Our trains don't take hours to get to the next town. So many speed up time to make the delivery schedule more challenging with a "fast time clock". This confuses our little people. Let's give them day and night! The video below shows transition from day to night. Here, time is sped up to 500:1 to make a shorter viewing yet the color transitions are still quite smooth. Unfortunately, the soft blue moonlight did not come through.
The AniLight has a great feature meant to light the layout from above. Since this can be sunlight, moonlight or lightning, the effect is called "skylight". And since sunrise and sunset can make beautiful oranges and reds and moonlight a soft blue, there are 4 outputs for this feature driving Red, Blue, Green and White (or RGBW) outputs. This feature is meant to drive a RGBW LED strip/rope with four power transistors (~$1 each). If you only have white lights, a single white output could be configured which would also support the lightning feature. If RGBW outputs are grouped together then AniLight features the following commands:
Night: Toggle Green LED on - The RGBW LEDs extinguish to a dim blue moonlight.
Daylight: Toggle Red LED on - The RGBW LEDs all light at full intensity for daylight - making a bright white.
Sunset: Toggle Blue LED on - The RGBW LEDs all dim and then traverse orange and red (see video) before staying a dim blue for moonlight. The traverse can take from 17 seconds to over an hour according to how CV 522 (or CV 10) is set. This enables synchronization with a fast time clock.
Sunrise: Toggle Blue LED on again - The RGBW LEDs traverse red, orange and then all brighten to full daylight intensity. The traverse can take from 17 seconds to over an hour according to how CV 522 (or CV 10) is set. This enables synchronization with a fast time clock. Toggling Blue on again repeats the cycle as long as desired.
Lightning: Toggle White on - Any of five real lightning flashes (selected by CV 523. or CV 11) override the white LED output. For added effect, command AniSound to animate thunder (5 factory sound tracks included). Try it with a delay and lower volume for distant thunder. The video below shows this light and sound combination - though the bass of the thunder is not well represented through the camera microphone. Note that if the white output is in sunrise, day or sunset, the lightning is inhibited.
For the Olympic Logging RR, a "LEH LED rope light RGBW" was purchased (~$30) from Amazon. Instead of stretching the strip along the length of the layout, it was wrapped tight and stapled to a Styrofoam container top used to deliver steak from Nebraska. This way shadows are cast better simulating sunshine but the light level does decrease with distance.
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