Re: DCC Controller Features

seware · 2004-12-02T00:29:37+00:00

Thanks Keith. I have had mixed emotions on controller size and what controls to put where. I decided to go with the larger two-dial-controllers-in-one, because I liked the idea of being able to control two trains simultaneously from a single panel for things like consisting and yard operations. However I did not want to be limited to the two controllers, therefore my inclusion of the CAN bus that could really be used for any kind of peripheral... a wireless receiver, wired controllers like you are talking about, etc. I like the idea of having the master controller, input dials and booster all in one package for those folks with small layouts and limited needs, but yet providing a mechanism for future flexibility. After completing and testing, I plan to make my design and software free to all who are tinkerers and would like to have some flexible and powerful DCC control functionality without the exorbitant cost I have seen for similar setups.One particular question I have wrestled with... Do anymost controllers give you the option to set a loco to a particular speed and direction and then select a different loco to manually control without affecting the operation of the first? Kind of a loco cruise control? This is the direction I am heading... allowing as many locos as the memory will hold to be directed simultaneously. This will of course requires a well-executed "emergency stop all" mechanism to avoid disasters.

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J Barnstorf 21 years ago

ok, the prototype I model couples locomotives in large numbers for storage. So, for me it makes sense to do so on my layout. I would have thought that was obvious. I'm sure that you will infere something completely different from what I meant. Do you think about what I write or just react to what you are sure you thought I meant?

None, but others might be trying to learn something from this ng. Well... maybe I could use some spelling help from anyone else.

I want to run a model railroad, not learn electronics. You are forcing your value judgements on others.

Ahhh, no, we are going nowhere.

1) I never said newbies have to start with DCC. I recommended putting a little money away so they could start early. I suppose I should have been more explicit and indicated that at the beginning an inexpensive DC system would suffice. I know... money spent on a DC controller they would later never use. I'll write that into the budget warning. 2) I never said one system was the only way to go. You did. I did present my preference but I did not belittle people for using either system. I never said analogue was dead. 3) You seem to think that if we don't learn electronics we are not properly model railroading. This kind of snobbery applied to any facet of the hobby, turns people off the sport. So, yes, you are doing the hobby a dis-service. If you had presented logical statements that didn't go off on weird tangents you may have been able to provide constructive information regarding DC. But your safety tangents, references to slot cars, intermixing of driving/dispatching concepts and inability to accept simple facts like multiple locomotive coupling just make you hard to believe*. *For me anyway. 4) This is a hobby, it's for fun. As soon as you force your own standards on others, then for them the fun is gone. Structured modeling groups exempt from that statement. I don't tell my son how to play with his GeoTrax and we have fun together.

That's not a compromise, it's a sarcastic mechanism to ensure failure.

You are extremely incorrect in that statement. If I did not have DCC available to me I would still use DC. I would also not push DCC on a newbie. I'd explain pros/cons in a neutral fashion then let them decide. Unlike you, I see both alternatives as valid. I even see your use of the hobby as valid for Your pleasures.

Jb

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mark_newton 21 years ago

Gregory Procter wrote: >

Since WHEN did they? Are you serious?

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Greybeard 21 years ago

What I have been reading from GP is not "DC is the only....", but the same as I've been trying to put into words, don't get hooked into only one way of operation and not know any other. Time under the bench, it's not my favorite, but something I consider as a means to an end, and there will never be an end. Automation or compuker control, something that reduces the "operator" to a "spectator". Block detection to kill a block if a second train enters before the first has cleared, well, I'd sure hate to see some of my engines meet up with another under any circumstance.

Operating to prototype rules, well, to each his own, even the crackpots. When it comes to the point, as in one club that I know of, of having to have an order to take a car off a siding and pop a new wheelset into it, it's gone a little too far. However, all of the clubs that are within reasonable driving distance are DCC, and that leaves me out. (It also leaves me out from the turkey that looks at everything with a micrometer eyeball, "THis pump's out of scale!" )

I don't want to see any newbie turned off because he looked at the cost of DCC, and that first one is expensive in anyones book, and thinks that there is no other acceptable way. DC is as acceptable today as it was fifty years ago, and just as functional. The cost in dollars is lower, but the cost in knowledge and labor is higher. As long as there are differing budgets for modeling, both systems will be around, neither one of them having a real advantage over the other where common sense is applied. One is more work and thought, the other is more money.

