DCC4PC Railcom Reader with RocRail

[lyneux]

Hi,

 

I'm trying to use the DCC4PC Railcom Reader with Rocrail via the TAMS RC-Link compatibility mode and failing miserably!

 

Here is the setup:

Lenz LZV100 - v3.6 (I checked to ensure that the Railcom cutout was set propoerly).

DCC4PC Railcom Reader - Set to address 1 (rather than the default of 0, as per the manual).

DCC4PC Railcom Computer interface - Firmware updated to 1.4 (TAMS RC-Link compatibility mode).

1 single track section wired in to J1 of the Railcom Reader.

Loksound V4 equipped loco.

 

I have added the controller as per specified on the wiki. I have the following questions:

 

1) I'm not sure what to put in the sensors configuration part of the controller screen (see attached screenshot) - the wiki doesn't seem to give help with this?

2) Once I power on, I see continuous scrolling in the server trace of: "detector XX out of range". This is a lot of noise. Is it telling me anything useful? Can I switch it off as it seems to make the interface unresponsive?

3) In the controller trace I see something more encouraging: "00:13:11 detector [YY] reported address [00000] state [off] direction [fwd]" where YY loops from 1 to 24. However, when placing the loco on the track I never see this change to report the address (it stays at 0000).

4) How do I set up and address the 16 sensors? Again I couldn't find anything on the wiki to talk about addressing the sensors from the DCC4PC board via RC-Link.

 

Any help with the above very gratefully received!

 

Guy

Edited August 11, 2017 by lyneux

[RAF96]

Have you asked this question on the Rocrail English forum.

They're very helpful usually.

Rob

Edited August 15, 2017 by RAFHAAA96

[lyneux]

Yes, I've asked on there.

 

Since posting the above, I upgraded Rocrail from a version (circa Feb 2017) to the latest build. This just made things worse as I now get the dreaded spinning pinwheel (OSX application busy cursor) and Rocview becomes unresponsive until I disconnect the DCC4PC Computer Interface USB cable.

 

It feels like Rob from Rocrail is pointing the finger at DCC4PC and their implementation of the TAMS RC-Link protocol that is saturating the bus with messages. Maybe I need to approach them? It's all rather tricky to get support... especially when the protocol being mimicked (TAMS RC-Link) is from yet another third party!

 

Guy

[TWG]

I think that you should put your problem to DCC4PC.  The two men behind it are very knowledgeable and when I had a question about whether one of their products was suitable for what I wanted they responded quickly (they advised against its purchase)

[lyneux]

A brief update:

 

The discussions with the Rocrail guys have proved fruitful insomuch as Rob has helped to remove a lot of the "noisiness" of the diagnostic traces that was slowing down Rocview (and effectively making it unusable) as well as correcting a couple of issues in the way that the RC-Link traffic was being turned into trace messages (so it is now easier to debug!).

 

I can now report that I have a functioning set-up! It would appear that the sensors are simply addressed from 1-16 for the first board. By creating a sensor and a block and then linking the sensor to the +in and -in events of the block, I am now able to place a Railcom decoder equipped train on the block and have it automatically assigned to the block by the software. A non-railcom equipped deocder in the block results in RocRail functioning as it would do with more 'standard' voltage drop occupancy detection (e.g. the LDT RS-8). The sensor is triggered but the train must be manually assigned to the block.

 

The one thing that still seems to be outstanding that would be good to fix is the amount of 'chatter' that the DCC4PC computer interfaces generates on the RC-Link bus. It reports the state of all of the 'possible' 239 inputs. I only have a single board connected so it would make sense for it to only report the 16 inputs of the connected board. If I find time I will discuss this with the DCC4PC guys (although I note that their website hasn't been updated in several years which doesn't bode well!).

 

Guy

Edited August 15, 2017 by lyneux