XpressNet Blues

[Ron Ron Ron]

So you dont rate my chances of getting a Multimaus to work with the Elite then.....

 

Back to the drawing board.

Probably not!

 

The MultiMaus was left off the OP's (Ian's) list at the top of this thread, which is a shame as it works perfectly well with the Lenz system, as some members of this forum will testify; .....but then Roco DCC equipment is designed/made by Lenz !

 

 

.....What is the point of Xpressnet if it doesnt actually work? .......

Trouble is works perfectly well if you use the Lenz kit because they wrote the spec and their kit conforms to their intentions for it. Hornby will tell you their implementation works perfectly well because they got a Select to talk to an Elite (though its gone a little quiet on other additions at the moment). ..........

When the Elite was reviewed after it was first released, it was reported that it didn't work properly, if at all, with XpressNet, contrary to what Hornby have always claimed.

I had assumed that if this was indeed the case, then it may have been down to Hornby (or the company who designed their kit) not implementing the XpressNet protocols correctly.

Does anyone here actually know the status of Hornby's implementation of XpressNet?

Clearly it doesn't work, so why not?

 

 

The other DCC product used in Ian's "experiment" may not be compatible anyway.

The EZ-Command system uses an older version of X-Bus and not XpressNet.

As far as I'm aware, XpressNet was designed to be backwards compatible with X-Bus, but in the later versions of XpressNet, support for some of the X-Bus commands has been dropped.

 

Quote from the Lenz document pointed to by Two Tone Green.....

 

"In the time since X-Bus was first designed, DCC has also been expanded to include 128 speed steps and extended 4 digit addresses. This has necessitated changing the network protocol to accommodate these extended features.

For reasons of clarity and data consistency and to simplify future versions some Xbus V1. and V2 commands are considered legacy and may no longer be supported in all command stations.

Starting with XpressNet 4.0 support for these older commands will likely be terminated completely".

 

[ Thanks for the link Andy. Most of the 80 pages is pure gibberish to a numpty like me ! ]

 

 

The X-Bus port on the EZ-Command was provided purely for the use of compatible X-Bus equipped EZ-Command devices, such as the EZ-Command Companion add-on controller. It may be possible that it uses an early version of the X-Bus protocol that is no longer supported in XpressNet.

(Incidently, if I remember correctly, the EZ-Command was also designed or made by Lenz for Bachmann.)

 

 

Did the ZTC system support XpressNet, or was it only a later version of X-Bus ?

Again, from the Lenz document (remember it was published in 2003, so may have been superceded by later changes)......

 

".....XpressNet is also supported by a variety of other NMRA DCC manufacturers including Atlas, Roco and CVP products.

(Prior versions of the X-Bus protocols were also supported by Arnold and ZTC systems.)"

 

So in summary;

 

Lenz works with Lenz, as you'd expect.

 

Roco works with Lenz because it was designed, or is made by Lenz - and XpressNet is implemented correctly.

EZ-Command uses an older version of X-Bus, that is no longer compatible with XpressNet V4.0 onwards.

But then again, EZ-Command was never intended to be used with anything other than Bachmann EZ-Command kit.

 

Hornby proclaim that their Elite is a compatible XpressNet system; but evidence so far suggests it isn't compatible at all !

 

The ZTC system works with Lenz. Either it uses a compatible version of X-Bus or is properly XpressNet equipped?

 

 

So, of the two non-Lenz brands used in Ian's "experiment", one used a different system and the other seems to have some issues regarding XpressNet.

However, two other brands not used in this test, do work with XpressNet.

 

 

p.s. As an aside; others brands mentioned by Lenz....

 

Atlas - re-badged Lenz Compact, sold in the USA (possibly discontinued now?).

 

Arnold (now part of Hornby International) - I believe it's a discontinued system, now replaced by Hornby's own DCC kit.

 

CVP - I know very little about their EasyDCC systems, or whether they use (used) XpressNet as stated in that 2003 document.

 

.

[ian]

A fair summary Ron. I didn't include ZTC, CVP or Roco because I didn't have any of their kit to hand. It was just that I had various bits with the 'same' interface port on them so I thought I'd give it a try.

[Adrian Wintle]

 

Atlas - re-badged Lenz Compact, sold in the USA (possibly discontinued now?).

 

 

 

The AtlasMaster system was definitely discontinued a number of years ago. I pick up bits on the cheap to give me extra throttles and faceplates for my Lenz system. The hand controllers are great if you don't need 4-digit addresses or more than 4 functions (which I don't for running North American N-scale consists).

 

Adrian

[Suzie]

? Roco MultiMaus is not compatible with lenz LZV100 - I have seen the LZV100 crash quite regularly when a MultiMaus is being used and this is well documented elsewhere, even with the current firmware versions. This is especially disappointing since the bug appears to be in the Lenz kit! Both devices of course adhere to the the ExpressNet standards but there is some woolyness in the expressNet standard that allows for incompatability.

 

Roco LokMaus2 appears to be fully compatible on the other hand.

[Oakydoke]

The Roco MultiMaus is compatible with the Lenz LZV100. A friend of mine uses the combination successfully and hasn't reported any problems to me.

There are lots of people reporting using this combination successfully.

However, I have heard some have had issues following updates to the Lenz command station though. I wonder if the latest MultiMaus update has to be carried out to match the changes in the Lenz kit?

[Red Baron]

has anyone tried the Xpress net stuff with an Elite recently? i.e. since 1.3 firmware and so on that fixed many of the early "elite" bugs?