Ok

Nice opinion. Thanks.

DC has not gone away.

Rich

Great outline of the situation

 I think the key is the time frame. What happens 10 years down the road doesn't worry me too much, I'll just keep my loco fleet minimal so I don't have too many pieces to upgrade or make compatible. The number of guys still running DC shows that availability of advanced  technology doesn't mean everyone will embrace it.....DaveB

Contention

Wireless contention or noise will be a major hindrance in adoption.  I can't see many of the DCC/Controller manufacturers going after FCC licenses to build transmitters and receivers so everything will run on the "open" bands, and be subject to all the rest of the junk on those bands.

And the clubs WILL care.  If they can't take their layout to a large model train show, christmas memories show, county faire, etc because it doesn't work with all the cell phones and other devices they won't go with the system, regardless of how much "better" or "easier" it is.  They will stay with the tried and true that they know how to make work and get around external problems.

And without a common standard again it will have very limited adoption.

Kevin

Battery powered wireless

Battery powered wireless control sounds wonderful, it solves so many problems.

But of course it has it's own set of problems.  In the smaller scales, at least, there is already a space problem when you try to fit in a decent speaker, decoder, and enough weight to get decent pulling power.  A battery is nowhere near as dense as a chunk of lead, and they're not small either.  And of course for wireless you need an adequate antenna, which of course can't be sitting right on a chunk of metal.  All this is practical now to a certain extent in G scale, perhaps even O.  With some effort reasonable compromises might be reached in HO.  I just don't see it happening for N scale though.

You mention R/C airplanes.  That's my other big hobby, I fly electric planes.  In general battery power is great - clean and quiet and has quick spool up (compared to the gas or glow engines that are the alternatives for planes).  And you don't have to stand in front of powered spinning knives (the propeller) to start your plane.  But you do spend a lot of time charging batteries.  If you look at rcgroups.com there is a whole separate battery forum - battery care is a big deal.  There are many safety issues and battery life issues with high powered lipo batteries.  Now for model railroad use the batteries can be much lower power, lower discharge rate so many of the issues may not even apply.  As long as you select an appropriate battery.  An ironic twist is that many people with larger electric planes/helicopters end up taking a gas generator to the flying field so they can charge the larger batteries fast enough to spend a decent amount of time actually flying.

R/C airplanes also have antenna placement issues - people screw up antenna placement in the airplane all the time, mostly get away with it a surprising percentage of the time but have brief loss of control issues, and occasionally just loose the airplane.  I've watched a couple people at our club flying field watch helplessly as their planes disappeared over the tree line, unresponsive to control inputs.

The most practical battery power approach I've seen so far is what a friend does with his garden railway - the battery charges from the track.  It's enough of a battery to run for a surprising length of time, but it doesn't last forever.  It does, however, eliminate virtually all of the annoying electrical pickup issues you have with a garden railway.  Oh, and it's a DCC railroad too, he uses lenz usp decoders so the signal is capacitively coupled across the crud on the rails even when electrical contact isn't made.

Like everything else, wirelessly controlled battery powered model trains will be a set of tradeoffs.  Some people who don't mind coupling a battery car or dummy loco up, and who are willing to spend the time to get antennas properly placed, charge, etc will probably love it.  Other people will prefer the current set of problems with regular old track power and DCC.

I think I'm one of the latter.  Although I will keep an eye on what you guys who want to play around with it come up with 

Have you seen it demonstrated

Have you seen it demonstrated in N scale? With the battery and receiver installed in the loco and not in a separate car?

Then there's keep alive

I'm with Joe

Having gone back and forth on this issue, I think the logical progression is a wireless, dead rail (or charging rail) solution based on DCC protocols, so all your DCC equipped locos will all still work with the new system.  All the proprietary systems out there, or coming out, will all have their followers, but eventually they will either get together and get some standards to be compatible with each other, or they will be niche products with perhaps one clear winner.  But I think the company that has the dead rail, DCC solution will be the ultimate winner.

Having said that, (for the umpteenth time), graphite has changed my entire view on this subject to the point where I don't see a need for dead rail in my situation.  All I would like is a RailPro like controller for DCC and I'd be happy.  Of course, I still like my RailPro system, too, and likely will run both together.

What I want....

