- Grossi, P.C. (2022-) The workshop
A survey of the various hardware and software tools used to pursue a variety of projects, some of which are listed here.
- Grossi, P.C. (2021-) Capacitive Energy Conversion
Documents in this section relate to a research project that investigates the application of
electrostatic engineering
to the generation of electrical power.
The significance of this research is highly topical at present, considering the strong political and
commercial interest in converting natural energy resources into useful electrical power.
This research project starts by examining the basic theory of electrostatics, and the relationship between
electrostatic energy and mechanical energy. In particular
it considers what happens when a capacitor is charged, isolated and changed in value. The resulting analysis
suggests that, with appropriate
machines, an alternative and less expensive technology might replace the currently popular types of power
generators.
- Grossi, P.C. (2022-) Railway signalling projects
Documents and technical files in this section relate to a continuing development project that investigates
a new way of sensing trains on miniature railwaty networks, and processing the information available.
This is an ongoing project and reports will be published as ideas and experiments are pursued.
- Grossi, P.C. (2023-) A Virtual Signalbox
Documents and technical files in this section relate to a continuing development project that offers
a railway network design facility. It provides a synthetic representation of a variety of installation features,
including track, signals and buildings, all of which can be positioned with geographical accuracy.
It can be used for model ("tabletop") networks as well as miniature ("ride-on")
types.
It is hoped to continue the development to enable "live" monitoring and control from a computer screen, locally or
remotely through the internet.
This is an ongoing project and reports will be published as ideas and experiments are pursued.
- Grossi, P.C. (2023-) Energy recovery in miniature trains
Electric motors powered by batteries are a popular power source for miniature trains. But the capacity
of the batteries limits the time on task before they need to be swapped or the vehicle taken off task while they are charged.
Kinetic energy recovery systems are now well understood and widely used, so the possibility of recovering kinetic
energy from miniature trains seems a worthwhile ambition if it can extend their time on task.
This article explores the technical issues involved.
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