A couple of weeks ago I spent 4 days/3 nights in the hospital with my youngest son, so nothing got done that week as all my stuff was at home. Last week was a little more productive. I trudged on with my Pi Howto document and just about there. I was having a problem with it recognising the NCE SB3a and not running in 'faceless mode'. After some nights research I found the answers. Thanks to Mark Gurries' website I found out that re the SB3a, JMRI doesn't recognise it in its configuration settings, even though it is in there. Apparently you have to "lie" to JMRI and set it up as a Powercab and it works fine. As for the 'faceless mode' I had been using DecoderPro3 to set the configuration settings under this misguided notion that being '3' it must be a better version compared to just 'Pro'. If I understand the forum correctly, apparently '3' is actually a cutdown version specific for decoder settings etc, not the full shebang! So I reconfigured the settings using just DecoderPro to mainly start the WiThrottle server upon startup. Copied its configuration file to the faceless mode configuration file. Made an entry in the start up script. Disconnected the terminal. Rebooted. Waited for a couple of minutes and voila my smartphone's Engine Driver app picked up the WiThrottle address and port and was able to connect. Brilliant. So now just to update the doco and I do a run through to make sure no problems. Then I might approach one or two guys from the forums to test and provide feedback before I release to the general public. Nearly there!
I also took the plunge and ordered an Auscision NSGR 73 Class, 7309, reverse Tuscan shunter. I couldn't get the one I really wanted ('Dubbo') as it was sold out. So I will take modeller's license and say 7309 has been posted to the western line on loan from Eveleigh Yard for some reason or other!
Saturday is a running day at Mr Mackie's so that will be a good arvo.
The Tour de France has started again so that will be distracting me for the next few weeks.
Sorry I missed updating the blog last week. Busy with the Pi.
Yes I think I am just about ready to release my instructions. I will be attempting another run through of the instructions, and might even see if anyone on the forums is prepared to do a run through as well. I am pretty happy with what I have done so far. There is a bit of discussion on this topic on the JMRI forum, but I guess there is more than one solution to the problem, so maybe mine will be just another one to be considered?
On the weekend of the Queen's Birthday Long Weekend in Queensland (and most of Oz except for WA) my club, RMCQ, celebrated our 40th anniversary. Go along to www.rmcq.org.au and click on the 40th Anniversary link. I also took possession of some newzed (newly used) railmotors that my mate PK was wanting to offload. Both NSWGR. First there was the CPH/CTH railmotor in green and cream livery. The second was a 620/720 railmotor in reverse Tuscan red. Both with DCC, sound and weathered. Very good, hardly used, and the price was great!
While I have been concentrating on the Pi, my hobby desk had been progressively getting buried with junk that I had just thrown there for later filing, storing, etc. The long weekend had been mostly wet, so I took the opportunity to do a big clean up of the study/hobby room so now I can actually use the hobby desk to start modelling again. The Club Xmas Modelling Competition is on in December which isn't that far away in the scheme of things!
So this week I will concentrate on the Pi and JMRI setup howto run through and iron out any issues as I would like to finalise this sometime soon.
Well since my last written post I've been tinkering away with the Pi and getting answers from the Forums for some questions I needed sorting out. So in the last couple of weeks I've basically been able to get the Pi to a state of readiness. I had answers provided to me about the persistent device names which would come in handy for situations where more than one system may be connected to the Pi. Fairly simple once explained! Secondly I was able to get a very simple answer as to how to pass these device names to JMRI so that they would be in the drop down list in the Preferences section. And yesterday I had a afternoon pass-out from the missus and I was able to go over to Mr Mackie's for what the missus said was a 'play date'. I've been interested to see how the Pi would go connecting to a NCE 5A Command Station which by default comes with a serial interface rather than USB. Craig had a Serial to USB cable, so at least I would have connectivity but how would the Pi go with interfacing to the new device. I was thinking I might have to look for Linux drivers, etc, but as it happened, the Pi immediately recognises the connection without drivers and assigned /dev/ttyUSB0 to the device. I then fired up JMRI, re-jigged the NCE Preference to Serial connection and /dev/ttyUSB0 and voila we had layout interfacing going. I was able to control one of Craig's trains no problems. I then restarted the system with the wifi Access Point dongle connected and got JMRI's WiThrottle going. Out came the smartphone and was similarly able to connect to the layout and control an engine.
One thing I will have to investigate is with the Android Engine Driver app I had the speed up to '28' and the engine was just moving. There was another setting to do with max throttle something or other which was set to 25%. I am wondering whether this reduces the '28' setting to 25% or say '7'. Not sure so will enquire online further. One interesting thing we saw was that both the JMRI throttle and the smartphone throttle reflected each other when both were set to the same engine number. So when one's speed increased it was mirrored on the other. Amazing!
So basically the Pi is set to go if I don't want to look at further interconnectivity with say MERG. But I do, so will potter around further. However I will write up my How To, repeat the install instructions to make sure this is OK, and once satisfied will publish them. I might also offer a Pi Setup Service!
On a side not, I also installed Putty and VNC Viewer on the laptop so that I can remotely connect to the Pi and reduce the need for keyboard, mouse and monitor connectivity when in the future the Pi becomes a standalone device providing whatever interconnectivity between the various layout systems I come up with.
One of these days I'll get back to the modelling!
