DCC Accessory Compatability

Discussions on all modular specific topics...
Mike_R
Posts: 406
Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2009 7:05 pm

Re: DCC Accessory Compatability

Post by Mike_R »

This will always happen with different control systems. They will need some sort of interface for feedback to work on a different system.
Paco's GenLI-RS interface will work without a command station for RS feedback. I'm not sure where it can be obtained from, possibly as a kit.
As I said before the other option is to make it easy to connect different types of feedback units to a module, and have one for each type you plan to connect to. With this it would mean not using combined detector and feedback units.
Mike Ruby
signalist
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Jun 24, 2014 10:54 am

Re: DCC Accessory Compatability

Post by signalist »

Digitrax feedback to JMRI will be via a Loconet interface on the JMRI computer (Locobuffer, PR3 etc).

NCE feedback will be via an NCE cab bus interface (NCE USB) or possibly via an NCE command station with integrated serial interface. The NCE command station may be a requirement - I have not tried using NCE.

Lenz feedback will be via a RS bus interface (can be serial, USB or Ethernet) or can be via a Lenz command station and Expressnet interface. The latter is likely to be used because there are a lot of people with LZV100 and serial/USB/Ethernet interfaces anyway so can be easily sourced.

HSI88 feedback will be via a HSI88 interface or can be via an Ecos command station which has HSI88 and Ethernet built in.

JMRI will quite happily talk to as many connections as are required regardless of which family they are. There might be some value in getting stand alone Loconet, NCE and RS Bus interfaces and configuring them on the central computer in advance to save a lot of setting up on the day rather than rely on people bringing along command stations and interfaces. Configuring serial and Ethernet interfaces can be a chore and finding drivers for USB interfaces is not always straightforward when time is in short supply.

I suspect that RS bus and Loconet are in the majority where feedback is concerned with very few NCE and HSI88 so it should be easy enough to get most setups up and running with no fuss.
Post Reply