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Detecting trains with InfraRed + Arduino

You've probably seen a lot of reversing/stopping circuits around, but the majority of these run on occupancy detection in track blocks. This can work very well but, due to the differences in train engines, you can have issues with how quickly to slow/stop individual locomotives. There are other ways of detecting a train coming to a dead-end, and here I'll show a method using Infrared Light.

Infrared light can't be seen by the human eye, but can be picked up by electronic devices. Due to this, it can be used freely around your layout (with the exception that direct sunlight/room-light can cause interference) for detecting your trains. One of the more common usages is to put an emitter/detector combination in a buffer to stop a train as it comes to the end of the line.

Note that there are two emitter/detector devices! Each 'black box' in that diagram contains both an emitter and a detector. The benefit of using the QRD1114 means that these are neatly packaged in one unit!

In this set up the emitter and detector are both facing towards an approaching vehicle. The emitter-side of the QRD1114 will always be emitting infrared light down the track. The detector will then receive the infrared light reflected off the vehicle as it approaches and its internal resistance will rise accordingly. This means we can read the resistance of the detector to know how close the train is therefore slow it down proportionately. We can therefore ensure the train does not hit the buffer by checking the value of the detector and altering the speed of the train quickly and appropriately.

Firstly, here's the circuit for wiring up both the 'Infrared Emitters and Detectors' and the Optical Detector / Phototransistor (recommended) from Toys Downunder. And Here's the datasheet for the latter QRD1114.

Note: I happened to test out both setups as I destroyed my first QRD1114 by applying 5v directly to the emitter... You must only apply 1.7v max!

And then the detector set up on the engine shed roads:

The two roads above will eventually be located inside an engine shed. Due to the potential interference from one emitter to the other, I will put a separator down the middle of the tracks.

The maxmimum read distance I could achieve was just under 6cm during testing**. This wasn't exactly what I was expecting and would've liked around 10-12cm for this purpose, but I worked around this. It seems that there is a more expensive detector at Toys Downunder: Sharp GP2Y0A21YK that can detect object up to 84cm away. I imagine it would be as simple as obtaining larger IR LEDs to boost the light output and therefore the light reflection.

Once the two detectors were in place, I set about automating a quick shunting process. I'd started noticing that, depending on room light, the readers weren't doing the best job; down to around 20mm distance was all that was being detected. This would not be enough to measure the speed as I wanted to, but I kept going anyway.

Programming the detector was the same as the potentiometer throttle done previously. The detector acted as a variable resistor and the reading would be from +1000 to 0 depending on the reflectivity of the object. It turned out that 0 was when the object was closest to the detector. Unfortunately, this only started changing once the object came within 30mm.

Here's a video of my quick shunt automation in action. First with the QRD1114 and then with the separate emitter/detector:

Results

I ended up stopping progress on this as the detector didn't respond as well as I'd have wanted. After getting a 6cm read distance during test I thought it would feasible, but this dropped to a max of 15mm when actually installed on the track. There would be too much re-adjusting to get either of the types of infrared detectors to work.

The only option from here is to purchase the Sharp detector mentioned above and see if it really can detect 84cm!