H1000 posted:Barry Broskowitz posted:H1000,
It appears that this "scan" only happens when we hit the "run trains" button on the first screen.
TIUs also get reacquainted with the app every time a Refresh command is issued.
This and a whole lot more about DCS WiFi is all in MTH’s “The DCS WiFi Companion 1st Edition!"
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Barry,
Does the TIU really communicate directly with the App? The way I picture it is the WIU acts as a middle man between the App and the TIU, just as the TIU acts as a middle man for the DCS remote and the DCS engine on the track.
Another one of my many side projects has been picking apart the data packets the app sends to the WIU to see if something other than the App can be used to communicate with the WIU. (Similar to what San Diego Mark did with his RTC program) I have been able to send a few simple commands to the TIU (via the WIU) by using some packet mirroring and trick the WIU into doing what I want from a PC. While the App issue the commands based on the information plugged into it, the WIU is really the "puppet master" of the TIU. The TIU is only aware of the WIU and the WIU is aware of both the App and TIU.
There are some other things I have done with the WIU that lead me to the above conclusion that I would rather not discuss on a public forum without permission from MTH first.
My picture is like this:
The TIU came before the WIU in terms of design so I don't think the TIU can even know what's going on with the wifi.
If you examine the TIU hardware, ... the TIU has always accepted ascii commands (Which San Diego Mark's program has mapped out cleanly) on a serial interface at the FPGA inside the TIU (which is connected to the DB9 at the bottom of the box). The USB port MTH added in the later revs just goes to an FTDI chip (one of those virtual com port RS232 converter chips) which then goes to the same serial port on the xilinx FPGA. The WIU just translates the network packets into the existing ASCII language that the TIU already uses. Since the serial ports are ganged together inside.... if you connect the WIU to the USB port on the TIU and monitor the DB9 port on the TIU with a serial cable and terminal on a PC, you can see the entire WIU-TIU conversation on the ASCii side of the translation, which is exactly the command protocol SanDiegoMark's notes describe.
The interesting part to me would be looking at the network side protocol and see if the content matches the ASCii side, or if the command set is different. I haven't even figured out what type of network packets it is yet. I didn't see any TCP or UDP going by on my packet captures... All I saw was the ARP discovery so far.