Greybeard

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Gregory Procter 21 years ago

I don't really know anything about Macs, but I thought when MS bought into Apple Mac that a part of the deal was that Windoze would be on new Macs.

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Gregory Procter 21 years ago

that keeps your

my point for

That would be pretty stupid phraseology to include such things under "rules" - rather like calling PC hardware "software".

Regards, Greg.P.

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Gregory Procter 21 years ago

that keeps your

my point for

You mean all this time we've been arguing over a difference in language???

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Gregory Procter 21 years ago

OK, strange, but if that's what they do ...

Sure, if your prototype does it ...

It's certainly not obvious to me why they would do it - it seems a waste of effort to couple them just to uncouple them when they need one, and it would require an extra man on the ground to flip the uncoupling lever.

One thing I have noticed about yanks on ngs (without intending to be rude) is that many of you seem to react to trigger phrases without any apparent thought. I do hope I haven't caught the habit.

I can help there! :-)

I'm not telling anyone that DCC is the only answer. That's the point where I started this thread, in response to yet another "DCC is the only way to go" response to a newbies request for advice.

My initial point was that "Start with DCC" was bad advice - since then I've been responding to the replies.

A DC powerpack is always useful - lights, accessories ...

No, I never (intentionally) said that.

You joined the discussion in concert with those who were saying such things.

I don't think that. However I do think it is a bad move to follow the path of avoiding such exercise before you know that is the option. DCC is often presented as the hi-tech path, whereas, as you are pointing out it is the way to go to avoid understanding technology.

Ok. To me a "model railway" is a model of a railway, not just a means to driving model locomotives within realistic scenery. A nice part of the hobby is that we can ignore any part of the hobby we don't like, either by buying in or just completely ignoring it. Now imagine the comments if I put my bare board layout photos on my web page as a completed layout! I might not like doing scenery just like you don't like the wiring side of the hobby but we are both missing an equally large part of representing our prototypes.

I'm not forcing my standards on anyone - I leapt into this discussion because someone was presenting their standards as the only acceptable ones. I have attempted to demonstrate my points by describing what I do, but you and others seem to take my comments as being rule setting.

LOL - what compromise is there between two incompatible positions?

You're arguing with those who put the "DCC is the only option" forward. - rather like GWBushes "you're either for us or against us" situation.

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J Barnstorf 21 years ago

Interesting. Well, Gregory if you were trying to convey that DC and DCC are both viable solutions then you lost me on that point. From what I was reading a lot of your sideways comments came off as definately anti DCC. If you were trying to convey a neutral position then I don't think you did a good job doing so.

I'm not an American. I have nothing against American people in general, no more or less than any other country including my own. The Edmonton I'm referring to is in Alberta Canada. Amazingly enough, that made me do a search and there is an Edmonton in Kentuky USA. However I doubt there's a large CN locomotive yard there.

Your logic often escapes me so I doubt we'd realy agree on much, or even have a normal conversation.

Jb

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Cheery Littlebottom 21 years ago

Mac OS whatever and Linspire are readily available in North America and Europe. I suspect they can be had down your way as well.

Linspire computers are cheaper than Windows computers, and are said to run the same software. I have a copy of the Lindows operating system, but I have not installed it yet.

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Cheery Littlebottom 21 years ago

Well, no. CVs are fairly standard for the most part, and several free computer programs can eliminate even that tiny bit. I haven't considered a CV number, or calculated a setting, in years.

How is electronics design and repair relevant to my daily life? Most electronic devices are either so cheap that repair is uneconomic, or single-chipped so that repair is impossible, or so tiny that repair requires speacilised tools.

Beyond that, my daily life is such that adding a layer of cobbled-up electronic bits won't add anything to it's quality.

My hobby, however, has greatly benifitted from a New Zealander who /has/ made electronics his avocation.

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Paul Newhouse 21 years ago

Try wasting your money. Buy parts and assemble them yourself. It's easy and inexpensive besides, then you know what's in it. Then run one of the free *ixes (NetBSD, FreeBSD, Linux). Microsoft? ... just say NO!!

