Shpaget

Mistery solved, I guess. Thanks!

I just got an update on the wagon delivery. It was given to Rod Stewart's manager. Hopefully he had a chance to forward it.

Do you drive only in Aussie land or have you driven much in the other parts of the world? Yeah, that would require much more substantial bracing. Could be a Europe thing. Or it could be something recent. The first time I remember seeing it was summer 2016. What I see as a potential candidate would be a special purpose high precision distance measuring device. Mapping companies could offer truckers some cash to have that on their trucks and drive around for purposes of accurate map making. The device would be continuously calibrated by GPS, but offer much better short term precision than GPS alone (since GPS is accurate but not precise, and this thing would be precise but not accurate). GPS provides error correction over long distance, and this thing provides precise wheel rotation counter and can conceivably offer the possibility to measure roads very accurately, twists and turns in the road included, as well as suitability for urban canyons and tunnels where GPS can be finicky or entirely nonoperational. I could be entirely wrong of course.

Could be, but a tachograph wouldn't require it to be on more than one wheel, and most of the trucks manage to have techographs without even one of these. Yes, this one and the real life ones I've seen had multiple installed. The mounting bar that connects the device with the body is somewhat of different shape (probably only to facilitate mounting), but the device at the end is pretty much same looking. On this particular truck I don't know if it's on the other side as well, but all the real world ones I've seen had them on driver (left) side at least. Unfortunately, I couldn't examine the right side, because highway.

Yeah, I discounted those since there are simpler solutions. I don't think so. These are at the center of the truck wheels which are much higher than your average curb. I can't stop a truck on a highway just to ask the driver that, and I've never seen it on a parked one. On the picture in OP it's on an older model, but I've seen it on newer ones as well. My car has tyre pressure sensor, but it's hidden somewhere. Apparently it can be done without parts sticking out like this. Deflators wouldn't be mounted on a truck in operation, would they?

I've seen this thing on semi truck wheels only a handful of times over the last couple of years, usually on highways in Germany, but by the time I take out my phone to snap a picture, the truck is usually long gone. Now I stumbled upon a YT video with a truck that has it. I'm talking about the things attached to the body and leading to the center of the wheels, both front and back. I have no idea what it is, what it's called and my attempts to google "thing on truck wheels" are, expectedly, not fruitful. So, what is it, what does it do, why does it have to be on all wheels, why do some trucks have it, does it taste good, why don't all truck have it? Help!

Interesting. Over here, 8000+ km away, we had quite a bit of coverage. I don't really watch local TV or listen to the radios, but I managed to see and hear news about it on both. Furthermore, the local technical museum organized a lecture on SpaceX and rocket reusability, had to charge admission fee because of large interest, completely sold out, organized another one the next day and sold out that one as well.

Going to Mars doesn't need to be profitable. That's the goal, and all these ventures are just fund raisings. Consider it the same as people working for years just to be able to buy their dream car that will never be profitable, but that's what they are willing to spend their money on.

What about George actually holding on to tethered Sandra for several seconds before flying away, but Sandra having no problem getting back to safety?

So, does this make Tesla Roadster the most powerful car ever built?

Hey Elon, you need a volunteer to fill up that suit?

Yeah, that's the probably the biggest issue I have with the flick. It tries to portray itself as the most hardcore of the hard SF out there, with Kip Thorne, himself, counseling on the scientific aspects of the movie, endlessly praising its own accuracy when it comes to physics, yet when it comes to basic Newtonian stuff, it's worse than Star Trek. Star Trek, at least, doesn't pretend to obey action-reaction principles of rocket engines. This abomination does exactly that, yet fails miserably. As a movie, it's ok, I've seen worse, but the amount of false advertising around it is what gets me. I don't demand hard SF or no SF, but the boasting got me prepared for nothing less and I started watching it expecting to see hard SF. And what do I get? NASA that has become a clandestine organization which has fallen out of memory, recruits a farmer to fly a mission to save the world. First step is to launch a Saturn V-ish thing that carries a shuttle that can land and get back up into orbit overcoming relativistic effects from gravity, then have enough dv for another landing and take off, and another visit to a black hole. But it needs a Saturn V to get up from Earth.

