StoneMonkey78

What I took from the demo was that without Railcontroller, the app would only give throttle control. When the app is used to control accessories it is doing so as a remote for the layout control part of Railcontroller.

Whilst you are correct regarding the app on a phone, the impression given at the demonstration I saw was that a tablet could not only have 3 throttles simultaneously displayed on screen (without the need to swipe left/right as per the phone), or one throttle and the layout diagram. Of course that could just be a salesman getting carried away as he didn't have a tablet on hand to demonstrate this!

Another way at looking at this is that Bachmann is trying to offer a system that is scalable to meet all users' needs from the basic single operator to the complex multi-user club layout. At its simplest (cheapest) buy just the hub, load the Railcontroller on any (old) computer, and run locos from any suitable phone. Price for this setup wasn't mentioned. At the top end, buy the hub, have multiple Railcontroller laptops as necessary, up to five handhelds, and 50 phone/tablets running the app, each with up to 3 controllers at a time. I realise that on the grand scale 2A ain't going to cut it, but the demonstrator made it clear there was a booster unit in development.

The demonstrator described the battery as a heavy duty lithium rechargeable - an off-the-shelf battery normally used in mobile phones. Full charge of a new battery was described as having a runtime of 12 hours with a fully discharged battery taking 2-3 hours to recharge; he acknowledged that over time the battery duration would fall off. My wifi-connected mobile phone lasts 14-16 hours, so I don't know why the handset could not be wifi connected given that it is not running a large battery-draining screen like a phone would?

What I took from the demonstration was the wi-fi was limited to the 2.4GHz band as this provided more than sufficient bandwidth for the handset(s) to talk with the base-station. What was not clear was whether phone or tablets running the app were talking direct to the Kenesis base-station, or whether everything need to be connected to a separate hub - there was a separate wi-fi WAP above the demo, but it was not apparent whether this was part of the controller setup, or was just being used to connect to the many wifi cameras that were in use around the demo stand. What the demonstrator did stress was the ability to use cheap and cheerful phones/tablets with the system from which I inferred that older app-running hardware that didn't have 5GHz or 9.6GHz bands, could still be used.

It's the hub that has a 2-line display - the handset has a 5-line display.

Thanks everyone for your follow up posts, and apologies for not responding before this, but holiday preparations have taken priority. Thanks for the steer regarding the Universal CANMIO Firmware, Nigel; armed with a search term I was able to find things on the MERG website that I would never have found otherwise. Although the assembly instructions for the CANMIO-SVO kit include installation of the 10-way box header (J3), there is no mention of its function or reference to the potential attachment of daughter boards, and thereby the board's full potential. Accordingly, as described by your responses, I can achieve the necessary servo control and frog switching with 13 CANMIO boards; this makes the cost much more affordable. I'm still a little perturbed at taking on the board construction task - the MERG forum seems to be littered with calls for help when constructed boards don't work once assembled, though I acknowledge that no one will post when everything works as intended! On a separate note, having been unimpressed with the graphics available in JMRI's Panel Editor software, the steer to looking at the Layout Editor software, reveals a much better graphical interface. I've not yet finished all the block designations, and getting my head around how to get JMRI to construct multi-headed semaphores, but here is a screenshot of my point/semaphore graphical control panel:

As I don't have any of the hardware I can only go by the information provided on the MERG website. The website says that until the alternative versions of the CANMIO board have been produced, all orders will only be supplied with the CANMIO-SVO (Kit 98-S). The build instructions (dated 1a March 2018) clearly state 'This kit is for the CANMIO-SVO which is configured to drive up to 8 servos.' The circuit board includes an array of 8x3 pin headers to which the 8 3-wire servos can be attached, and, as an alternative, the option of fitting either a 2.54mm or 3.5mm 1 x 10 pin array - 8 of these alternative pin header holes are electrically connected to the centre pins of the servo pin headers (the other 2 are marked 0V and + . So this particular kit only supports 8 outputs. If there is a MERG kit that supports 16 servo channels I would be interested, but I could not find it on the MERG website. Nigel could you provide a link? Many thanks

The MERG kits currently being supplied are designated CANMIO-SVG and they only drive 8 servos, not the 16 you mention (there are only 8x3 pinouts on the board), so with a kit cost of £12.76, that works out at £3.19 per point (assuming one channel for servo control and one for frog switching) - this figure is just the board costs and excludes the cost of servo, relay, bus and power wiring. I did look at the option of sourcing components for all the MERG boards. Where I needed only 1 board (CANUSB4, CANGIZMO) I couldn't source the parts cheaper that the kit price. I would need ~26 CANMIO boards (just for the turnout servos/frog switching and semaphore servos); if I sourced the PCBs and PICs from MERG, and the rest from Farnell, then the per board price came to £12.01, not really much of a saving over the MERG kit price of £12.76. I have no doubt that I could drive that price down maybe another 10-20% if I sourced some components from multiple sources (Ebay/China etc), but the real savings only occurred if I was buying enough components to make 100+ boards. If the DCCNext/Mardec option mentioned above does what the website suggests, then my cost just for the board and free software at E7.50 works out at E0.94 per point (87p), less than 1/3rd of the price of the CANMIO board. The Mardec sketch seems to be well thought out such that user programming is very simple (no sketches to be written). It is not about saving money, for me it is about not spending money unnecessarily - the pedant might suggest there is no difference, but to me there is.

