Imagineering 2015
Mini Coaster
A miniature but fully functional roller coaster I built for the WDI Open House. It runs on a PLC with real block-zoning logic that catches dangerous situations like a valleying train and drives the system to a safe state.
- PLC
- Block-Zone Logic
- Reed Switches
- Automation
In the summer of 2015 I built a miniature, fully functional roller coaster for the WDI Open House. It runs on the kinds of components you’d find in a real attraction: a PLC reads the sensors and drives the boosters to keep trains from colliding.
I wrote block-zoning logic to show that the system can catch a dangerous situation - a train valleying, say - and bring itself to a safe state.
The components are too small for full-scale sensors, so I used a different sensing trick. A reed switch sits on the track, and magnets in the back of each train tell the PLC where the trains are.