This section describes my undergraduate dissertation project, undertaken at the University of Essex in early 2007. The project involved the wireless automation of a model railway with independant CPU-controlled trains and signals.

The main objective of the Train Project was to pave the way for decentralised control and automation in a railway system with lesser reliance on centralised systems. The components had to undertake decisions locally, operate safely in an uncertain network environment and not rely on the presence of other components.

> Read more about the purpose of the project.

The system was implemented using the Cyan Technology eCog1k development boards and RadioMetrix TDL2i wireless modems. The bulk of the work involved the from-scratch development of a 4-layer network model and control system in the C programming language.

The project aimed to make the trains and signals intelligent, paving the way for further automation research. Ultimately, the actual experimentation with distributed automation was over ambitious and was not investigated, but useful lessons were learnt from a networking perspective on constrained devices.

> Read more about the solutions chosen in the project.

> Read a review of the end result.

The project involved the production of a report and several presentations.

> See downloads for PDF copies of the final presentation and the IET presentation.

I am grateful for the radio hardware kindly supplied by RadioMetrix.

> The thanks to pages lists some of the people who contributed in some way.