Hi Robin. The overall dimensions of the proposed layout is 4.8m x 1.2m, increasing to 2.2m at the other end (designed to fit in a garage); assuming a roughly centre-feed from the controls (plan to have option of connecting controls from either side of long face), so maximum distance from control to furthest board will be in the order of ~4m. I am encouraged by Nigel's steer to look at IoTT - didn't get the Swiss guy's name - his Arduino sketches seemed logical (notwithstanding his occasional typing errors!) and easily understood. This solution has the potential to be scaled for what I want, though I'm not sure about powering everything from the DCC bus - there must be a better way of doing this. Similarly, I very much like the look of Nico Teering's Mardec software (it is a really clever Arduino sketch where the user doesn't have to write the sketch, merely enter keyboard inputs to on-screen prompts) and his Arduino-based DCCNext boards. If the web site is to be believed, a 12 servo controller (or 8 servo + 8 relay switch controls) for E7.50 - excluding the cost of the offered enclosure - could offer a solution at about £2.15 per point, including the cost of the servo. His videos are here. His DCCNext boards come in kit form the same as MERG kits, but the greater number of channels would result in fewer boards and therefore less soldering! I have asked some clarifying questions from Nico, but have yet to hear back. Plenty to think about. [Edited - forgot to add the cost of the frog relay]

Thanks for all your inputs, and apologies for the delay in responding. I have spent the last few days researching/costing a MERG CBUS solution and wanted to get my head around what was involved/options/numbers etc. CBUS undoubtedly offers a solution that doesn't involve a lot of programming, centred around the use of the CANMIO boards to directly control either servos or relays, married to a CANUSB4 module to link with my computer and thereby JMRI. The PMP18 single servo kit was also of interest in that a number of my baseboards have only a single insulfrog turnout or semaphore, so such a servo controller becomes very cost effective when using a 2-wire trigger from a relay on an adjacent baseboard. I felt that I would also need a CANGIZMO to test the CBUS connectivity. Whilst the cost of such a CBUS-based solution is less than the MegaPoints solution, it is still coming out at a cost of over £550 (excluding the cost of wiring and servo mounts which were not included in my estimated costs in my original post). Also there is the significant disadvantage of having to build nearly 30 circuits. My soldering skills are quite moderate, and therefore the time, effort and angst of such an undertaking is not something that appeals. However, Nigel/Robin, thank you for the heads-up concerning RS485 - not a board that I had heard of. This merits further investigation as a possible bus solution. I understand the boards are very cheap (in comparison to the I2C-Extender solutions I identified above). Having watched a number of YouTube videos in this area, there may be an easier solution involving an RS485 connected network where a JMRI/CMRI-connected Arduino Mega, acts as a master to a series of slave Arduino Nano controllers. The Nano controllers control the PCA9685 16-ch servo controllers and 8-ch relay modules with fairly simple sketches, addressed directly from JMRI via a USB connection to the Mega. The disadvantage of this solution is the potential need to upload revised sketches to multiple Arduinos under different baseboards (though hopefully once working, repeated crawling might not be needed!). I also accept that time will be needed to perfect the sketches. However, I feel more confident tackling this area than having to build ~30 circuit boards and getting them to work correctly. Apart from the PMP18 single servo controllers (which I will be using), I was also impressed with MERG's servo mounts. I have seen other laser-cut and 3D-printed mount designs, and feel that the MERG design/cost is something to seriously consider. I leave on holiday for 4 weeks shortly, so whilst I will continue to monitor this thread, I will not be able to follow up any research suggestions for some weeks (my wife wants me to have a digital detox!). Thanks all. David

Thanks Robin and Nigel for your input. I hadn't appreciated the distance limitations associated with I2C buses. Having now researched this issue, and for the benefit of others reading this thread, the limitation is solvable. The factors that affect this bus centre mainly on line capacitance that distorts the leading edge of both clock and data pulses (rise time), such that as line distance increases there is a point where the slave boards can no longer reliably determine each pulse. The effect can be mitigated to some extent by using lower data rates on the bus. A single I2C master/slave arrangement should work at distances up to 7m, but for every 5 additional slave boards on the bus, this distance reduces by 1m. As my layout involves about 20 slave boards, then I will have to look at using I2C extenders to distribute the signal. I found 3 x I2C extenders: Sparkfund's Differential I2C Breakout (£8.98 ea from a UK supplier), the Bausatz I2C-Extender (available is a kit at E11.00 ea from Germany), and Sandbox Electronics Active I2C Long Cable Extender (£14.66 ea from China). All can use a star distribution, so I could probably get away with 3 or 4 boards. Assuming the Sparkfund board was used with appropriate cables, this would add about 40p to the cost of each point. One other thing I discovered regarding the I2C bus, although it is described as a 2-wire bus, all the boards need to share a common ground. All the advice is to use 4-core wiring to include VCC, Ground, Clock and Data lines. I was aware of the need to ensure the relay switching of frog polarity is appropriately timed. As an aside, I had forgotten that I had bought Insulfrog Code 80 points for the hidden/fiddle lines, so the number of relays needed is much less than at first thought. Nigel, I hadn't heard of CBUS, so I will look into that. Also, although I had tinkered with Panel Pro's Panel Editor, I hadn't tried the Layout Editor - the Layout Editor seems to give much better control of the graphics layout.

