April 2017 Legacy Users Group Video and Summary

Thanks you, Marty / Dave Slie for creating video.

Another good job MARTY!!!

Thanks for the video!!

Interesting...

Thanks, I look forward to watching!

I just watched the video, its great for us who could not attend to be able to see the meeting. There was a question from an attendee about using the LCS on an iPad 2. I can confirm it works with no problem, I am using an iPad 2 to control my layout with the Layout Control System.

I should have added on the fastrak item -- "and don't say stuff foam in the track" -- I run over carpet and it's got to be 10x noisier than my old original lionel track... it's just bloody dang noisy!  I have 170 ft of it btw -- so I think I can say this.  (yes I measured it up!)

In regards to the question I had on the state of the switches being know directly by the switch itself -- and then the question about running PDI wiring between switches...

I was assuming the state would be made available on the PDI bus in some manner.  Whether that meant a PDI plug into the switch, a plug into a LCS device box per switch or an RF signal in some form to a magic box on the PDI bus, or some other means .... I hadn't really considered but I also hadn't considered going outside the framework/architecture of LCS for the info.  

Well I think this overlaps the STM2 monitor now... that's either on my xmas list or I have it and I've yet to get around to putting it up.... so my experience is limited.

But perhaps these can get confused and indicate the wrong state at times ...  

So in the end it seems simpler, more reliable and all that to have the switch itself know its state and be able to transmit it onto the PDI bus directly in some manner.

I can't think of any reason to not be willing to string PDI wire between switches except for the standard pragmatic issues of length and cost of the wiring.

Likewise I can see that there might be a ERR path to an upgrade perhaps here too... that might be nice... save the old switches sort of thing... 

Still back to main question, I suppose if in theory it were an RF link per switch to/from the magic box next to the LCS wifi unit which is hidden under the table... ok, yeah that'd be kinda cool at first blush -- save a bit of stringing wire and all that....

But hey you know, if I'm stringing wire between switches for the PDI bus -- maybe it can supply power to my switches too... there could be an upside there to that approach if it were possible.

So I don't really know the best approach... 

I know one of the questions was about connecting the STM2 to a DZ2500 switch machine. There has been several topics on this forum about this. I worked with a couple forum members to get this to work, so if you already have them you can still use them. Here is the wiring diagram I developed. I have successfully got this to work via Cab-2, LCS App, and so forth. 

 What you need to use is a DZ-1008A relay. Please note that this diagram doesn't show anti-derail hooked-up, but just follow the wiring diagram from Z-stuff. 

MartyE,

And every one else involved  here, a big thanks for the recording and info from the meeting. Those of us that can't attend the York meets really appreciate this!! And also a big thanks to all those from Lionel and anyone else answering questions and providing information on the Lionel products and other things available for the LCS system. Always great to hear directly from the people that make all this stuff workso we can 'play' with it. I think everyone appreciates that whether watching live at the meeting or from home. 

Thank you Marty & David for the video.  It is a long way for some folks like myself to make it to York, every few years is a treat. 

Was folks locked out side again like last fall?? 

I agree with the one gentlemen that state the LCS doesn't seem to be promoted enough.  I'm the only one I know of that has it setup out in my neck of the woods here in Utah.

Jim

Thanks Marty! and the guys from Lionel.....

Thank you, Marty - and the Lionel troupe.

And, thanks for the modules.

Until October....

Thanks again to all involved.  Much appreciated by those of us that can't be at the meetings.

So I hesitate to post this -- sound like a broken record responding to each answer on every question I had. 

Doing it anyway.

So the question about the 2-way comm to the engines was also mine.  The answer came back about using sensor track for that.

I understand that idea and I have several sensor track.    The sensor tracks are good...

However I don't think they really solve the problem. 

The problem is that even with the sensor track -- the one way comm to the engines means you never really know what's on the layout for sure...

Simply because you can't poll all the engines and have them tell you.

The sensor track does tell you when a particular engines goes over it... but that means the engine has to go over it.

If you have a several engines not moving but on "idles" so to speak ... you don't really know from a technical pt of view if they are there or not -- or someone lifted one off the layout.

The base may have them in it's directory -- but it doesn't know if they are there ... and the commanding in the blind means it doesn't know if the command got there or not...

So in the end, it'd be nice to have 2-way comm to the engines.

Perhaps the bluetooth add on to the newer legacy engines is a way to do that -- perhaps through that the layout can be polled ... 

I'll call it the LCS Monitor for Lionel Legacy Bluetooth...

Severn posted:

So I hesitate to post this -- sound like a broken record responding to each answer on every question I had. 

Doing it anyway.

So the question about the 2-way comm to the engines was also mine.  The answer came back about using sensor track for that.

I understand that idea and I have several sensor track.    The sensor tracks are good...

However I don't think they really solve the problem. 

The problem is that even with the sensor track -- the one way comm to the engines means you never really know what's on the layout for sure...

Simply because you can't poll all the engines and have them tell you.

The sensor track does tell you when a particular engines goes over it... but that means the engine has to go over it.

If you have a several engines not moving but on "idles" so to speak ... you don't really know from a technical pt of view if they are there or not -- or someone lifted one off the layout.

The base may have them in it's directory -- but it doesn't know if they are there ... and the commanding in the blind means it doesn't know if the command got there or not...

So in the end, it'd be nice to have 2-way comm to the engines.

Perhaps the bluetooth add on to the newer legacy engines is a way to do that -- perhaps through that the layout can be polled ... 

I'll call it the LCS Monitor for Lionel Legacy Bluetooth...

When will your product be out?  I look forward to presenting it to the Legacy Users Group.

Lionel would have to build in some kind of status output packet on their bluetooth they are adding to their legacy engines.

The packet would be similar to the sensor track packet...

Likewise this magic bluetooth device would somehow support the remote command controller of lionchief -- and somehow connect to this monitor in some cases at the same....

And they would either have to support a command that drove the packet out the bluetooth (on demand) or the packet would just appear on the output at some rate without any intervention otherwise...

I'm no bluetooth expert but I read that a master can support 7 slaves.  That's not going to work for you folks with the big layouts maybe ...

However then I read that two or more of these can in theory be combined into larger networks.

Given that, perhaps there's an architecture where multiple monitors could be added as folks desire to cover their "fleet" on the layout ... although this seems like it could be expensive.

Anyway, all that together means to me this is a lionel lcs device, not an end user's creation...  but I'm happy to imagine otherwise...