Has anyone seen a hardware-software solution that enables a tablet or phone throttle without having to run JMRI? I know this may sound like madness, call it anarchy, but I don’t want to start my PC every time I run trains. I want the control system to wake up and go.
I am using Digitrax Chief.
Bachmann has some trains that use bluetooth to control them. You load up the bluetooth app on your phone, turn power onto the track, and you can control the engine with your phone. The downside is that you’re limited to a few Bachmann engines, and not much else.
The other thing people do is get a dedicated PC. There are computers like the Raspberry Pi that run Linux, and you can put JMRI on them. They use very little power, boot up quickly, and cost under $50.
If you want to get really intense, you can use an arduino, which is a $5 embedded board that you can program. You can write a program that acts like a DCC controller, and connect to a bluetooth module… It still means you have a processor that interfaces between your phone and the track though.
No matter what you do, there’s no easy and practical solution to getting rid of that processor.
Having BTDT within the last six months, unless there’s been some new downloads made available that package everything up neatly, putting JMRI on an RPi requires a level of geekdom likely excluded by the nature of the OPs question. You have to bre prepared to do some hacking and be somewhat knowledgable about setting up a computer to build the RPi, as well as being able to manage it via remote access.
In our case, we didn’t have the latest RPi build, which didn’t help. I set the project aside here until I got the chance to update the hardware, then planned on a fresh install. That’s still pending, so a great idea in theory, but still lacking a bit in practical terms.
On the other hand, JMRI on a PC or laptop has gotten quite a bit friendlier in the last year. At least it works better for stupid ol’ me. If you need more radio throttles inexpensively, that’s still the way to go.
I’m not certain that is correct. Member of our club has made us an installation and he didn’t indicate that there was any great difficulty. In fact, the latest RPi thing actually has the capability of allowing the use of up to 10 cell phones without the need of a separate router. If I see him tomorrow night I’ll ask him how he did it.
There are step-by-step guides on configuring this all on a Pi. Available on the JMRI site and/or the JMRI Yahoo group.
The trick with a step=-by-step is to use EXACTLY what the creator used, not “I heard from my Linux guy that this distro is horrible on a Pi so I trued it with that one” and to follow each step EXACTLY, don’t skim over things. If it’s written in the guide, it’s there because it’s important and you can’t skip a step. You’ll end up with strange errors and things not working. If it gives a command to enter, enter it, even if it LOOKS like the next step after that is ready to go.
–Randy
There ARE ready to run solutions for us that want to use phones/tablets as throttles.
The first is ROCOs z21 or Z21, with its dedicated router it is made for phones and tablets. The bigger of the two, the black Z21 has full Loconet capability.
The other solution is Digikeijs new command station, also with WiFi.
http://www.digikeijs.com/dr5000-dcc-multi-bus-centrale.html
These are made for us that like to get working command stations without being computer/electrical engineers…
Randy and maxman,
Well, maybe something’s changed in the last six months. But when we tried it, all the needed info was definitely not in one place. IIRC, I had to piece together the info from three different places. I’m definitely not a programmer, but the wife definitely is (with an EE to boot) and she found what was lacking rather frustrating when I asked for help.
If either of you has a link to the specific all-inclusive instructions that work, that would be appreciated for the next time taking a stab at it, though. I can only note that following step-by-step exactly multiple times didn’t result in an workable, easy install. It did work (eventually) to run DecoderPro from the roster. Trying to get it to manage the remote turnouts on the layout at the same time as running DP just didn’t work, but I suspect that was a hardware limitation of the hand-me down 2 year old RPi, instead of having a more recent build.
Really, what’s needed to make this useful more generally is the whole mess tarballed up as one download. That clearly wasn’t the case then. Maybe it is now? My thoughts at the time were that someone could make a mint by buying RPi’s, flashing them with a workable build of JMRI, providing a link to a suitably configued remote access program for the managing computer, and selling them at $100 each. As it was, it was more of a “learning experience.” Nothing wrong with that, but most folks who want one for controlling a layout/managing decoders via JMRI are looking more for “plug-and-play.”
Bachmann partnered with BlueRail Trains to provide a wireless train control using Bluetooth and smart device. However, you are not limited to Bachmann models.
Available direct from BlueRail Trains
Track Power Board
Battery Power Board
Dead Rail Plug and Play System
You can read lots of opinions formed on lack of information so best to visit BlueRail Trains website and take time to read all the info provided and watch the videos in the videos link.
At present the BlueRail Trains board does not use DCC information packets but you can run a locomotive equipped with a Blue Rail board on yo
This link will take you to a word document that the person who did our club setup used. It looks complicated to me, but then I’m not a programmer. I think if you follow the steps exactly you should be successful.
Please note that you need the current revision of the Pi device. I believe that the instructions reference an earlier version.