.... is a system where

1. there is a battery/capacitor of sufficient capacity to keep my locomotive going for 10 minutes;

2. The command signal is wireless. Perhaps up in the still relatively empty 5Ghz range;

3. Where that battery will charge, even during operation, on whatever segments of track I have powered. 

This will allow me to stay fully, or near fully, charged most of the time, while being able to dead rail turnouts and complex trackwork (aka "short centrals") 

What I don't insist on, and suspect might not even actually be in my best interest, is where the throttle talks directly to the "receiver/decoder" (RecDec?) in the locomotive. If it goes through a command station and pushed to broadcast antennas attached to that command station, this might be a good solution. And it might also help make the throttles not only cheaper, but (and here is where the manufacturers have a case of the vapors) might open up the possibility of more than one manufacturer's throttles working with a system. And the system talks to the RecDecs - with a standardized language. Like we have with DCC, where everyone's decoders are supposed to work with everyone's command stations. 

But I haven't seen anyone even thinking about working towards something like that. 

FCC = not relevant for selling outside USA

Dear MRHers,

...and what about the rest of us who do NOT live in the good ole US-of-A?
FCC is not the wireless spectrum police here in Australia, or elsewhere beyond the north american continent,
and selling a wireless device anywhere else will need appropriate certification, and possibly even frequency adjustment...

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

Do you mean DCC or the Powered Rail will fade away?

It seems like the future control of some locomotives may just be wireless, but will still use a DCC decoder.

Maybe, but I use a landline for my telephone and Internet reception because I currently find no need for a cell phone.  I also might be a closet Luddite, I don’t know.

In the meantime, my new layout will be DCC with a lot of Arduino Pro Mini enhancements.

Gene

I finally traded in my 78 rpm record player for that new-fangled 45 rpm one.

FCC = Non-USA

True Prof, the FCC doesn't equal any country other than the US.

However, EVERY country has their own regulations and bandwidth issues.  In many cases frequencies that are available in one country isn't in another country.  Once you get out of the lesser-regulated sections you find it almost impossible to create something that is acceptable in all countries.

The only real options is fully digital like the RC world has gone, and even that requires being accepted by the various countries' equivalent of the FCC making the endeavor expensive.  Plus even RC digital is affected and can be brought down by a lot of people with phones and etc in the area, once again causing problems for large public events. And I can't see any of the manufacturers going through the pain of getting all their decoders/receivers and command stations/transmitters approved world-wide, so common frequencies will have to be used and will have the same problems they have today, getting worse as more and more devices try to share that limited range.

Kevin

You need to know your

You need to know your audience and I can guarantee you that the audience moves at a glacial pace, kicking and screaming into a "new" era.  The Atlas forums had a reputation of a little bit like the wild west, battles would break out and the members were blamed.  But most of those battles were over DCC, not all of them but most of them.  At the end of the Atlas forum life, if you even talked about DCC versus DC the thread could be locked because of the battle that might happen, this happened to me and others.

People - many people - did not come to DCC easily with a smile on their face, and it wasn't until there was a certain "momentum" that slowly it has become the industry standard.  Sound is what really got the ball rolling and many sitting on the side lines saying they were true DC through and through, thought of changing.

Others were pulled in not because they had a love of DCC but they wanted their layout to be featured in articles and be taken seriously, when they went to NMRA conventions and layout tours, DCC was pretty much at most layouts so they switched.

I had two friends who I asked in 2000 if they would ever consider going DCC, their answer was an emphatic no. Of course I didn't believe them because even back in 2000 I knew that was were the hobby was going. They are both DCC now, but one has only switched in the last year.  And his layout is common wire, reasonably large with #18 wiring, poor guy.

But even with all that push and pull, many came to DCC reluctantly, and now that they are there another change ain't going to happen

I have run wireless on battery in G scale and I wasn't impressed, the batteries would lose umph before dying and engines would require battery swap outs, more than I liked.  Now I know that can change, but I know the model railroad audience and how slow they are to change.  Unless some new miracle system evolves, DCC is here for a long time.  And to quote an old army saying: "If stupid works, it isn't stupid."

Graphite on the rails?

i hadn't heard about using graphite on the rails, I'm intrigued.  Don't want to derail this thread, but where can I find more info (a quick google search proved only that the terms "graphite" and "rails" are used in many contexts that have nothing to do with model railroading).

Google-Foo/MRH Search-Foo (top RH corner of page)

Dear Ken,

Google-foo says...

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/graphite-track-treatment-12196204

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/using-graphite-on-rails-for-better-electrical-conductivity-12195891

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

I still think

Wireless and batteries are two separate issues.  Getting the control signal out of the rails would be a positive step. The rails can still be the main source of power,  

The issue of wireless bands will be played out by people with more skin in the game than model railroaders.  We will follow the lead.  In the mean time, the home modeler and clubs will likely not be severely limited by wireless traffic.  

Will the big show venue dictate the direction of control technology?  It appears the people releasing this new technology aren't letting it stop them.  