Hi. I've been lurking for nearly a year, but this is my first post. Apologies if this is not the correct sub-forum for my questions, but I wasn't sure. Background. I'm returning to the hobby after an enforced absence of nearly 20 years - my, how things have changed! I sold all my OO scale stuff in the late 90s to switch to N gauge (scale) and bought a CVP EasyDCC system to control the proposed layout. Having dug it out, it's working fine, and I'm content with controlling locos with the couple of panel-mounted rotary controls, ie I don't want to go down the route of controlling locos from a computer. Layout. All still in planning with nothing built, but nearly all the track bought (Peco Code 55 on the visible bits/Code 80 for the hidden sidings). I need the layout to be portable so it will be a series of 10 x 1200mm x 600mm boards. The proposed layout has 91 points (97 point motors allowing 2 for slips and 3-ways) and 15 semaphores, and whilst I probably won't need to automate them all, I'll plan on worst case. Original Intention. Back in the day, point motors were invariably solenoids controlled with push buttons on a mimic panel. When I started to look around at present day solutions, I was impressed with Dave Fenton's MegaPoints Controllers and a shift to servo-based tie-bar movement. However, having costed a MegaPoints solution at something over £1.3k to put in place, a solution that worked out at something over £12.50 per turnout seemed excessive. Accordingly I have spent hours looking at other micro-controller solutions, reading hundreds of posts on multiple threads and viewing dozens of YouTube help videos. However in all this research, whilst I got much useful input, I didn't find a single solution that met both my needs and my ability to understand the solutions being discussed (I am tech-savvy, but so much has changed such that a new language has emerged that I have yet to learn). Computer Control. The one main issue my research called me to question concerned having a physical mimic panel. The hours needed to design, construct and wire such a beast, and the lack of flexibility if changes are needed, drew me to the screen-based alternatives. It is clear there are many programs out there that might meet my requirement to specifically control my points and semaphores, but I stress that I am not looking for a program that controls locos, does DCC programming, does block control with interlocked signals, etc - all I want to do is control the points and semaphores. Proposed Solution. My research has led to a possible solution that works out significantly cheaper - if it works!. Nevertheless, as I am dealing with hardware I have never used, and being a Yorkshireman who won't spend a penny if not sure that what is being bought is going to work, I wanted to run my ideas past this community. I welcome any input, alternative suggestions, highlight any errors, and solutions for the bits I have not yet worked out. Servo-Control. SG90 servos mounted below the baseboard, controlled from an Arduino Mega clone via a 2-wire I2C bus and a PCA9685 16-channel servo controller. Frog Switching. The DCC Bus signals are polarity-switched using a 5V relay switch, triggered via an 8- or 16- pin I/O expansion board, sitting on the I2C bus. I have identified 3 suitable expansion boards: the PCF8574 and PCF8574A 8-pin boards and the MPC23017 16-pin board. I am conscious that there is only a finite number of I2C addresses that such boards can utilise, so will use the 16-pin board(s) where required for any individual baseboard, rather than the 8-pin board shown in the diagram. I am also conscious that there are 16-way relay switches available - I think that the 8-way relays will be easier to mount and wire (inside the baseboard frame rather than under the baseboard surface). Wiring. By mounting the required servos, servo controllers, relays and I/O expansion boards on each baseboard, then (excluding any wiring for lighting circuits) there will only be 6 wires passing from one board to the next: the DCC bus, a 5vDC supply, and the I2C bus. Costs. Arduino Mega2560 clone £7.89 (~0.08p per point) PCA9685 16-ch servo controller £1.53 (0.10p per point) SG90 servo (bulk buying gets cost to under £1.00 ea) MPC23017 16-pin I/O board £1.70 (0.11p per point) 8-ch Relay Module £3.60 (0.45p per point) Total - £1.74 per point Control. Now the bit I haven't yet worked out. I have looked at JMRI Panel Pro; the graphics aren't great, but I can get a touch screen laptop to switch the point graphics on screen. Apparently the Arduino can be controlled by JMRI, though I am unsure of how the linkage is made; is it the same USB connection that is used to load the Arduino sketch, is there another bit of hardware that needs to go between the two? I note that some Megas have wi-fi; is a wireless option viable? Are there better control programs than Panel Pro that will work with Arduinos? Is there anyone out there implementing this solution, in whole or in part, who has suitable sketches to share? Thanks in anticipation for any contribution.