WIMorrison

Keith You will be getting a mix of 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals which will account for the some of differing strengths, plus there are people arriving home with phones and 'hotspots' and you can probably add into that mix a lot of misconfigured devices which are not set to UK (or EU). Regrettably absolutely nothing you can do about it - other than lining your house with meta and earthing it out (the Faraday cage referred to earlier )

@melmerby - shows that there are a lot of houses around you

where do you buy the black one? - even Gaugemaster don't show a black faced combi on their website

Here's a primer for you https://tonystrains.com/news/peco-electro-frog-turnouts-dcc/ You can ignore where it says DCC, there is absolutely no difference in wiring them for DC or DCC

? why should they ?

As you are using DCC a small stay alive capacitor on the decoder, or even simply a capacitor across the pickups if you are wiring direct to the wheels without a decoder will do it. You only need a decoder if you want to switch the lights off. Look at DCC Concepts for pickups or Digikeijs for complete kits https://www.digikeijs.com/en/dr100y-h0-lighting-installation-kit-yellow.html

All true, but you described this as an emergency stop not a graceful stop. In an emergency stop you simply want all moving parts to stop when the button is pressed - and as most people don’t use software then the methods I describe will work for them.

By far the simplest way is simply to switch a short across the track. the automatic protection in the command station will then stop everything and one you have fixed the issue start again - even easier if you use an NCE EB1, PSX, MERG DCO or similar because as soon as you remove the short they will reset and layout starts again. Or another alternative is to place a switch in the feeds from the command station to the bus - On layout goes, Off it stops Lots of ways to skin this cat without software or anything clever or complicated

Cant you just press the <Esc> key on the keyboard to instantly stop the layout? That is what I do with the software I use .

you are competing with Mobile Phones in that area of the spectrum

I think that you will find that it is not approved for use within the EU therefore should not be used at UK exhibitions. the NA 2.4GHz spectrum is slightly different than that authorised in the EU and also the broadcast is different to that authorised. a device such as this is very likely to cause issues for other approved WiFi equipment especially under the circumstances being discussed.

can you point us at the STL for these?

Interestingly it isn't the hotspot that consumes power, it is WiFi hardware itself. The hotspot is simply a software switch on the hardware for WiFi and it is the hardware consumes the power. I wager that 99% of people use WiFi at home and that the majority of those people will also use WiFi in the office and train/bus going to work - this means that they never switch the WiFi off and if they have used it as a hotspot than they won't remember to switch that off. If you want to save battery and be more secure, then switch off WiFi and Bluetooth, easy enough on some phones - but harder on others

Paul What you can see is the SSID of WiFi routers that are beaconing (or broadcasting) their network presence. A hotspot is the name applied when it is happening on a phone or MiFi device.

@John K I can assure you that I have not misunderstood anything, I have designed, built, managed and maintained wired, WiFi and satellite based networks that have had many tens of thousands of users. I fully understand the operation of TCP/IP (plus other protocols) and the various transport mechanisms that are involved in LAN, WAN and RAN. It might help you to read up on 802.11 and whilst there look into adjacent and co-channel interference and how they impact congestion - or even easier just google WiFi congestion and read some of the learned articles that you be offered, especially the ones for IEEE

Do you mean 5Ghz rather that 5g - they are not the same thing? Plus there is no point in having 5Ghz if you controller only works with 2.4Ghz.

It may simply be necessary to use wired handsets as the public is not going to stop using smartphones and I suspect that most people wouldn’t know whether they have a live hotspot or not. what I did notice from the other reports of issues is that most people were having issues with 2.4Ghz radio and yet when using 5Ghz connections the problems were greatly reduced. this would make sense as 5Ghz is newer and devices that support this standard have better components and up to date firmware and software - but whilst 5Ghz might work now that will change as more and more devices use 5Ghz and you will be back to wired handsets. upping the power to ‘drown out’ other signals won’t help either as other exhibitors will simply do the same and once more you are back at the same place. temporary solutions include changing the channel to a less congested channel either manually, or by using a decent router which has automatic channel optimisation m, ideally with beam forming technology. You can get these from Hauwei and TP Link at reasonable cost.

Mick I don’t think that iTrain has an interface for DCC++ - I could well be wrong though (I often am!). iain

I went into DR5000 and to ext88N IN, in this section have I set the following... SETTINGS Number of 16 input modules 0 = you dont have any s88 Number of 8 input modules 0 Number of contacts 16 First contact in feedback space 0 Report all contacts after power on 1000 ext88 modules Number of control modules 0 = you dont have any s88 Type Dr4088 Channels 1 - Pair - Throw Ticked - 1 2 - Pair - Throw Not Ticked - 1 3 - Pair - Throw Ticked - 2 4 - Pair - Throw Not Ticked - 2 up to 16 (1 ticked 8, one not ticked 8)

Paul i am saying that you should connect from the dr5000 direct to the one DR4088 you have set up - remove the connections to ALL other devices. look in your dr5000 program and set all the S88 to zero

Paul diagrams would make your posts much easier to read - whilst in your minds eye you understand what you describe, for those of us at a distance the words are difficult to comprehend I am suggesting that you connect one DR4088LN DIRECTLY to the DR5000 and that is all you have connected - the idea is to remove all potential issues and simplify the diagnosis other to those that can be dealt with. also make sure that on the DR5000 only LocoNet has feedbacks assigned and that the S88 have been removed (by default the DR5000 uses the first 32(?) for S88 unless you remove them). Then connect some feedbacks to some track and confirm that all is working - currently you have far to many variables to enable fault finding and you need to learn to walk with this before your run - presently you are trying to run a marathon and we know that isn’t feasible as I have said many times - keep it simple until you are 100% confident then start getting more complicated.

Why not make it simple and simply use one DR4088LN numbered 1-16 (or even 65-80) and connect that to the DR5000 rather than creating unnecessary complications at this stage? Doing this means you are only working with one issue not several. These units are normally 'bombproof' and have been used in their thousands worldwide faultlessly - which doesn't help you, serve to show that you must have created some complexity somewhere that doesn't need to exist and that is masking your issue. Therefore you need to go back to first principles with one command station, on feedback decoder with 3 or 4 feedbacks connected and one loco - this only needs to be 1m long in total containing 3 or 4 feedbacks wired correctly, you should also build this simple proof of concept in iTrain and make it work and then, and only then, once you have this working then you can extend to the rest of the layout. Until you confident with these basic fundamentals then you are simply going to go from one frustration to the next

Nick you are better asking this question in the iTrain forum than here. I also suggest that reading the guide in this link may help you plan how to use feedbacks to create blocks https://berros.eu/itrain/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10759 Iain

A pi with the latest Java will work with iTrain and if you look at the iTrain website you should see a pricing option that meets a tight budget. Regarding the z/Z21 for automation the better choice is always going to be the Z21 as that offers the Loconet T interface which gives access to cheaper occupancy detectors and other accessories. However if a budget is the driving factor then the DR5000 may be an option as it is very full featured and similar in price to a z21, though I would advise you that the mantra of your get what you pay for’ applies to model railways also perhaps start with the DR5000 with a Pi and move on later if you have issues?

I always look for the tiny (and I do mean tiny) Zimo logo on the box - if it ain’t there I don’t buy it. Normally I would buy OEM Zimo but sometimes speed needs and Bachmann fills the gap in those occasions