The club got its WIU's yesterday. We tested one on the test track and it is impressive how it runs trains -- much better than the remote, though you can't do "lash-ups" yet and the Feature reset is a factory reset. I'm at the club right now as I got off from work early and have been testing multi-WIU operation between the staging yard and part of the primary main. Here's what I've experienced so far:
- As a test, I connected a WIU to the club's WiFi router for better range. Worked perfectly. Don't try putting multiple WIU's on the same router as you lose contact with the locomotive (though I'd prefer being able to do that as your smart phone only has to make one router connection for both Legacy and DCS using home WiFi router).
- Following the instructions and making the WIU on the main the "master" and the one in the staging yard the slave unit, the inter-WIU communication seems to be there, but when the locomotive travels from one zone to the other, communication with the locomotive is lost. This persists even after powering down the WIUs. All is not lost here because hitting the refresh button re-reads the locomotives and you're back in business (hopefully the locomotive isn't moving too fast to get control of).
- The software has a very polished feel to it, The soft key menu is a great feature.
- The engine response to commands is great. The real test will come when we have multiple users trying to run multiple trains (if I can get that zone issue resolved).
- I did get the "jump to max" glitch when I hit the "+" too quickly, but touching the speedometer at the desired speed brought the locomotive down quickly. The max speed feature is a great addition by the way.
One thing that concerns me is the app doesn't seem to properly unload on my Samsung Galaxy 3. I'm attributing it to the phone's age. When closing the app, it goes back to the phone's home screen, but on re-load, the app comes up as if it's still running. Checking the app manager, it indeed was still running. This may be a glitch with my phone itself as it's about four years old -- restarting the phone cleared the app and it loaded normally, but on exit the problem repeats. I'll try it with my spare and see what happens.
That's all for now. Going to put everything away and go home before the nut-jobs (OK other nut-jobs) get out on the highway.
