It sounds promising!

Yes to everything on one decoder

They are using mini-SD cards for their memory so they've got a lot of space. Right now they aren't planning on having the system be user upgradable, but perhaps in the future.

Love to See Norm

Norm that was you? Name tag looked good. Like the wow sound. Can not believe you demo a diesel!!! 

get back to the tcs booth

what was mode 3???

and is it custom sound programmable, ie my own sounds, and if so how much does the pgm hardware cost???

GET BACK TO TCS BOOTH

Mode 3

Mode 1 - normal engine throttles up with the throttle, no steps

Mode 2 - User can select via function key when steps occur

Mode 3 - TCS board uses BEMF, throttle settings and perhaps a bit of magic to calculate the load and automagically inserts steps as it considers appropriate.

I'm going to be very interested in seeing Mode 3.

No custom programming, yet, but if they do decide to implement it, it won't require any special hardware past an SD card reader and a mini-SD Card adapter (both common computer gadgets).

You'll be able to get upgrades to the chip by sending the mini-SD card back to TCS for them to reprogram. I wonder if they'd be willing to create an engine only version of the card so you could use it to keep the locomotive running while the sound card is in for upgrades?

Please clarify custom programming vs. updates to the chip

I'm having trouble getting what you mean by just needing an SD card reader and mini-SD card adapter vs. having to send the card back to TCS.  Are you talking about manipulating the sound files in your own computer vs. upgrading to the latest version of the WOW firmware requiring TCS to reprogram (e.g. from v2 to v3)?

Also, are you referring to a miniSD card or a microSD card?  There are also HC versions of both and an XC version of the micro; these have insane capacities for use in current decoders (emphasis on current, future=who knows).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_memory_cards (a bit out of date I think).  It's my impression the WOW uses the microSD form factor.

What size SD-Card

I got the definite impression that they were using the middle-sized SD-card (mini?), and evaluating whether or not the size that goes into our phones and my GoPro (micro?) would work for even more size reduction. I do wonder at that though - the size of the decoder doesn't seem like it would accommodate the Mini.

Right now the TCS WOW does not have, according to Norm, any customer replaceable software - not firmware, not sounds. That's a possibility for the future. I do expect someone to grab the chip off theirs and see what formats are in use - apparently one of the good things (and this was according to another manufacturer) that TCS did was to increase the sampling rate on their sound files.