Reminds me of a blog

Joe, never had LokSound

I was really looking forward to getting Loksound in the upcoming Walthers SW1200 release, but that's been pushed back to January. The decoder I replaced was a non-sound decoder, and Intermountain doesn't offer a non-DCC MKT F7B. I use WowSound as my primary for a few reasons:

1. Kits guaranteed to fit into a locomotive
2. Keep-Alive installed with the kit
3. Competitive price point through retailers: on par with Soundtraxx and Loksound 4.0.

I operate my engines on several club layouts (I know you're not a huge fan of them, Joe), so KA's are pretty much required to keep the sound going consistently. Hearing the start-up beeps of a 710 turning over every three feet on unreliable track gets really old really quick.

I know that Loksound offers a form of Keep-Alive, and I've been looking forward to their Full Throttle ever since hearing about it, but most installs I do are cramped enough that they require the TCS kits. In addition, the places I've looked at online for Loksound + CurrentKeeper are $20-$40 higher than a comparative TCS kit. With the recent price increase at TCS, Loksound might be back in the running. If ScaleTrains ever releases something in my 1953-era, I'd be all over that.

Microsoft Update

I'm having to restrain myself here. I could get.... somewhat unhinged sounding.

I no longer have a configured JMRI machine. Or a Photoshop box.

Windows 10 update 1803 turned my laptop into a doorstop.

I've reinstalled, over a period of about 3 hours+ last night, from scratch. That's just the OS and drivers. Now to get the apps and pull my backups out of cloud storage. Thank goodness I set up the backup service a few months ago.

I’ve been using Microsoft and

I’ve been using Microsoft and Apple products for decades. They both have their pluses and minuses, however the automated updates just became too much of annoyance for applications where I want stability.

Now I use a Raspberry Pi running Raspian for every place I need to use JMRI.  Nothing updates unless I explicitly do the update.  

As a bonus, everything runs on the microSD card. No disk drive, no separate operating system, it’s all self contained. So I make the upgrade on a new card.  If, for some reason, there is a problem with the new version, the old SD card can be swapped back in. At that point you are back to a stable old system that can continue to run while you go about fixing the new system.

i still use my Windows system where it is required, for instance Lightroom and the ESU LokProgrammer. But all of the JMRI and control software that requires stability has been moved to the Raspberry Pi.

I know I’ve said this all before, but it is such a simple solution that I feel it should be ok to repeat it now and them.

GS

Article please

That would make a very useful article -- we've done the Arduino for the average modeler articles, how about a Raspberry Pi article for model railroaders?

Keep in mind you need to not assume a lot of prior knowledge. Assume just enough tech savvy to be able to get it with some explanation -- someone able to wade into Arduino space with help.

How about it?

Oh, yes, please

I'd love an article like that. What are you using to connect to the programming track? I've got a Sprog 2 that I currently use, and hooking that all together would be just fine.

Agreed

I've got a Raspberry Pi on my desk that's taking up (not a lot of) space. I've always wanted to be able to set that up to run JMRI.

Windows 10 update (work

My wife's HP laptop hasn't been updatable since it refused to

boot Win10 x64 over a year ago; it would just hang.  Fortunately I had two accounts on the machine (one mine) and mine still worked.  Running as an administrator I had to recover the files I could from her account and copy them to a new account I built for her from scratch.  I've locked out her old account but not deleted it; she was the owner of the machine and it's just easier to ignore the old account than to live with whatever negative outcome might occur if I deleted it.

The insidious thing about Windows is that if you don't update voluntarily at some point it decides enough is enough and in its infinite wisdom it will do it whether you want to or not.  For months now it will get part way through an update (enough to warrant a restart (or 2 or 3+) then discover that it can't complete the update so reverts back to what was in effect before (same number of restarts going back plus possibly one extra for spite).  Thinking I had nothing to lose I even disabled Windows Update only to discover that after about a month some loophole kicks in and WU reenables itself and we're off tilting at windmills again.  The error code is something that is of little use to those of us slightly beyond the Neanderthals in our tech skills, something about a file in use that trips up the whole process.  No mention anywhere I can find on what that file is or what app it is a part of (I suspect antivirus though turning that off didn't accomplish anything) so now I'm left with only one more idea and that is to wade through a clean boot.  Either that or the laptop and I venture out in a rowboat into Lake Washington (Seattle) and only one of us comes back...

I do recommend investing in some sort of backup; in my case I use Acronis and its standalone USB dongle you build for bootable recovery.  It has it's quirks (sometimes forgets how to clean up old backups and should you choose incremental backups instead of full backups each time you can't simply use Windows Delete to do housekeeping manually.

I thought I retired from IT to get away from all this sh*t...

Not much of an article as

Not much of an article as most of the setup work has already been done. For an overview check out JMRI RaspberryPi as Access Point. A complete software image for JMRI for the RPi can be downloaded HERE. I have now built two systems for myself and five others for clubs and club members. The latest one includes the RPi 3 B+ with the 7 inch touch display housed in a  SmartiPi Touch - Stand with a Pi-Sprog driving the tracks. A Wireless Keyboard completes the programming station. If you delete the display and keyboard you can run this as a "headless" DCC system using cell phones as throttles with WiThrottle (iOS) or Engine Driver (Android) apps. The system can be configured to drive most DCC systems through USB adapters (ie, LocoBuffer-USB,  PR4 USB to LocoNet Interface) or command station interfaces.

OK - I am a computer nerd, so an article may be in order.

@joe - article

Hi Joe -  The basic installation of the necessary software is very well covered.

This link to the Raspberry Pi Foundation tutorial on installation of Raspian is very good.

This link to the JMRI installation instructions for Raspberry Pi is old, but with one exception, is correct. If you're using a newer Pi version 3 with built-in wi-fi you can skip step 5.

I think, however, you weren't looking for an article on installation instructions, and may have been looking for something more along the lines of the general use of the Pi as a platform in the operations of the railroad.

Send me an email with your thoughts and perhaps I can come up with something that will at least point people in the general direction of something useful.

gs

One thing I'm interested in...

I already own a Sprog 3 (not a 2 like I thought) and so I really don't want to have to buy a Pi-Sprog. So.... any idea if it will it work with a Pi 3 through the USB?

Sprog 3

Jeff - I don’t know for sure, but the JMRI page on the Sprog hardware says most Linux versions include the correct USB drivers. So, I would lean towards saying it would work. Not having tried it myself, I couldn’t say for sure.  The JMRI support guys are very responsive. Shoot a message to their group on groups.io if someone doesn’t chime in here. Really, if the USB works with other computers, and the drivers are already in Unix, there is a Sprog Command Station option in the JMRI set-up, so it’s a pretty good bet it can be made to work.

I’ve only used the NCE PowerCab and SB5 via USB. The club’s NCE system via the serial adaptor. And Lenz via their LI-USB and an older LIsomething-else-discontinued. So I don’t have direct experience with Sprog.

I can say I didn’t have to load any additional USB drivers for NCE or Lenz. They were already present in Raspian Linux.

GS

Sprog 3

Yes you can use the sprog3 with a RPi3.

Using the prebuilt image mentioned earlier in the thread makes it easy.

https://mstevetodd.com/jmri-raspberrypi-access-point

SPROG 3 on RPI with JMRI

I use an SPROG 3 on my first system, and it works great. The PROG 3 and now the Pi-Prog have become my primary programming and testing systems. The ability to easily switch between programming and operation modes is a really big plus. 

Thanks!

Looks like I have a summer project. Thanks!