AndrewC

My gob has been smacked. The roofer showed up on time. We've now got all new guttering, downspouts, and 3 leaks patched. From what he said there was an inscription on the flashing up top that said ABC 1983. That means the current bits are 35 now. I can see a total re-roofing job in the next 5 years for sure.

That about sums it up. Coldest morning of the year and I've got the roofer coming to replace the guttering. Oops. £5 says he cries off before 08:00. The beautiful metropolis of Telford beckons early next week for a technical workshop. 9 1/2 hours round trip for a 4 hour whinge-fest. Joy unbound. Burger all else. Enjoy the day.

Or living with their parents, whinging on twitter/instagram/reddit/facebook/all of the above (delete as appropriate) about how offended they are about being called snowflakes.

Thanks, but I don't have a Demo entry in my railed vehicles list. May be an idea just to create a new temp loco with all the normal functions setup and update its number as needed. Good idea.

That is pretty much it. With a roster of around 80 locos, having to faff with that awful configuration UI to create each one individually is a nightmare. Its a shame there isn't a fast adhoc way of running a loco with it. I know there are a few people interested in testing it out for Freemo use. Spending several minutes having to create the entry and apply all the function buttons for a loco that will no doubt only be used for an hour then discarded from the app is not the way to go. Especially since Engine Driver and WiThrottle make the process so much easier. At least with JMRI everything is in xml and stupidly easy to clone one loco to help fill the whole roster.

The DR5000 config app looks for a block of 3 available ports. XBus, Loconet, and itself. On one laptop it setup as com4 for loconet. On another it is on com5 as it also has a PR3 driver installed that takes com4.

Shame it didn't get more invites. Nice layout and fun to operate. At least you are freeing up space for more modules.

try setting the programming mode to direct byte instead of paged. that's the only difference I can see between my setup and yours.

Good old Crapita. I must say, I've never had a problem with them. Once upon a time they managed to c0ckup a major project. They went back to the software vendor for some consulting help. Vendor said no. Vendor referred them to my employer, who promptly bend them over. I ended up with a £10k bonus for 6 week's worth of work to save their sorry backsides.

Has anyone found a way of manually creating a file to be loaded into the Z21 app? I'm asking as the process for adding a loco to the app is painfully slow and I've got potentially 80+ locos to add. If not, it's back to JMRI and WiThrottle.

Poutine is wonderful. Its also made with curds and not cheese, fries and not chips. Add in some pulled pork or brisket. mmmmmm. It's also fast becoming one of the UK's most popular street foods. Almost the perfect comfort food. Good moaning all from the boring borough. All quiet here. Still waiting for more renovation quotes and for the bank to get the giant hedgehog out of its backside. Other than that. burger all happening. Enjoy the day.

Happy Appearance Day Laurence.

Just a comment that is slightly off topic, but interesting to note the resistance to touch screen throttles by a few people. I know it is all personal choice and I'm not belittling those who prefer a physical controller, but at a recent Freemo meet out of the 20 or so people that operated over the 2 days, only 1 used a traditional controller. All the others used phones or tablets.

For what it's worth I'll throw my 2p worth in. 24 years ago, I'd have recommended Lenz or Digitrax depending on local availability. 10 years ago I'd have recommended Digitrax as I found the Lenz handheld throttles a pain in the ar$s when operating points and stupidly expensive to expand beyond the basic set. 5 years ago it would have been NCE. Today, I'd (and just did) go with the Digikeijs DR5000. For £150 it does more than £300 worth of Lenz gear. Add a Roco 10813 wireless mouse to it for less than £90 and you have a full walk around system that can be plugged straight into a computer for JMRI or panels. If you have a smart phone or tablet the Z21 app is a free download so you can have a second throttle for nowt. The unit has a built in access point (wifi) that you can set to Z21 protocol. With the Roco wifi multimaus, you get the knob style control as well as the option to plug in any other throttle you like. Yes it's fairly new and there are some interesting quirks but overall its pretty much plug and play. (when configuring the LAN or WIFI you have to plug the unit into a router, but it can run stand alone afterwards)

I've tried the same as Ian but get different results. The connection settings on the JMRI page assume you are connecting the Digikeijs unit via LAN and not USB. I can't do that as I'm using the DR as a Z21 server so the protocol has been changed. Mine is setup using USB according to a couple of Youtube videos I've seen. Digitrax, USB, port set to the same that loconet on the DR5000 is using, command station as any DCS200 or later, and connection with locobuffer USB. I can read and write with JMRI just fine, but the identify loco function is intermittent. As far as I can tell, Ian has the same settings but can't read the decoder.

Deja voodoo. The feeling you have had the desire to stick pins in the person posting the same joke before.

Isn't that a Welsh dish?

Been there done that, someone puked on the t-shirt. You should see how bad it is at De Hem in London. Its like St Paddy's day but orange instead of green. We love Amsterdam but it is full of sh#tweasels most of the year. That's why we like mid week at the end of May. Before the real stag weekends start. Rotterdam on the weekends for the jazz at Fenix. Kaapse Brouwers, Stadsbrouwerij de Pelgrim, etc.

If you are looking at places to avoid, we'll be in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, & Brussels the last week of May. (After Chelsea Flower Show of course)

Good moaning all from the boring boring borough. Condolences DD. She sounds like the kind of woman that would have kept on battling at anything and everything. Good to see Debs is slowly on the up. May it continue. Rick, would that be a llama llama ding d0ng? To the rest that are ailing or under the weather: get off your arse and get better already. You have trains to play with. As for me, another day of builders traipsing about making up quotes for the renovation work. So far I've got £24k to £37k for the same bit of work. London prices innit. So looking forward to months of living in a building site..... not. TFIF. Enjoy the day, enjoy your weekend. edit: ####### useless pile of #### censor list. It can go #### itself.

Like my dad I've got slippery veins. In his case it was exasperated from donating nearly 100 pints over his lifetime. (I've still got his 50 and 75 certificates packed away) One of the vampires at the QE in Woolwich found the way around it for me. When ever I need blood work or a cannula, I start with my hand in a sink full of very warm water for a couple of minutes. It really brings the veins to the surface. Then she gets me to lie flat so there is far less chance of fainting.

Probably the vegetarians & vegans.

Has anyone heard from Pete Trisonic lately? I know he was cutting down his participation on the site but hasn't been around at all since Dec 14.

Greetings from the boring borough. Little happening here of note. Someone f*rted outside Charing Cross so the whole area is closed off. SWMBO is now on a bus to Woolwich and then DLR to Bank. Allegedly TfL will accept SE tickets this morning. History tells me, my lady will be using some colourful language over the next 20 minutes or so. Addendum: yep, just received a text saying the bus driver was p1ssy about her gold card. Bus rammed with brats all standing at the front, she had to fight to the back where she managed a seat. In other news, I hate banks, builders, and trying to get quotes for renovation work. At the current rate of effort, I'll be spending more of my time appeasing the wbankers than the actual renovation labour. That is if the useless bunglec**ts bother to respond to my email with the first batch of quotes. enough ranting. Time for more coffee and to see what festering turds await me in my corporate inbox this morning. Enjoy the day.