Boulder Creek speed reader

[up1950s]

Saw in a mag today that this ( wheel ) is made for N scale as well as HO . I guess it could be mounted on anything that a loco can pull . Anybody try this . Looks like the cats meow as it gives a speed readout live everywhere in route .

http://www.bouldercreekengineering.com/

[peteski]

Cool!
Speaking of that, IIRC it is Piko that has an H0 car which connects to an app running on a smart phone/tablet.  It not only reports speed, it also shows the grade, car tilt and some other parameters. Those can be graphed as the car travels through the layout. Super-cool for the super-geeks!

[up1950s]

So a dynamiter car would be a bill fitter .

[coosvalley]

So a dynamiter car would be a bill fitter .

The Dynamiter car explodes onto the scene!   

[up1950s]

The Dynamiter car explodes onto the scene!   

dynamometer , sorry for that .

[up1950s]

So a  dynamometer car would be a bill fitter .

Correct to " dynamometer "

[coosvalley]

Dynamiter car sounds pretty exciting though!

Admittedly, a dynamometer car connected to your phone does sound really cool too.

[up1950s]

Dynamiter car sounds pretty exciting though!

Admittedly, a dynamometer car connected to your phone does sound really cool too.

Lets all buy one so Pete has to get a cell phone .

[nkalanaga]

When the original FTs were on their demonstration runs, they ran on the SP in California.  One story I read, years ago, was that the engineer gave them a little too much throttle, and they pulled the front drawbar out of the dynamometer car.  Since THAT was connected to all of the plotters recording the data, which in turn were connected to the ink drums, the inside of the car looked like it had been dynamited.

And "dynamiter" could be a spell-check artifact.  When I typed "dynamometer", Firefox refused to accept it, suggesting "dynamiter" as a correction.  I added "dynamometer" to the dictionary.  It would have also accepted "dynamo-meter"...

[peteski]

Lets all buy one so Pete has to get a cell phone .

LOL, that really bugs you, eh?  I do have a cell phone, it is even semi-smart, but it is flippy.  And I keep it tuned off unless I need to make an urgent call. Can you deal with that? 

[up1950s]

 

[Mark W]

I have one of these and love it!  Speed matching is no longer a time consuming hassle.  I hook up the speedometer car to my engine and can adjust my speed curve on the fly and see real-time speed results.  Just last night, I speed matched 4 different engines with 3 different brand decoders in about 6 minutes (I had to reset and re-do one).

For the device, I bought a cheap $20 tablet from Best Buy.  It's incredibly slow compared to a brand name tablet, but works perfect for this.  I set the display to never sleep. 

My only gripe is something that could easily be fixed in their app.  The accuracy of the unit is excellent, but the precision is hurt by the scale and the dreaded slinky. 
Because the counter is so small, sensor skips, doubles, and general timing variation is inevitable and can vary the speedometer by as much as +/-3 scale miles per hour.  So my 40smph train ends up reading reading 38, 40, 40, 38, 40,  41, 43, 40, 38, 40.  This could be easily fixed by increasing the average time from a few milliseconds to a full 1 or 1.5 seconds.  I'd much rather see a slower updating, more consistent speed. 

Then there's the slinky; better position the speed car toward the front. 


Otherwise, it's fun, it's useful, it's awesome! 

[jmlaboda]

Dynamiter car sounds pretty exciting though!

Was on the Addams Family...