to further minimise the risk of damage. This action model looks wonderful does n't it!
OMG ! John, thank you SO much for 'introducing' me to this ! - I had absolutely NO knowledge of Magnorail... I did some work for Gerry Anderson on Thunderbirds (a very long time ago!) and know he, as I am now, would have been stunned at how useful this could have been !!! Take care, Mike
4:55 You don't need the external pull-down resistor. The Arduino's I/O pins already have an internal pull-down resistor that's takes effect when you configure the pin with INPUT_PULLDOWN.
Earlier Atmega CPUs don't have that, just internal pull-ups. Of course he can just wire the reed switches to connect to ground and invert the meaning of the inputs.
@@gblargg all of the arduino clones I have used have had both pull ups and pull downs so I would imagine the genuine arduinos are probably the same.
@@conorstewart2214 Take a look at e.g. the Pro Micro schematic and the Atmega32u4 datasheet. No pull-down resistors.
Started watching these videos intrigued by the creativity . THEN i recognised then I recognised your voice. Thank you for so much joy over the years
What an incredibly beautiful diorama with Magnorail. Thank you for your explanations. Best model railway greetings from Germany and thanks for sharing!
Guten Tag von Wales!
First of all, this is a very good scene and takes Magnorail way further than I have seen before. Here's a suggestion though, something that would add a bit more realism would be to extend this concept to also control the speed of the Magnorail motor slowing it down so it's more realistic when vehicles go round corners.
No idea how or why I'm here on this channel, but thanks CZcams! This is just amazing! Mad skills on so many levels! Looks like fun, but no way I'd have the patience for all this.
Do you know about state machine programming? It's where you have a place in the code for every combination of events. So, the initial state would be "motors off". The next state would be "bicycle running before accident". The next state would be "bicycle stopped, rider thrown". Etc. The transition between the states is driven by the inputs, or a timer. So you would have a timer with a random timeout (so the scenario gets run at random intervals), which gets set when entering State 0 (motors off). When that timer fires, it sets the state to State 1 (bicycle running before accident) and turns on the motor for the bicycle magnorail track. It stays in State 1 until the reed switch fires saying that the bicyclist has reached his doom, then it enters State 2. Etc. It makes it very easy to make a script, because once you have created the engine that drives the state machine, the states themselves are like Lego(tm) bricks. If you want to change the script, just move the states and their actions and their triggers around.
This sounds brilliant! Thank you.
Wow the finished product is amazing to watch. Just love it.
that's on a whole other level mate, congrats!
Brilliant! You confirm the discussion I had with a model maker-integralist: for him the models shouldn't be mobile, but all fixed! Evidently ten years ago I could already see far! But your model; very nice... only ever seen such a curved short bridge!!! 😊
This is incredible!! Absolutely beautiful and breathes life into a scene
I love this little scene, so well thought out and executed.
Absolutely superb modelling - one of the most interesting videos I have watched in a long time. Thank you!
What a fantastic addition, more tips tricks and special effects please.
I'm starting work on a brand new model in the new year which I think will intrigue people! If you subscribe to my channel you will be notified when the video goes on line. Thanks for your interest.
4 Years late, but it is still brilliant in 2023.
I like those "howto's" with technics as Arduino's. Thanks for sharing.. the video is well explained en the scenery is outstanding. Till next time!
THAT WAS WONDERFUL!!!!! Reminds me of a major accident or two that I had on my bike when I was a kid. Except no ambulance.
The final result is wonderful 🤩 you did a great job 👍
jeez, its almost like you've been a special effects expert for years and designed roller coasters or something 😉😂
we got em bois
Who would have thought it 🤔
@@johnsminiatures8955 nice to see you're enjoying you're retirement John.
Marvellous stuff! Something to delight me as a 50 year old, but the 'magic' of it would have fascinated my (former) 5 year old self even more!
Could vehicles designed for the Faller Car System work? Advantage being having working lights (though no doubt functionality would be limited versus a proper Faller road system), but maybe the front steering would function more like a real vehicle. Obviously the vehicle would need the motor to be removed or mechanically isolated.
Problem with the Faller system seems to be that the vehicles need to be quite large to accomodate the drive system and battery, meaning that you are restricted mostly to commercial vehicles. With Magnorail, normal cars, as well as bikes and presumably motorbikes, could be used- but not as autonomously, since all vehicles on a chain would start and stop together. But I bet both systems could at least be used side-by-side.
just happened across this. you have a wonderful talent, and the diarama obviously tells a story... great work!
