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Over 50 days of prototype testing!

A project log for rail.X : monitoring railroad crossings for you

Mesh of open devices monitoring railway crossings "open-closed" status.

janmarcinowskijan.marcinowski 06/29/2018 at 14:470 Comments

We've reached a milestone - over 50 days of non-stop work with solar power and 60 simulated trains every day!

Yup, rail.X prototype 1.3 attached to a device simulating a railroad barrier is a legit long runner.

The version 1.3 is by now working non-stop for a period of more than 50 days. We gather data from it to monitor the "state of charge", the power of solar cell, and also the temp, so that we don't charge the Li-po when it get's too hot (over 40 C). Oh, and the state of the barrier of course:)

one random day table example
one random day table example

The maximum Soc for our Li-po is around 87-88% even during a fully sunny days, but I consulted this with Particle Community, and was assured that this is in fact a "by design" feature. See the conversation here.

I've also confirmed that the device is using in such conditions (60 trains a day) about 1.2 mb a month - on Particle SIM.

My friend (Maciej) is helping me with the PCB design, and we have (the 0.3 version) ready to be printed. You can see the schematics (and some renders) below.

Keep your fingers crossed. We hope, that when we get the PCB prototypes, the possibility of "real life" tests will be much closer!

Thanks for support I've been given. You're great!

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