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.