Pi and JMRI photos

As promised in the last post, here are some photos and a video.

My Pi in its case with the DLink modem active as the Access Point

Close up of the WiThrottle screen in JMRI with my smartphone's Engine Driver app connected

The full JMRI DecoderPro screen operating on the Pi

The Engine Driver app on my Android smartphone with 4494 connected

Pi and JMRI success!

This week has been a HUGE THUMBS UP. After re-imaging the Pi's SD card I progressively built the system up and installed JMRI on the Pi Friday night. I got to the point of starting the WiThrottle server within JMRI to see if the Pi advertised the JMRI connection specs to the outside world. And IT DID! So Sunday morning I went the next step and connected up the NCE USB to the Pi as well as the NCE SB3a. The SB3a was then connected to a length of track so that an engine could be tested. After setting up some more preferences within JMRI around the NCE system, the Pi was restarted, JMRI started up, and WiThrottle started. I then went to the Android smartphone, connected to the Pi's wifi signal, started up the Engine Driver app, and voila I connected to JMRI! After acquiring NSGW 4494 (the engine I had on hand) I played with the Android controls and the engine moved up and down the track. Oh wow! I also tested the connectivity on the Android tablet also running Engine Driver. All good. I do have a video and some photos but for some reason Youtube and Blogger are playing up. I'll try again on another day from another PC.

Back to the Pi and wifi connectivity, I was also able to establish a remote ssh connection on the Tablet to allow terminal emulation over wifi. Wow. Also I installed a VNC (virtual network connection) server on the Pi and using an Android app (AndroidVNC) was able to fire up the Pi's desktop GUI remotely on the Tablet. Double Wow! However I have to learn how to drive this. I am also thinking of installing similar apps on the laptop to allow remote connectivity if required.

This week I still have to sort out the persistent naming of the NCE and MERG USB interfaces as JMRI is currently using /dev/ttyUSB0 or 1 which is not easy to remember. Hopefully if I associate these interfaces to something more readable, JMRI will use these. Time will tell.

For those following my progress, I have been writing the steps I took to get this done. I will publish this once finalised.

Oops back to square one!

This week I persisted with the Pi up to the point of causing some sort of system issue and the spare room on the SD card was consumed to the point of only having some MBs left on an 8GB card! No idea what. So back to square one and re-image the card and start again this week. I think I am getting a better feel for the little beasty so hopefully it will not take me long to get back to where I was before the conniption!

Saturday was Club Day but no chance to run trains due to busy meetings. However Sunday was Mothers' Day so I took the boys down to the Club for an hour or so to let Mum have some quiet time! We were the only ones there. Lachlan ran his N scale train and Matthew ran his Thomas and Toby trains. I even got a chance to run a NSWGR 44 Class for the first time in months!

So hopefully a better week with the Pi.

Pi Persistence and a new link

Hi all. Sorry for no update last week as there really wasn't much to update. I have been persisting with the Pi and trying to understand the whole UDEV thing. I discovered I needed some additional 'packages' to allow certain things to be reported. Did this and ran one of the new commands 'udevadm' which was looking very hopeful when it started to hang the Pi. After much colourful language emanating from the study, I decided I needed to research this new development more. It would appear there is a known bug in the Pi whereby the output stack for this command running on the Raspbian OS fills up and then stops the Pi. Hopefully the Linux gurus can sort this out soon. Things like this happen with development boards such as the Pi. I'll keep a close eye on the Forums.

I stumbled on a new link as a result of my membership of MERG, the Guildford Model Railway Group (Sydney, NSW) who 'Wallerawang' as their current exhibition layout, but are planning their new exhibition layout (still early days) which they are hoping to possibly use MERG control for. A fellow MERG member is a club member and also a reader of this blog. http://www.gmrg.org.au/. I'll add this to my Links list.

The weekend just gone was the Brisbane Model Train Show and my club RMCQ was well represented. The lads looked very schmick in our new uniforms. Everyone was consistent. I was only able to get out on Sunday and help out.

So this week depending on the Linux gurus, I might progress with the Pi or not. As I mentioned to the above member/reader a for the Pi other people have been able to get JMRI running on it, as have I, but it is the integration of JMRI into the Pi as an access point in its own right that doesn't appear to be documented or experimented well at the moment, and that is what I am perservering with. That and the ability of the Pi to recognise some generic USB type conenctions such as the wifi dongle to be used as the access point, the NCE USB interface and the MERG USB interface that is keeping me busy trying to work it out. Hopefully the end result is some basic instructions whereby if these are connected the Pi will assign a more meaningful interface name than say /dev/ttyUSB0 to something like /dev/NCEUSB or similar. Then hopefully modellers who use other DCC manufacturers could potentially tinker with my instructions for their USB interfaces.

So if this doesn't move along at any speed I might look at starting some more modelling!