November 2026

Model Railway DCC Base Station

Following on from the DCC (Digital Command Control) Decoder for model locomotives described in last month’s issue, Part Two this month offers a DCC Base station that provides power and data to your model railway tracks. It’s based on a Pico 2 microcontroller module connected to an LCD touchscreen. It’s easy to customise for your needs.

RGB LED Christmas Star

Just in time for the Christmas festivities, this 24cm luminous RGB LED star twinkles with 80 ‘NeoPixel’ multicolour LEDs that dazzle with an array of twelve different colourful patterns. The star-shaped board arrives in kit form mostly pre-assembled, and can be up and running in under an hour. (Surface mount soldering skills are necessary for the successful completion on this project.) You can see a video of the finished article here https://pemag.au/Video/RGBStar

Don’t leave it too late to order the part-assembled boards direct from our online store!

Ducted Heat Transfer Controller (Part 2)

Our project proposes a system that switches a fan to move warm air between rooms, in order to equalise the ambient temperature around the property. In Part Two this month we get to grips with assembling and setting up the system.

Circuit Surgery
Using a PSpice CMOS 555 model in LTspice

Our in-house surgeon compares the characteristics of bipolar and CMOS versions of the venerable 555 timer, describing how to model them in LTSpice circuit simulations.

Maxwell’s Equations

Recounting historical discoveries by Faraday and Maxwell in the earliest days of electronics.

Audio Out

Our analog audio specialist re-visits the challenging topic of audio signal switching. We add new features to our all-pass filter, including a phaser, a balanced output, a frequency range switch and a signal inversion switch.

Max’s Cool Beans
Weird & Wonderful Arduino Projects
Part 23: Doing it with diodes

Max continues to grapple with a controller for seven-segment VFD (vacuum fluorescent display) tubes, using notably the Russian-made IV-11 tube.

Power Electronics
Part 8: AC to AC Converters

Continuing with the theme of power electronics theory and design, this month we introduce the theory of somewhat esoteric AC-AC converters, which convert one form of AC power to another. The interesting topic of heavy-industry cycloconverters is also laid bare.

Techno Talk

Max relates his experiences and advice about self-publishing a book, including practical design aspects and creating an e-book. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be…

Working with DCC

This article will complement our recent projects utilising Direct Command Control (DCC) techniques for model railways. It offers readers an in-depth guide to using both the Decoder and Base Station, plus more details on DCC itself.

Coming up in the December/ January 2027 issues

Digital preamplifier & Crossover; The ‘Earth radio’; DCC Remote Controller