I think it is too early to impose the standardization that is in place with DCC.  Let creativity define where the system can go,  Don't expect to have the same standardization as DCC has, unless there is one winner.  Multiple patented intellectual property dealing with the same process are seldom shared like DCC has been.  More like what happens in the rest of the world.  

Skipping over DCC

I'm skipping over the DCC issue once I get rolling on my layout. Going to use 12 volts AC with on board rectifier and the Deltang system from England. Have tested out the system. Works pretty good on my test track.

Guess I'll just sit back and watch the fun for now.

Bernd

Stepping on my WiFi signal.

I live in a dense neighborhood.  Last year my WiFi signal strength was having issues.  I got an app that is used for consulting.  It analyzes all the WiFi routers around you.  It picked up 24 wireless routers.   It gave me the names, locked or unlocked, strength and channel. Most of those were on channel 6 and a few were grouped on channel 11. My router was on channel 6.  Basically everybody on channel 6 are "stepping" on each other.  As some of you know the wireless router with the strongest signal wins.  The app advised that I should switch my router to channel 1.   So, I did.  It made a huge difference!

The point of this discussion is that WiFi traffic can be overloaded at home too.  So, be prepared to make some adjustments.

Den

...

It confounds me how often people conflate Power issues with Communication issues, but then perhaps we have never left the analog era where we communicated by varying the power level...  Anyhow, this should go without saying:

Battery power has absolutely nothing to do with wireless communication. 

I'll repeat that, once again: Battery Power has absolutely Nothing To Do With Wireless Communication.

Now I'll introduce a new [foreign] idea to this conversation.  Wait for this shocker...

Wireless communication has absolutely nothing to do with the DCC Command Protocol.

Shocker, no?

The DCC Command Protocol is a communication LANGUAGE.

Wireless is Communications DELIVERY

Voltage is POWER.

To have a viable system, you must have All three - BUT - it does not matter what those three are, and what more, even if you standardize ONE, the other two can still be something else.  The only caveat is that as you move forward, you may lose backwards compatibility if you don't plan for it.  Computer programs do 100% of the things you tell them to do and 0% of the commands you think they should intuitively do automatically.

On a large scale, battery power will never be a big push in this hobby.  It may be useful on small operations where there is 1-5 locomotives and only a bedroom sized operation, but anything on the order of a club scale operation is beyond the scope of batteries. 

We have the best power source available through the rails themselves, always one when we want it on and always off when we want it off.  it further turns on automatically when we flip the switch, and fully turns off when we flip it again.  There will never be a battery that costs less than the wire that runs under the layout hooking all the segments together, nor a battery that lasts as long as that wire, nor presents less environmental hazards than that wire.  It's good common [as in, grounded!] sense!  No battery can compete with the output of a transformer!

When we introduced Digital communication, we effectively changed our delivery system.  Yes, we can still use the rails, but anyone with any experience with electrical systems knows any system with moving contacts is going to be trouble, and with our trains, we have not one but two contact surfaces introducing issues into the system.  The first is between the rail an the wheel, and the second is the oft ignored contact between the wheel and the pickup.  Going wireless eliminates this interface altogether while reducing our interface points to just one - the one between the transmitter and the receiver, and I do believe it's always best to have the lower number of variables possible. Pull out the DC trains and remember what it looks like to have pure power and nothing else in the equation, it's amazing, you can go 15 years without cleaning contacts once and get the same level of smooth operation.  Remove the power issues from DCC, and DCC works beautifully.  Hence, yes, future looks like we'll be going wireless.

So this brings us to the Communication protocol itself. And with the level of modern programming, you can put any language you want on the decoder itself and have it speak in whatever language you like.  Once the chip is loaded, it will do what you tell it to do.  It won't matter what language the locomotive next to it speaks Unless you are trying to co MUs, in which case then all of the languages matter, but thanks to that chip, loco 1 can speak DCC and loco 2 can speak R2D2, but because someone set up a common operating system on the chip, they have interoperability.  We're a bit ways away from this in our hobby, but this era is coming.

With our phone based systems right now,w e can effectively operate the traditional DCC infrastructure through the DCC interface [JMRI] and then operate the wireless directly with the phone itself.  The latter system eliminates the traditional DCC architecture, replacing it with power sources that supply nothing but power, from any name brand you want [so if the best power source maker is Matrix, you don't have to cry about Digitrax not using a Matrix Power Supply in their DCC command stations]. For this reason, the Future is WIFI Direct Digital Command and Command - WDDCC.

