G-TRACK

G Track is the big brother of Tracklink V2. This can be used for all types of scale models RC Cars, Locomotives, Excavators, etc.

The ESP32-S3 MCU makes this board easy to be repurposed for other robotics projects too. Enough pins are exposed for extra I2C, SPI connections.

Features:

• Input Voltage 6-17V (2S-4S Lithium Battery)
• Power Management:
  • 5V buck convertor
  • 3.3V LDO regulator
• 2x High power DC motor drivers
• 6x LED Outputs
• 12 extra IO pins Exposed
  • 4x Servo outputs
  • 4x ESC outputs
  • 4x Analog IO
• 1x Output for external loads (upto 10A)
• 1x I2S Audio Amplifier
• Integrated Voltage sense
• Firmware Power control
• USB-C for programming and debugging

For convenience, the Motors and Leds have use 2 pin conntectors (JST-ZH and JST-SH)

Firmware:

1. Locomotive firmware - https://github.com/DragonRailway/TrainControl_BLE
   Uses the same fimware as tracklink board

Project Origins:

The Tracklink V2 quickly became quite popular with the Dragon Railway community. It was designed only for S scale locomotives. And the newly added G scale has been gaining traction for a while, so I designed this G-Track board for our members who make the G scale locomotives.

In these scale sizes space is not a constraint, so I exposed some extra pins for Servos, ESCs, Analog, etc since they wont increase the overall cost. Now with these features it will also replace the RCX-S3 which was designed for the X470 excavator.

• This project's PCB and PCBA service was sponsored by the OSHWLAB Stars campaign.
• Project was completed on June 2025