This is the DCC++ board project. It's a relatively simple printed circuit board which integrates all of the components that are necessary for a DCC++ base station onto a single PCB, with all of the things you need, and nothing you don't.
Instead of the typical 1A limit of the arduino motor shield, this board uses the IFX007T half-bridge, with much larger current and voltage capability (up to 24V). Current capacity (without a heatsink) is probably around 5A, but may be more with proper ventilation or heatsinking.
The board is roughly based on the Arduino Leonardo and Sparkfun's Pro Micro board, but with the outputs already wired to the correct pins on IFX007T. The unused pins are available on screw terminals.
I designed this board to support the current and voltage needs of a G scale railroad, but it should work equally well for smaller scales.
The LEDs are connected to Arduino pins D1 and D2.
- Attach an AVR ISP programming dongle, USBtiny, or other AVR programmer to your PC and board. (Make sure the drivers are installed).
- Power on the DCC++ board by plugging in the micro USB cable.
- Open the Arduino IDE
- In the Tools menu, select "Arduino Leonardo" as the board type
- In the Tools menu, select your programmer
- In the Tools menu, select "Burn Bootloader"
- Wait for the bootloader to complete. The board should show up as a serial port after the bootloader is flashed.
- Clone my fork of the DCC++ project and load the DCCpp_Uno sketch onto the board.
- Done!