Video (Javantura v3) – The Internet of (Lego) Trains – Johan Janssen, Ingmar van der Steen

HUJAK’s CroDuke Indy presents video and slides from Javantura v3 conference presentation:

The Internet of (Lego) Trains – Johan Janssen, Ingmar van der Steen

Last year we thought about starting a new Internet of Things project. In the end we decided to use Lego and Raspberry Pi’s to create The Internet of (Lego) Trains. There were multiple reasons for this project. We wanted to learn more about these technologies, get non-technical people and children excited about electronics and programming and have an excuse to play with Lego. The Lego trains are equipped with a Raspberry Pi, camera, wireless dongle, infrared transmitter, speaker, RFID reader and battery pack. Next to that we have automated switch tracks again with the help of a Raspberry Pi. To view the entire track we also have an overview camera connected to a Raspberry Pi. To control the trains and other parts we built a Java and AngularJS application. The Java application uses Jersey for the REST endpoints and connects with the different components. For some functionality the Java application calls C and Python code so we didn’t need to write and maintain that functionality ourselves. The application supports both manual control of the train and autopilot functionality. In this session we will explain how you can build your own Internet of (Lego) Trains. Next to that we will talk about our experiences and challenges and of course we will give a live demo!