WIMorrison

Gentlemen, a discussion on the merits of product A v product B does not help the discussion, nor will it enlighten people. Both of the major commercial products will satisfy the requirements that have been stated.

Manual running isn't shown on any of the videos because people have been running model railways manually for 70+ years and there is little point is teaching people how to suck eggs. The various ways of running trains within iTrain Manual, Semi-Automatic and fully automatic are discussed, both in the videos and within the iTrain manual. You latest post shows a 'new board' which seems to imply that there is a larger layout than what you have show to date - is this the case? Please post a layout plan of the entire layout, it is germane to the discussion that people understand the entire picture without anything omitted, not a subsection with aspects removed ' for clarity' which is actually not providing clarity, it is adding to the potential for you to waste money because we do not have a full and complete picture of what you plan to operate. My recommendation remains that you get a competent, professional company to build this layout for you for several reasons, the major one being that you are not understanding the majority of the responses you are getting here therefore will not be able to give accurate instructions to anyone on what is required, plus I am unsure of your ability to implement what will be required to run the layout correctly given the level of understanding being demonstrated heretofore. This may seem harsh, but it is honest.

Don’t know where you are getting the number of modules from, but you appear to have doubled them from my estimate. take the number of feedbacks and divide by 16 to get the correct nunber again, a competent professional builder will be able to work out what is required and source the correct items

The 19v is the input voltage and not the track voltage which will actually be around 17-17.5v. the NMRA spec required decoders to work up to 23v (which is what DC controllers peaked at) therefore no issues. The default Roco voltage is 18v at the track - i use 17v at the track with my equipment.

I would strongly advise against doing this as you will find it awkward to operate and experience from other people trying this and finally accepting that they needed to put feedbacks across the whole layout to make life bearable, and the cost for another module to place feedbacks across the entire layout is minimal - around €80

YAMORC YD6016 are much more cost effective

You are having the layout ‘professionally built’ - any competent ‘professional builder’ should understand your requirements immediately and wire it without any difficulties. if he doesn’t the I wouldn’t classify him as competent and would go to a company that can actually provide the service such as DCC Train Automation who are able to provide the entire package.

That is NOT what I said. I said you need to put feedbacks everywhere, or you will have issues. I did not say anything about automatic or manual running - again you are seeing what you want to see and finding issues where they are not stated. I repeat that you can run trains manually whilst trains are running under automatic control.

You cannot just put feedbacks on part of a layout as I explained before and dozens of people have found out. If you do then when you bring trains onto the layout they will not be recognised and when you take them off they will remain on the layout where they were last seen. Like anything in life, doing half a job leads to more problems and issues than doing the job properly.

You are not considering Train Controller either but don't seem to have an issue with that. Threads drift, it is a fact of life.

Paul, Given that you say I marked up the feedbacks a couple of years ago and as the layout hasn' t substantially changed since then I am not sure there is a need to be repeating the exercises that we have been though previously. However others may have a different view and they are, of course, welcome to make their comments.

Surely you should just install Java onto your Mac and run JMRI natively without recourse to Parallels?

Paul, I really worry that you are starting to overthink this and finding issues where issues don't exist. Where a loco, or motor, is within a train doesn't cause issues as you simply provide that information when you create the train. I suggest that your best route to solve your issues is to find someone who is operating automation, and I would actually stick with someone planning to use your chosen software because whilst the end result is the same the modus operando between all the programs is different and 'understanding' the wrong one will only add to your confusion in achieving your objective. There are no hard and fast rules that say you need x number of feedbacks, y numbers of blocks, or that a block must be a certain length - your budget, the way you operate the layout and the physical plan all dictate how the variables work together and like any model railway you need to be open to adaption and change during the build and operation phase to get the best from the software, your layout and your enjoyment.

Hmm, I have a work around for you :) Extract the msi file to your desktop and run it with the Install USB driver checked. The USB drivers will install but the installation will fail. Then run the msi file again, but UNCHECK the Install USB driver and the installation will complete and you can run the program as you see here.

Index of /digikeijs (traintastic.org)

Paul Bob Fuller and I created a series of videos about iTrain that you can find here; Video 01: Using iTrain Tutorial Series - Installing iTrain - YouTube Please note that U Tube is an American company that make, of all things - tubes, whereas YouTube hosts lots of (mostly) free videos 😂

Excellent - do you know the current product numbers?

It depends on what you mean by 'long' 2m isn't that long, but 10m is quite long, however the Loconet cable can be very long (in comparison) and you should place the YD6016 where it will be most central.

AFAIK Uhlenbrock have stopped making this piggy back unit, as have Lenz. Apparently Train-o-matic make one but no feedback yet on whether it will work like the one you quote

Phil The MTB motors are not stall motors, hence not making a noise like stall motors and not consuming any current when stopped. The motor only turns in one direction and the first cam on the shaft nearest the eccentric activates the first micro switch to stop the motor. The next instruction causes the motor to turn the camshaft another 180 degrees and stop again. the other micro switches as always in sync with the motor because the cams are all on the same cameshaft :)

You can also buy an MTB MP10 which is a direct replacement for the Tortoise motor, even down to the footprint which is identical. Same reliability as the rest of the range which I started using around 4 years (perhaps 5 years) ago and I have been telling everyone how good they are since :))

when you put the static ip address into the laptop did you also include the subnet mask (255.255.255.0) and the default gateway (192.168.0.111)?

Reset z21 to defaults - hold down button on front until the blue light changes purple and let it go then try again

That is a MS generated IP address that occurs when the laptop is not connected to a network that issues up addresses. if you are just using a direct cable between the laptop and z21 then change the laptop address to 192.168.0.100 and you will be able to connect

Have you confirmed that the firewall is not blocking the access? yiu need to have port 21105 open to 192.168.0.111 and your laptop address needs to be in the range 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.253. try disabling the firewall and see if it connects - only takes 5 mins so very little threat window.