Martin Sant has been developing a way to control the points in a garden railroad such that he can use an Android app to determine the route a train will take. I’ll let him describe the set-up:

“The technology behind this is based on the Raspberry Pi, which can be configured as a web server and the Wixel, which is a small wireless microprocessor board from Pololu. The web server will serve up HTML5 pages to the tablet and then communicate with a master Wixel that can control up to 64 slave Wixels. Each slave can be programmed to control 6 R/C style hobby servos which, with some waterproofing and an enclosure, I was planning to use to actuate my turnouts. Oh yeah, each slave can also send back 3 analog inputs and 2 has two more digital i/o pins.”

His plan is to make the whole thing waterproof so that it will survive being outside in the garden.

For more details, please read the Railroad Wixels page at MartinSant.net.