Paul

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Gregory Procter 21 years ago

I originally tried to convey that DC and DCC have their places and that there are situations where one has advantages over the other. Since I made those comments I have been responding to a series of how/why/what/you idiot questions and comments, which of course tend to be in favour of my prefered system because that is what the questions are about.

It's the only one I know of. My brother lived thereand lectured at the university.

One of the points I have been trying to present is that logic is a useful tool in deciding on and developing a control system. The present point on which we all seem to be wandering past is that railways have a 'mechanisim' by which they keep their trains separated. The 'rules' are the part which causes those involved to observe and follow the output of that mechanisim. The rules in themselves cannot keep trains separated. Whether one is into using DCC or analogue that mechanisim needs to be understood, or one is just driving one's train around in the same manner one drives one's car to the supermarket. (I used the term "slotcar" but that has proved an unpopular analogy) I considered, rightly or wrongly, that these 'mechanisims' allocate a section of track for exclusive use to an individual train. (ok, there are exceptions - MUing, calling on in suburban service etc, but they are exceptions)

Those allocations are the key to successful analogue control. Every section of track does not need an expensive rotary switch, every section does not even need an on/off switch. On my main layout I have replaced rotary switches with computer switching, but that is not a requirement, only my preference. As most turnouts route power and a train's route is completely limited by the turnout setting, an entire route can be powered by two input wires - I need only link the desired cab to those two wires and my train is directly controlled by my hand-held controller and no other track or loco is linked. From there I add a further layer of complexity with signals, which would be there for DC or DCC, so that's not an issue. Beyond that I add yet another layer of complexity in the form of selectable automatic control - again that needs to be there for DC or DCC for my particular layout. I related those parts for interest's sake, but obviously I have confused people with too much information.

Regards, Greg.P.

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Gregory Procter 21 years ago

I did say "electrics". A model railway layout needs wires to the rails and probably detectors, signals etc etc. Your locos need decoders soldered in and lighting systems installed.

There's also that crunch point where your favourite loco, or even the entire layout doesn't go, normally when a crowd of critical observers are waiting expectedly. Without some knowledge and logic ability the layout will remain dead.

Sure, he was at one of my clinics on DCC one time. :-)

Regards, Greg.P.

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mark_newton 21 years ago

No, that's not the case. Macs have always used their own unique operating system, at least until OS X. Perhaps what you are thinking of is the various MS applications that are available in Mac-compatible versions. When I got the iMac that I'm using now, it had Mac versions of Outlook and Explorer included as options on the software CD. I have been known to use OE on the odd occasion.

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Gregory Procter 21 years ago

I've never bought a complete computer since the Sinclair ZX81 in 1982.

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Gregory Procter 21 years ago

I've never heard of Linspire. Is it a brand name like IBM/Dell/... or a completely non IBM computer.

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mark_newton 21 years ago

Signals do not "control tracks", they merely give the driver a visual indication of the occupancy or condition of the track ahead. Unless they are overlaid with train stops, ATC, AWS, ATC, Indusi or the like, they do not control the train either - that is the responsibility of the driver, acting on the information conveyed to thim by the signal.

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mark_newton 21 years ago

No, Greg, in EVERY case the locos are couple for a reason, either operational or statutory.

Where did that come from? No-one suggested that was a reason for coupling the locos. You pulled that one out of thin air. Why?

In three of the examples I gave, there is no reason to uncouple individual locos. For the duration of the job they remained coupled.

If it is necessary to uncouple, it is not usually a two man job, nor is it any great effort. Disconnect the MU jumpers, put the taps up and pull the pin. Piece of piss - I do it every day.

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mark_newton 21 years ago

You're joking, yes?

Do tell, what part of wiring a layout for DC block control has relevance to everyday life?

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mark_newton 21 years ago

Gregory Procter wrote: >

Well, here's another one that you've pulled out of thin air.

I haven't ever advocated anything at all for beginners, be it control systems or any other thing. I don't really have anything to say to beginners, since I don't feel there is much I can help them with.

To suggest that I advocate DCC to anyone "because it allows you to ignore prototype safety regulations" is pure unadulterated bullshit, Greg, and you must be well aware of it. The day I advocate non-prototypical operation of any sort will be the day I take up slot-car driving.

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