jbiltcliffe

Hi All Following on from the advice and comments on here and the discovery last night that it was the laptop communicating to the Sprog that looked to be the issue tonight I gave up on the laptop and pulled the old XP desktop out of the computer graveyard and then had the most sucessful evening I've had so far with DCC! Under Windows XP the Sprog and JMRI installed fine (a bit of a run getting the right versions of Java for XP to run the latest version of JMRI). On running JMRI and trying to identify a decoder on an empty track I got an error saying no train detected - more than I'd ever achieved on the previous laptop. It appears that the manufacturer code in the decoder is not recognised by JMRI properly, however selecting the decoder manually I was then able to read in all the values and populate JMRI. Firing up a throttle I finally managed to make a DCC train move. I even got to the point of getting the laptop out and controlling the loco using a throttle on there. The actual loco doesn't appear to be wonderfully happy going in reverse. Forward is fine, and I can see in the Sprog console the instructions being sent to go backwards, but the loco seems very hesitant to actually decide to move. As a long term setup I'm going to have to decide what I actually use as the main machine to run JMRI on. The current machine is probably getting on for 8 years old (last really used in 2014), so is not ideal, however looks like it should be usable for getting to grips with the basics. It looks like there are people using Raspberry PIs for this, so might be worth a test at some point. In the mean time I've got a couple of locos - a class 150/2 and a Windhoff - that are both DCC capable and have the decoders ready and waiting for, so it might be time to try and fit those and see what I can get working. Thank you to all those that answered - it gave me enough to find the problem and at least a short term solution! John

HI Izzy I was discounting the other errored devices as they are present whether the Sprog is connected or not. Unfortunately the Dell laptop I've been using as my development machine doesn't have a complete set of Windows 10 drivers. As previously mentioned since I was seeing what I thought was communication in one direction then I was assuming it was a Sprog or Sprog <> train issue, however since I now know it's a laptop <> Sprog issue then that changes where I'm looking. I think I might need to try on the newer main Dell laptop that has full driver support or failing that see if I can literally dust off my old XP desktop that hasn't been out in a couple of years. John

Hi Phil Thank you for the pointer - I'd done various googling, but not actually tried the help files as I've got used to most help tending to push you to manuals on the website anyway. One thing they suggested was using the command monitor to test the Sprog connection and it looks like I'm not getting a response back. So while I was getting flashing LEDs it appears there is still not bi-directional communication going on between the Sprog and the laptop. Time for yet another read through the Win10 install instructions and try and work out what is going on. John

Hi All Thank you for the feedback. In the preferences settings I have two options - "Sprog" and "Sprog Command Station", and currently I'm set to the first. The defaults also look like they are set to sensible options as far as I can tell. A couple of images that might help showing the device manager and Decoder Pro preferences.... On the Windows 10 question, I have two laptops available, however both are running W10. However as I mentioned previously, when requesting the Sprog to read the decoder the power LED on the unit flashes, so it appears to be getting a level of communication. The train I'm testing with is a Hornby R3297X LMS 0-6-0 Class 3F. It was supplied with an R8249 loco decoder fitted in it. The leaflet with it said that as supplied the default address should be 3, however even if I select the decoder and set the address manually I'm not getting any success. Thoughts would be appreciated. John

This is my first post here, but hoping that someone might be able to point out what I'm missing. I'm just starting building a new layout after nearly 20 years away from modelling, and looking to use DCC for control as it appears to be a much for versatile control setup. Being new to this and looking for a low cost way to get started I've bought a Sprog 3 and was planning to use JMRI to get started. I've also got a Hornby loco which came DCC fitted - I plan to fit my own decoders to some of my older stock in the future, but thought I'd start with something already done. The issue I'm having is that I don't seem to be able to get any interaction between Decoder Pro and the actual train. All I keep getting are timeouts talking to the command station (error 306). I've been doing various googling and trying different things without much luck, hence hoping to get some advice from people more familiar with this than I am. The laptop I'm controlling the Sprog from is running Windows 10. I've been through the hoops to get the driver installed, so in device manager I'm seeing it listed as SPROG III. In JMRI I've set up the connection for the Sprog Command Centre and pointed it to the right com port. When I try and create a new loco and read from the decoder the red DCC LED on the Sprog flashes, so it looks like the laptop is talking to the Sprog, however it eventually comes back with the timeout. From everything I've read it sounds like this setup should work, so leads me to wonder if the train is faulty, however I would have hoped to get a more intelligent message about not train found, not timeouts to the control station. Any help would be appreciated as I'm running out of things to try but really want to get DCC control working. John