This introduces the problem of common ground.  That common ground will remain as long as it is provided, and once DCC manufacturers embrace WDDCC, I do not see the DCC common ground going anywhere.  If they do not embrace wireless, then I see the new protocol being whatever interface comes out next with the lowest cost to commit - and that it the systems not like Ring, but the systems like Bachmann's Bluetooth system, where you buy the decoder adn the operating system is Free.  Take a guess how long App makers will follow in the steps fo JMRI and make their own app...

Standards lead to dual mode

Until there are standards for the wireless in the locomotive used by all systems' transmitters, there won't be any large level of  adoption.  It's too risky to commit to an proprietary system.

Once the transmission standard is in place, then decoders will follow.  And just as we have dual mode decoders for DC and DCC; and quad mode decoders for DC, AC, DCC, and DCS, so there will be dual decoders for wireless and wire transmission.  When they are cheap enough, they will be included in all locomotives by the manufacturers.

More feedback from the locomotive can occur either with wireless or wired - assuming anybody is really interested.  Personally, I do just fine with my NCE system - it has enough feedback for me. I already don't use over half the features available on it, and I can easily not use more.

Enjoy

Paul

Wireless Standards

I agree with Paul, we need wireless standards, Benny has some valid points. I believe Mr. Fugate nailed it. How do we get there from Here? The target is controversial and the technology is moving so fast, it is like nailing jello to a wall. A propriety system may leave many of us in a lurch. We need a bridge from DCC to wireless control.

1. Convert the DCC control [throttle] buss to wireless with a industry standard protocol.

2. Design wireless control stations and wireless throttles that use the DCC track standard for the masses.

3. Build a dual mode system that controls both DCC track decoders and standard wireless decoders.

4. The dual mode system will accommodate a wireless system with flexible engine power options.

The wireless DCC control buss protocol  and the wireless decoder protocol could be different.

As Benny has pointed out, a few standard circuits and a some code and you have a bridge from the old to the new. There is a transition path rather than a cliff that leaves many in a lurch.

WIFI may not be the answer, but wireless is. Early ideas using WIFI were presented here:

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/proposed-path-to-wifi-open-standards-12192398

Regards, John

"Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1." <> C-3PO - The Empire Strikes Back

Direct Wireless Control

The one issue I have not seen discussed, is how to I control my locomotive and not a locomotive with the same number on the layout next to me at a Show when you have a system that goes from the handheld to the locomotive direct?

Doug W

It's very simple. Dead rail

It's very simple.

Dead rail radio will never even have a chance to replace DCC until it is capable of doing what DCC does. Running N and Z scale.

Digitrax was smart. ONE of the reasons they dominate the DCC market is they were very aggressive about going after the N scale market, with smaller wired decoders, drop-in boards to replace light boards, and marketing directly to N scale modelers at their national gatherings. The large N-Trak layouts have been test beds for new equipment (UR-92, LocoNet Repeater) that gave them much higher load tests than they could find anywhere else. There aren't many HO scalers trying to control 9 locomotives in a single train as distributed power, or that have 100 trains (most with multiple locomotives...) running simultaneously on 120 scale mile long mainlines. AJ himself handed me one of the (then fairly new...) DT-100R throttles at the N scale convention in Orlando and told me to take it to the far corner of the exhibit hall (over 300 feet) and I ran a train on their display layout from there. That's how you make sales - by showing what your system can do.

I don't see any dead rail radio manufacturer even attempting this. Most are ignoring the N and Z scale markets completely. They can't be taken seriously until they embrace them.

Don't tell me it's because the technology doesn't exist. Not when this is out there:

All well and good....

.... except market forces may work against total standardization. Manufacturers grow and protect market share with proprietary systems. It is a means of retaining unique value and preventing the profit killing slide into total commoditization.

Look at gas stations as an example. Every brand of gasoline works equally well as every other brand of gasoline, generally speaking. What drives your purchase decision? Price. Gasoline is the epitome of standardization resulting in a totally price driven market.

Standardization helps increase uptake but at the expense of profit. DCC is advancing well in the hobby so there is no need to sacrifice profit to increase uptake. The universality of DCC modules was the least costly avenue to generate the needed uptake in the early years and it worked - DCC caught on en masse. Additional universality would probably degrade profits faster than additional uptake volume could replace.

Then there is the potential stifling effect caused by standardization. A new innovation may not be implementable because it requires deviation from or conflict with standards. Innovation is what drives business and ultimately delivers higher value products to the consumer. A proprietary system allows the innovation to be immediately delivered to the market.

At the end of the day it is all about business. If the profit isn't there then the business dies. Total standardization is generally not a profit boosting avenue.

 Several planes can...

Fixed that for you...