I’m so far out of the loop I don’t know what y’all are talking about. Phone to run a train??? Sounds like black magic to me.
I suppose the chimpanzee was there to make sure the trainees did not touch anything, and the trainees were there to feed the chimpanzee.
DCC is two things: the use of digital signal transmission to control different functions on a model, and a means of modulating electric track power to send those signals as a form of ‘powerline modulation’ so that a minimum of special wiring or reception would be unnecessary.
The phone is used as a device capable of sending control codes to the DCC equipment so that it can control all the various functions the same way as normal toy throttles can. A phone can also be used to communicate with a computerized control system like JMRI, essentially as a ‘smart terminal’, although I think that is less common (and perhaps more fiddly).
The major problem with a smartphone is that the user interface is little more than a flat piece of glass, with dubious “haptic feedback”. You have no knobs to feel position, no buttons in learnable positions, and you have to look at the limited ‘real estate’ to tell how your controls are set; you may also have to use foreground attention to go through multiple ‘screens’ to get to some functions or controls when running – think of some of the reported issues with systems like early BMW iDrive while you are actually trying to drive.
There are in fact some ways to address the issues with ‘smartphone control’ – but many of them start with the idea that obsolescent smartphones are dirt cheap compared to any proprietary DCC ‘throttle’ head, and the communication protocols are cheap and have default support.
The issue with Legacy and with DCS is the availability of new, updated wireless handhelds. I am not familiar with DCS but believe there are still handhelds available. For Legacy, Lionel still sells the Cab 1L, but it has less functionality than the old Cab 2. For O gaugers, the issue has become new features on Legacy engines that are only accessible with the Base 3, and the Cab 3 app running on a cell phone. Lionel has no plans to make a replacement handheld controller. The Cab 2 has physical buttons and haptic feedback, it is wireless.
1 Like
Keep in mind that most of this discussion is not about dedicated wireless throttles; it is about repurposing now-cheap cell phones as touch devices for model-train control.
Anyone purchasing a couple of the new $2,700 (retail) Legacy engines has no choice but to use a cell phone if they want access to all the new features.
I would introduce, as a separate discussion, use of smartphones to set up or configure things conveniently or expediently even if you intend to operate with a dedicated throttle or interface.
That might be particularly true with a controller like Raildriver that acts as a ‘locomotive simulator’ with handles, breakers and gauges…
Woke–the point of my post was to discuss and pros and cons of different control methods.
AmFlyerTom, It’s not just Legacy engines that need a smartphone. The MTH Premier engines are similar. For instance, I had to upgrade to the paid version of the app to even unlock and use the quillable whistle on the Shay. Ok, the upgrade was only $4.99, but if you’ve just spent $1,000+ on a locomotive, that seems a bit unfair.
2 Likes
True Rene, but sometimes Forum discussions DO take on lives of their own and take on the characteristics of (Dare I say it?) runaway trains! 
1 Like
As long as the motors are good you can always:
- Pull all the boards out, wire the motors directly from pick-up to ground and run them conventionally off a DC transformer.
- Install a drop-in conventional control board and run it off an AC transformer.
The possible long-term issues are why I want a conventional control fall-back. No offense to remote-only control products if people like them but I won’t touch them, I want that fall-back option.
That would worry me a lot less if I hadn’t seen examples firsthand of what happens when companies stop supporting app-dependent products. I have a very expensive speaker and a wireless thermostat that became functionally almost worthless ‘overnight’ because the companies involved chose to discontinue providing or supporting the app… and you needed the app to configure the device to function. Worrisomely closer to home, I’ve seen multiple threads on Digikeijs equipment – very expensive equipment – which cannot be configured to accept commands because there is no app support, even though there is an established community with a repository of the necessary software.
Bluetooth was never a particularly apt protocol for wireless train control (for example its range as designed may be inadequate for larger layouts) and yes, it’s possible that companies may stop implementing support for it in their equipment. On the other hand, it is just as possible that ‘smartphone’ or enabling-technology providers might drop protocol support (IEEE 1394, anyone?) leaving hobbyists in a position of having to develop or cobble up some sort of bridge to communicate with their expensive toys. I mercifully avoided any involvement with DCS but I feel very, very sorry for people who are heavily invested in it or in equipment dependent upon it.
There is an associated issue with wireless protocols in general. One of the great premises of NMRA DCC was the adoption of Lenz-style powerline modulation rather than ‘wireless’ to get the digital signal to the locomotives. In my opinion there ought to be standards for bridging DCC-compliant signals IN PARALLEL to various wireless protocols, so that (for example) you could replace a given DCC decoder with a unit that supports both DCC and Bluetooth/WiFi, and distinguishes the two control streams explicitly. (And supports two-way data over both protocols, something the curmudgeons at NMRA have been dogging for over a quarter-century now… and yes, I think that’s important to have standards for; at least a better framework for implementation than the Europeans have cobbled up.)