Now Scale it up from a Mini-Miniaturwunderland to a Miniaturwunderland. This little piece really leaves you in awe of what the guys in Hamburg have created.
The diorama is really brilliant.
Wow! The action model is wonderful! I now want to see all of them.
This is the coolest thing I've seen all day! That's amazing work on many levels!
Absolutely brilliant work. I love this idea and the craftsmanship. Greetings from Germany.
Would have liked to see more about the assembly, configuration, and operation of the track underneath. I suppose I should see if can look that up. Anyway, very charming scenario for the sequence.
Very nice video and I'm interested in knowing more about the special effects
That "motion" is so increadably smoooooooth. It's really quite breath·tak·ing. Thank you for the video. Cheers from So.CA.USA 3rd House On the Right
What a delightfull masterpiece!
A big compliment to you Sir from the Model Railway Club Deventer MSCD!
Never seen something like this. Amazing. Thanks voor sharing
I love the mechanisms ised to illustrate the bicycle crash. Very clever 👍
This is very educational as we learn also how the vehicles move on the Thomas the Tank Engine model series. I was wondering myself how the make vehicles like Bertie the Bus move or how sometimes the trucks or lorries move. And this is how it's done!
It is great! It is a cool story in the one little village! Decorations very cool! I mean you can add traffic light and other! Very cool!
i was impressed untill the bike crash.... then i was blown away, that was very unexpected, and well done.
I'd never heard of Magnarail before watching this, and I', so fascinated! :O The thumbnail looked particularly wild, like a robotic looking spin fossilised in stone :O
Regarding Arduinos, I have a few genuine ones I got from Maplin years back (remember Maplin? :O) and I used those with the ISP program to problam bare chips. I can make incredibly miniaturised circuits that way
I used to run and get the maplins catalog of parts like it was my childhood comic 😊
Helped with tearing down vcr's and things for investigation. Loved brass and steel mechanicals in electronics.
@@luminousfractal420 I took apart an older model VCR a few years back, and the mechanism and arrangement of components compared to more modern VCRs is so much more wildly complex and satisfying :D The VCR really is the perfect marriage of electronics and mechanical engineering
The cheery music while panning up to reveal a freshly dug grave is some Monty Python level humor
The accident effect is very nice!
fantastic love te animation look forward to more videos
That is really good. I love seeing new ways to use Arduino's. Thanks for sharing!
Man this is an absolute masterpiece
That's fantastic, what a great application of the magnarail and arduino's
Very cool. I can only imagine how many hours of work went into this. I did a project some years ago where we wanted to demo something at a convention so we built a slot car track and we wanted to time the laps and have a board with the information in real time. We started with reed switches but couldn't get them to measure the passing cars accurately. I don't know if there was lots of electrical interference from the slot or if the car just went by too fast but we had to go with another solution. I did not know at the time that the orientation of the reed switch was important. We had an intern at the time doing the electronics and I wonder if he knew, he was really smart so he might have. If I ever bump into him I will have to find out. Maybe that was a reason for the problems we encountered.
Magnetic reed switches are most commonly used as part of a stainless steel float, that sits in a gas tank.
When the float (which contains a magnet) drops to a certain level, it causes the two parts of the reed switch to stick together, completing the circuit.
So it’s a low-fluid level warning device.
This guy is using reed switches horizontally! That’s new.
wow this could become a whole seperate hobby next to running modeltrains
Brilliant stuff- need more please
So cute and made perfectly. But you need to program a stop start ramp for the ambulance to make it look more natural
First time i have seen this and its most interesting.
Never seen something like this. Amazing. Thanks voor sharing👍
Fantastic drama! That must be a dangerous section of road as I see what a Ford Fiesta in the river too!
How nice to see!
the technique is also very well done!
respect!
Healthy and Friendly Greetings from the Netherlands!
Rob
Coming from experience, any unsealed wood or cardboard creation will eventually succumb to humidity and will suffer warpage and breakdown, unless you live in a desert or a salt mine of course. You can use paper and cardboard but the trick is to paint it and seal it from the elements with a doping agent like a varnish of some kind.
great help bro. thanks. dbs from INDIA
haha how cool is that bike, I love the little crash scene mate, very well done
I love how the ambulance ignores the car which has crashed into the river like .. nope, not today !
Use a pair of fine needle nose pliers (plastic if you can get them) to pinch about 1/2 mm away from glass, and then you can bend beyond the pliers as needed.
