The Command Station is at the heart of the DCC Control System. It generates the DCC signal to control locomotives and other decoders, and provides a power interface (up to 20V and 3A) to send the signal to the rails.

It also provides 3 extension mechanisms:

  • A CAN bus to connect with the other modules (remote control, network interface, presence detectors…)
  • A 3-pin header with the logic DCC signal to control boosters
  • A 8-pin header with SPI signals reserved for a future use

Hardware (version 1.0, March 2020)

Schematic

The schematic is available:

This first version uses several ready-to-use boards to make the development easier:

PCB

PCB

License

The hardware project is licensed under the CERN-OHL-Pv2.

Software

The firmware is available on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/guiduc/dcc/-/tree/master/command_station/firmware

Features

The version 0.1 (August 2020) is very limited: it only sends DCC commands to one locomotive at a fixed DCC address (3). It receives orders from the remote control via the CAN bus or from a PC via the UART using a simple protocol.

Roadmap

The roadmap for future versions is available in the README

License

The firmware is licensed under either of

at your option.