Warming up the soldering iron

It has been over a year since I last posted anything radio or construction related. I have not been completely inactive in that time. I am up to 97 countries worked and confirmed for DXCC, with an increasing proportion of those on CW. But I have not built anything for a long time - until the last few weeks. And while it is electronic, it is actually nothing to do with radio.

The "it" is a PIC-based speed controller for a cable car that is going to be part of my son's model railway. The railway is still far from complete, but we bought a motorised cable car (made by Brawa) and recently tested it out. It will be a great addition to the railway, but I realised that accidentally leaving it running for a long period would not do the little DC motor any good.

So I started looking around for timer switches that would cut the power after, say, ten or fifteen minutes if we had not turned it off ourselves first. I posted a message on the G-QRP mailing list and someone (I'm sorry to say I can't remember who it was) suggested using a PIC.

I had never used a PIC before, but I do have a background in computer programming and hardware design, so it sounded like an interesting option. After a bit of research, I bought the Junebug prototyping / programming board from blueroomelectronics and downloaded the Swordfish BASIC compiler. I was soon flashing lights on the Junebug, but it took a bit more work to get a speed controller up and running. I'll post more details soon.