Wonderfully clever and skillfully executed. The cyclist was a hack, obviously, but everything else superb!
WRT using photopaper as the running surface, polypropylene poster paper is pretty widely used in print for outdoor posters, it's similar to the stuff the new banknotes are made of, and I'd imagine it would work well as a replacement. If you had it printed on a suitable UV printer it would get a nice scale-accurate-ish matt finish for tarmac etc surfaces.
Great job! Thanks for sharing.
Wow, such amazing work, thank you for sharing!
What an awsome model. The poor cyclist, hope he is alright!
7:45 - Polycarbonate has a glass transition temperature of 147deg C. It's one of the more heat resistant thermoplastics.
Hi John, I know I'm 3 yrs late in getting to the party, but what you've created is amazing. I'm now looking at doing something similar to my railway. Would there be any chance of a glimpse of your schematics and arduino sketches.?
Loved it, the scene was very funny.
Thank you very much amazing creation. I love it
There are tiny (less than 2mmx2mm) RFID tags that you could either embed in the chain or attach to a vehicle and attach a reader antenna to the track like the reed switch and use that to trigger vehicle specific actions along the track
That is adding too much complexity for a simple system like this. Everything along the chain moves at the same time and at the same speed in a very predictable motion. If you had pieces not on tracks and moving autonomously then maybe RFID tags would be a good idea, but in most track based system they are unnecessary.
Nice video John very informative 👍
The sequence that I saw was quite funny; the “magnetic” cyclist appears to cycle out of the barn > along the road and between the chevron signs and crashes > the ambulance appears and drives to the crashed cyclist, picks it up and wizzes off and the camera panned to the church yard and “there is the cyclists grave being dug” 😄
Fantástico. Você é um mestre! Parabéns
Very, very cool !!! Well done !!!
You mean the bike that goes of the road, flies through the air and skids to a halt on the grass are not all the same bike? And there was me thinking he'd done something clever.
It's brillliant. This is the kind of thing that bring models to life.
Very clear and informative thank you
Wunderschöne Idee und sehr gut gemacht.
This is amazing model building
What a fantastic job! Respect!
Amazing work. Thanks for sharing.
Incredible GREAT JOB!!
incredible idea and amazing detail. do you have any more information on it, more details please.
Have you looked at the accompanying video on using reed switches and Arduino boards at czcams.com/video/ieiawg7offE/video.html
Whoaow. That's amazing...
This is really funny and kind of cute!
The best idea
Very nice!
Thank you for sharing.
Great channel! Amazing job! I just subscribed.
Absolutely brilliant
That’s very clever. 👍
Thank you for sharing this.
Great looking diorama!
This is outstanding and very clever. I want to build a variation of this idea and wonder if the script for the Bicycle Accident is available. It would be a good starting place.
2:06 "Then have a good look inside the glass..." - that's where I paused the video and opened a bottle of Loch Lomond.
Thank you for posting
brilliant work👍
Polycarbonate is a higher temperature plastic than many that people generally work with. If you’re warping it with lighting then you’re probably going to have plenty of other problems too.
I'm currently building a small railway and incorporating magnorail. I thought I would mention how I plan to handle the warping / disintegrating photo card due to moisture issue.
I've chosen to snip off the mounting points on the "track" and I'm gluing down strips of 8mm foam around the entire track area. Similar to how the cork is done in the video, but snug against the track. When I'm ready to plaster, I plan to remove the magnorail system, and cover the foam not with the photo card, but with some styrene sheet I have on hand. When plaster and maybe even landscaping is all dry, I should be able to slice out the styrene, fit magnorail and glue down the photo card. Even still I worry about the card. Is yours still holding up OK I wonder?
I would love to use an arduino or two for triggering events along the bike path. Really fun idea and execution. I love the accident videos for inspiration. Thanks for sharing it.
Make sure the plaster is completely dry if you are using photo card or it will delaminate with the moisture. I prefer styrene or polycarbonate sheet. Good luck.
@@johnsminiatures8955 Ordered arduino starter kit today. Should arrive tomorrow. My magnorail channel in 8 mm foam is almost all glued down. It's tricky since it's all new construction and it's also my first time working with all of these materials and components. Fun times. Now here I am considering adding more to it.. will plastering ever get done? Is there a place I can check out your code by any chance?
Amazing work!!! Wow
use pliers for bending. put them between the parts main body and the curve you want to bend.
Super model diorama Nice!
I’m sure this is great, but I just dropped in to say the thumbnail looks like a live animal sliced in half 😂