berry120 Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 Hi all, I notice that Railcom was standardised by the NMRA some time ago and as such has a rather detailed protocol document here: http://www.nmra.org/sites/default/files/s-9.3.2_2012_12_10.pdf However, I can't find such a document for Railcomplus at all - an extension to railcom that automatically identifies locomotives placed on the track. I'm aware this doesn't seem to be a NMRA standard (yet), but there's decoders out there that support it (such as the Bachmann 36-556 and most Lenz's) so I'm assuming the information must be *somewhere*. Has anyone got any idea where I might find such a document? Many thanks! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 .....such as the Bachmann 36-556 ..... It's actually the 36-566 (not -556), which I believe is a rebadged ESU LokPilot Standard. . Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigelcliffe Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 Ask Lenz and ESU. Together they own/control the RailCom Plus information. Its not currently anything to do with the NMRA, and may remain that way, as it gives Lenz/ESU a technical edge over other companies. A few years ago, this caused Zimo to complain strongly(*) about ESU/Lenz and their apparent stranglehold on RailCom Plus and the requirement of licensees to disclose their intentions (thus giving Lenz/ESU early notice of a new products, but not reciprocating by announcing Lenz/ESU products to other licensees). (* last page of, and then dig through the history via other sites http://www.zimo.at/web2010/newsletters/ZIMO%20Newsletter%202011%20Juli_EN.pdf ) - Nigel Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
berry120 Posted September 6, 2015 Author Share Posted September 6, 2015 It's actually the 36-566 (not -556), which I believe is a rebadged ESU LokPilot Standard. . Doh, my bad - thanks for the clarification. Thanks for the replies all - I've fired off emails to ESU and Lenz and will see what replies I get! Out of interest, does anyone know of any open standard that offers similar functionality (the auto-detection of locos on a layout) or is this the domain of the closed protocols at present? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junctionmad Posted September 7, 2015 Share Posted September 7, 2015 Out of interest, does anyone know of any open standard that offers similar functionality (the auto-detection of locos on a layout) or is this the domain of the closed protocols at present? Railcom plus as far as I can see is an extension When you place any railcom enabled loco on a dcc track ( with cutoff ) the global Railcom detector will receive all the addresses , even locomotives that the command station doesn't know about. However, the address broadcast gets corrupted due to all the unknown locos clashing. ( unknown locos are loco that have received no commands ) To resolve the unknown locos, this requires a non standard command station, which would periodically scan unused loco addresses allowing the railcom detector to determine the actual locos on the track. Railcomplus requires a custom railcomplus command station At about 100 dcc packets a second , and assuming it was interleaved , it might takes a few minutes to scan the whole address range ( or a large subset ) If the goal is fast loco ( unknown) ID detection, then placing the unknown loco on an track section with its own local railcom detector will reveal the loco ID immediately Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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