[Zoltan] was developing a workshop on Matter for DEF CON, and wanted to whip up a fun IoT project to go with it. His idea was simple—take a simple toy train, and put it on the Internet of Things. Speed and low cost were the goals here, with a budget of around $40 and a […]
Lately, this peculiar little single wheel monorail came to our attention. Built by [extraglide1976], all from Meccano. His build started with modest tests: one gyro obviously flopped. Two gyros geared together ran slightly better. But when he adds active gimbal control, things suddenly come to life – the model shudders, catches itself, and carries on. […]
This fun PCB from [Nick Brown] features a miniature railroad implemented with 0805-sized LEDs. With an eye towards designing his own fun interactive PCB badge, the Light-Rail began its journey. He thoroughly documented his process, from shunting various late-night ideas together to tracking down discrepancies between the documentation of a part and the received part. […]
One of the most popular evergreen toys is also one of the simplest, wooden track with push-along trains. We all know the brand name, and savvy parents know to pick up the much cheaper knock-off because the kid won’t know the difference. But a really cool kid shouldn’t have to push their train around by […]
One major flaw of designing societies around cars is the sheer amount of signage that drivers are expected to recognize, read, and react to. It’s a highly complex system that requires constant vigilance to a relatively boring task with high stakes, which is not something humans are particularly well adapted for. Modern GPS equipment can […]
Here in the United States, we’re lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to shiny new passenger rail, despite being leaders in previous centuries. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has just released a story map of how the US could close the gap (a little). The Corridor Identification and Development (CID) Program […]
If you travel on the British rail system, you’ll be familiar with the ubiquitous orange dot-matrix departure display boards. At a glance they tell you the expected arrival times of the next few trains, where they are headed, and at the bottom the current time. [Chris Crocker-White] was inspired by a Tweet to recreate one […]