I frequent the local language http://forum.malezeljeznice.net/index.php

Unfortunately, he flew in late afternoon, did the concert and flew away, so there was no time for him to visit. However, we managed to give the organizers a HŽ Cargo wagon, (this one) and asked them to give it to him. We included an invitation for the next time he visits which, we believe, won't be long. Still waiting for confirmation whether this worked.

Yeah, sucking sucks at long distance. Blowing, on the other hand, doesn't blow . There is just too much of airflow going all around the key on a keyboard and too little where it matters. Blowing is much more directional.

Glad you got it to work. Thanks. Anyway, today we (the guys working on the layout) connected some dots. Rod Stewart is coming to Zagreb and he has a concert on Friday. The thing is, he's apparently a model train geek as well and has a huge layout of his own. Not only that but remarkably he models while on tours. Long story short, we started the process of contacting him, via the concert organizers, to visit us. No reply yet, but I'm kind of excited. If he does come, he'll be the second music related famous person to come. We've already had Michael Schønwandt when he had a concert in Zagreb. He Googled "model trains in Zagreb" and found us. Apparently he liked it, since he came twice in two days. Fingers crossed.

I don't think even a large 2 kW vacuum cleaner I have is enough to meet your spec, so I don't see how could a small portable thing achieve that. An air compressor, on the other hand, is perfectly suitable for this task and in absence of such a device a small can of compressed air will do just as well. You can have a can for under $2. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DB8NSG6/ref=s9_acsd_topr_hd_bw_b3Htt5X_c_x_w?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-4&pf_rd_r=3JMX4EDSDFXQW9WJHW6S&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=a6f20ec7-5849-5294-a05a-d077fd625212&pf_rd_i=3012916011 Honestly, I wouldn't buy an overpriced, blinged out, engineered to fail Dyson product that would most likely cost more than a compressor.

Caves of Steel by Asimov anyone?

Sorry, only one like per post allowed. I have a soft spot for special cargo trains

No. It's in Zagreb, Croatia. It's not nearly as huge as MiWuLa (they are a class of their own), but you'd need to sit in a car and drive for a few hours to get to a bigger one. We have about 1050 m of track in a roughly 75 m2 of layout, with another 200-ish m2 in preparation, which will bump our place on the list of the largest layouts in Europe quite a bit. We still have quite a bit of work to do. http://www.backo.hr/en/

We use WinDigipet (Windows PC) for our control. It runs the layout entirely automatically, deciding which train goes where and (usually) making sure nothing bad happens. We have almost exclusively Marklin locos which use MFX protocol, but the software has no problem with DCC and those couple of other brand locomotives. Also, almost all switched (points, turnouts, whatever you call them) are DCC. I haven't used it, but take a look at Rocrail http://wiki.rocrail.net it's free.

Don't worry about speed of acquisition. Even the, by today's standards, snail paced Arduino Uno with its 16MHz processor is more than fast enough, by a few orders of magnitude. If you are driving at 12,5 m/s (45 km/h) and the tire has a circumference of roughly 2 m, you only need 6 detection per second. A hardware interrupt takes about 2 µs. The necessary software updates of the variables and all the calculations can easily be done in under 1 ms, so your Arduino will still have about 165 ms more to twiddle its digital fingers in anticipation of the next time the magnet passes by the hall sensor. You could add more magnets for better precision and smaller increments. Conceptually, for the software should do a simple thing every time a magnet passes - add the circumference of the wheel to the distance passed variable. That's pretty much it, then every now and then pass that data to the computer (or to a small 16x2 character LCD. Take care when you buy hall sensors. There are different models operating with different logic. Some are active only while there is a magnet in its proximity, others will stay active until a magnetic field opposite polarity is achieved (they latch). Frankly I prefer the former. What you do need to worry about and take seriously is the electrical noise of the car itself. Spark plugs and alternator are quite messy and you'll need to filter that out. Mechanical mounting of the sensor and magnet is something I can't help you with, you'll have to find a suitable place yourself, but probably the best bet would be the rear axle.

What mod is that (the carpark underground station thing)?

Here's one of the latest photos of the layout I work on. And yes, those headlights do bother me, but changing the LED would be too much work, also it's not nearly as noticeable in real life. Maybe I'll just pain the white one with some yellow marker...

Model railroading is literally my day job.