MTH Wi-Fi question

I can't answer all of your questions but I do know the Lionel LCS WiFi adapter can be made to join your existing network. 

I asked if Dave was incorporating Lionel legacy protocols into the DCS app. I'm not sure if this was answered at the spring DCS meeting. I can't remember from the notes. It certainly would be cool. 

Ill be be interested to see what the answer is. 

Ron,

Based on my experience, you have nothing about which to be concerned.

My home network has an Apple AirPort Extreme router and 2 AirPost Express access points, and has the following nodes:

• 4 Macs and 1 PC
• 2 printers
• 2 Apple TVs
• 2 iPhones and 2 iPads
• A/V receiver, TV and Blu-Ray
• 3 TIUs and a Legacy Base

Of the above devices, 11 are wireless. I have absolutely no interference when using my iPad with either Train Controller or the Hikel (beta) app.

Marty,

Dave's for-money app is planned to control TMCC, as well as DCS. Whether or not it will also control Legacy engines remains to be seen.

If you configure the MTH and LCS WiFi adapters to "join" your existing home WiFi network, interference won't be an issue. Lionel's documentation doesn't favor such a setup because of concerns that latency in the data transmission over such a setup could result in problems with "responsiveness" to commands - but it remains to be seen whether or not this is more a theoretical than a practical concern when it comes to controlling the actions of model trains.

If you configure the MTH and LCS WiFi adapters as WiFi access points independent of your existing home WiFi network, then interference can potentially be an issue. However, current WiFi systems are pretty good at automatically adapting to situations where there are many independent WiFi networks running in close proximity and can continue to provide reliable data transmission at good speeds. To put this in perspective - the typical resident of an apartment building may be running their own WiFi network in the presence of over a dozen or more other WiFi networks being run by residents of neighboring apartments, yet will typically still get decent performance from their own WiFi network. Therefore, if you live in a single family detached home, running two or three independent WiFi networks will not pose any problem.

Unfortunately, you'll have to have multiple devices each dedicated to the network  or switch back and forth between networks to control respective systems If you go the access point route. 

My my setup will have a dedicate non internet access wireless router that can connect both the MTH and Lionel WiFi setups. I did that for the LCS wifi I had for the LUG meeting and added an Apple TV device so I could access it with my iPad and put in on a larger screen.