I’m not the ‘right’ person to take up the cudgels for toy-train operation (vs. modeling prototype railroad operation) because so much of it isn’t remotely prototypical. One does not turn a knob to make a locomotive go faster (except perhaps if simulating RCO) and I find it a bit upsetting to see a Paragon 4 E unit start moving before the prime-mover sound accelerates. I find many of the ways people have to manipulate buttons and knobs on the current ‘major’ commercial DCC systems irritating… in the same sense I found using many early personal-computer programs, particularly word-processing and database programs, irritating. But that really isn’t the discussion here – if you can’t set up or send the commands in the first place, all the fancy UI and IxD in the world won’t run trains.
“[U]nfair” is putting it mildly, Rene. It’s ridiculous. If the cost of the app is so burdensome to the company, then just fold the few bucks into the price for the engine. But, seriously: as Bob Farrell said, “Give 'em the pickle!”
There are kind of two separate discussions intermingling here. One is DCC. It has by far the largest installed base of users and will likely be supported into the future. A specific manufacturers proprietary software/hardware could become unsupported.
The other discussion is the 60Hz track power based systems which are Legacy and DCS. In both of those systems it is now necessary to use a cellphone App to access all the engine and accessory functions. The cellphone in some cases can communicate directly with the engine using Bluetooth, but with a limited set of functions. For full functionality the phone is paired with the control base wireless system, it does not use Bluetooth. The good news with both of these systems is if no command signal is detected, the engines default to conventional control using the variable voltage AC track power.
For us S gaugers there is good news and bad news. First the bad news, none of the manufacturers are making new S gauge engines now or in the forseeable future. The good news is that S gauge DCS and Legacy engines can also be operated with DCC. So they run on conventional AC, their proprietary control system or DCC. The S gauge engines with the exception of FlyerChief (another proprietary control system), do not operate with Bluetooth. All these engines, unlike DCC engines, are future proof in that they default to conventional AC track power operation.
I don’t have any of these concerns with my Lionel Type V transformer. I am happy with that.
While this thread has gone fairly wide since the original question, I want to ask from the perspective of the part I copied above.
Unless there is something I’m missing, the DCS remote can also set the engine speed in fine increments as described above. I’m not sure what the phone adds in that regard?
I do realize the DCS remote is no longer readily available however. Is it that CTT now tries to do the reviews using the app, since that is what’s readily available to anyone reading the reviews who may be starting at square one with a new purchase today?
To answer the original question, I’m not a fan of using the phone to control the trains at all. I did download the App for Lionel just to try it out with a few Bluetooth engines (out of curiosity) and to then see how it functioned with the Base3 (and it is used for the Base 3 updates, so it’s sort of required in that regard, I believe 
).
Not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but I’m not a fan of screens taking control of our lives as controllers for devices overall, it’s not just trains. Particularly in cars, where it is sort of dangerous to replace controls that previously could be “felt for” with a screen where that is not possible. And while it’s not an issue for most of us while running trains, they have yet to figure out how to make the screens work when one is wearing gloves due to things like it being cold outside.
For some perspective I’m an early 70’s vintage Gen-X, but having a conversation on this topic recently with a young colleague at work (who is a Gen-Z in his mid-late 20’s), he was in firm agreement on the screens for control of everything (particularly the cars example ) not being a positive direction we are headed.
‘Capacitive’ gloves for operating devices in the cold have been marketed for years now. The modern ones with nanoinsulation are fine down to 4 degrees F here; someone would have to explain to me why ‘model railroading would be fun’ in a temperature lower than that.
Amusingly there are also touchscreens designed to operate at very low temperatures…
The drawbacks of touchscreens (or anything else requiring foreground attention) as controls in a vehicle are well described in the literature. One particularly vivid example dates from well before the era of LCD panels (and is relevant to DCC IxD modalities): Lincoln went from a row of haptic buttons for functions of the trip computer to two little arrow buttons to select screens… and made switching functions while driving unpleasant: you had to focus on a little panel in the right lower cluster while pushing to get the right one, and the list ‘wrapped’ in both directions so there was no known ‘endpoint’ for memorized presses.
The DCS remote will do everything a phone will do. The same is NOT true for Lionel Legacy. The new advanced Legacy features can only be accessed with a combination of a Base 3 and the Cab 3 App running on a cell phone. This is unrelated to Bluetooth.
1 Like