(oh, and I’m not responsible if you find you have to cut some of the chair pieces to assemble them!)
maxman,
Thanks for that! Looks like it covers things comprehensively. Too bad it doesn’t rank high enough to be found as easily as some other info that comes up when searching. It sure could’ve helped save a lot of tailchasing. I’ve got it printed out to guide us the next time.
Wow, thank you all for the replies.
First off I will state the goals of this endevour. I desire a smarter throttle for my Digitrax DCC system. The DT402 is a cool throttle with many buttons, but in all honesty it is not intuitive. A smarter throttle will only present buttons that have meaning for the selected loco, and will rename the buttons for the functions of that loco. A smarter throttle will allow the buttons be rearranged for the specific loco. In my perfect world, this throttle is wireless and will wake up as fast and easily as the Digitrax system when it is powered up (plug it in and it goes).
Thus the desire to use a tablet or smartphone to control DCC locos. A cheap Android tablet can be had for less than C$100. I have no appetite to abonadon my existing Digitrax and DCC investments. BlueRail looks very interesting, but my fleet of locos are fully fitted with sound decoders.
Thank you for the links to Pi-based JMRI. As a professional EE I’m not afraid of doing system integration, I just really would prefer to buy an out-of-the box solution.
I will be heading off to adafruit and ordering a Pi to follow the detailed instructions linked above.
Dwayne A
Dwayne,
Good luck with your project. Please let us know how it goes. I shared the instructions that maxman provided with my wife – and she actually got kind of excited about helping me with one of my projects for a change. Looks like she’ll be stopping by the ECE (Electrical and Compter Engineering) store on campus to pick up a fresh RPi so we can take another crack at this. I’ll post up when we get something going.
Mike:
Just to follow up I did speak with the individual who made the setup for our club last night. He said that what he actually did originally was similar to what you described…went to several different information sources to find out what was required. He said that he found the information in the provided link after he was done. However, he did say that the linked information was valid.
One other point he made was that to eliminate the need for a router he did something to make the Pi thing think it was a router. I guess it normally doesn’t know this but needs to be programmed.
The other thing you should know is that the capability of the Pi as a router seems to be limited to 10 cell phones or similar devices, so if your application needs more than that you’d be better off using a separate router.
That is why I linked to the Z21, it has full loconet compatibility.
maxman,
Your colleague probably kept track of what was going on and defnitely documented what he did. We owe him a debt of gratitude for sorting that all out. My wife suggested I do the same, but I’m old enough and dumb enough keeping track of everything and organizing it was a bit beyond me on the very unfamilar subject. Now if it was history, I’d be OK…
Good to know it serves as it’s own router. Our home wifi system is locked down to static IPs for security reasons due to her job and needing to work from home from time to time. I assume it defaults to DHCP (we’ll be able to sort that out) but this will make it much easier to accomodate visitors.
A limit of 10 devices works quite well. I can’t see ever exceeding that. I have 5 conventional radio throttles at hand, but there’s really no room for more than a half dozen or so crews at once.
Thanks for the updates!
My wife brought home some fresh RaspberryPi 2 Model B and I’ve started in on building it. Note if following the instructions maxman linked to that it appears several steps have already been taken by updated hardware/software tp making install on the current model easier. I’ll have some notes when we get it up and running.
I have no idea what language you are speaking… Cold, wet day out so I will have to google some terms.
I thought Pi was 3.14
If you want RaspberryPi, it’s more than just a number now:
https://www.adafruit.com/category/105
To learn more: https://learn.adafruit.com/
They also do all things Arduino, another piece of hardware now becoming popular around the layout and frequently mentioned in projects here: https://www.adafruit.com/category/17
First off, sorry to get off the OP’s subject of NOT using JMRI.
After doing some reading, the Pi looks like a great way to use tablets to control DCC. After some reading, I agree with what I quoted. I’d like to see somebody who has electronic experiance and a bunch of free time (ya, I know. What is that?) build these to order. I’d give it a try.
I guess there isn’t a huge demand, or someone would have done this. There’s nothign stopping anyone from getting this all set up to run headless on a Pi, and then copying the compact flash with the software on it and putting together a little kit with the Pi, whatever wifi adapter they used, and the CF card preconfigured wih Linux and JMRI to make a turnkey product.
As for not using JMRI, why not? It’s already there, it already works. Why rewrite it all? If you take a small single board ARM based chip and build in the hardware and software to make this happen you have - wait for it - a Pi with JMRI!
A sophisticated version would allow you to connect to the device over the networka nd answer a few simple questions to configure it - like pick your DCC system and in the case where multiple interfaces are available, select your interface. The easy way would be to have different versions of the CF card - because fo the way JMRI works, all that really would eb different is the config file - so if someone buys one for NCE you just include the CF set up for NCE, or Digitrax, or whatever. So no complicated software configuration would be needed by the end user. Just plug it all in and turn it on.
–Randy