Over the last year I have been gradually tweaking away at iterations of controlling Lego Trains with code. Here is the most recent attempt from the summer link.
Recently the Kitronic motor controller that I had broke / wore out. I needed a replacement, I initially tried a cheap motor controller from China, which worked but I struggled with dealing with the connections of wires / not being able to get a consistent response from the motors. This is more an indication of my lack of finesse with this sort of thing than the motor controller being inappropriate Les wrote a blog especially as ever the man is a saint(link).
Then two weeks ago I saw Les Pounder was testing a new smaller, cheaper motor controller from 4tronix. So I read up on it here (4tronix blog for about Drivebit link ) and then bought one (You can buy the Drivebit here). Delivery charge was cheap and it came the next day, which was a bonus.
Here is what Micro:bit Express 3.0 currently looks like:
— Warksjammyblog (@warksmessabout1) October 24, 2019
Here it is in action:
— Warksjammyblog (@warksmessabout1) October 24, 2019I used Microsoft Makecode, and eventually settled on the code below, which uses the 4tronix extension which can be added on the extensions section. It isn't apparently there but if you type in the following URL in the extensions search bar it will appear: https://github.com/
Also I found 4tronix super responsive to customer questions through email.
You can download the code here
Here is what the code looks like(please note the motors should be directed fwd and back but I will edit at some point):
