NCE power cab/USB cable for JMRI? Joe Fugate?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Anyone know exactly how the NCE “to be released USB cable” will physcially connect to a power cab?

I got the USB part to my computer. But were is the other end going to go???

2

Jeremy,

Joe may be able to answer the question for you. It also might be a good question to bounce off of NCE directly: http://www.ncedcc.com/ncetest/nce2.htm

This is just a guess but I’m figuring that the USB port is somehow hooked into the back of the same power panel that you plug your Power Cab into. OR…it’s just a whole new power panel with the USB port attached.

Tom

3

Thanks for the response.

4

I don’t know exactly what NCE has planned, but based on past performance here’s a couple guesses.

  1. Even though NCE has announced the USB port computer interface for the PowerCab, they will be hopelessly late in releasing it. NCE seems to drastically underestimate their time-to-market process and as a result everything they release is very LATE.

  2. Once NCE does release it, however, it will be well designed and demonstrate lots of thought on ease-of-use and be reasonably priced considering what you get. Their PowerCab is their latest of example of an excellent form factor, great ease-of-use, aggressive startup system pricing and demonstrates a good grip on where the DCC market is headed.

Unless your layout is very small and will never grow, the walkaround form factor for a startup system is almost required these days given the increasing popularity and growing capabilities of programming on the main. Programming on the main, combined with ever increasing consisting functionality and more feature-rich sound decoders opens up lots of useful things you can do when running your trains.

So long story short, If you are an NCE DCC fan, just hunker down for a much longer wait than they lead you to believe. Once it finally does arrive, it is usually well engineered and worth the wait. [swg]