Wow

Im a complete Noob to this stuff, although Ive been in the hobby for over 40 years.

That is amazing.  Thank you for sharing.  Guess I gotta get a Computer Degree...after I just thought I earned an Electrical Degree...(when I figured out how to wire a Peco Electro Frog #6).  LOL.

LOL JD!

This great hobby always brings us learning opportunities.

I'm a bit of a dinosaur with this kind of techno-thing, but JMRI made it easy. There are good notes on the website about remote access via WiThrottle. Then I found instructions online for my router model to open a port and connect to my layout PC. Then I Googled "what's my IP" to find that part.  I added a free dynamic dns service as well but that's not necessary as long as you check your external IP address from time to time.

I had my remote engineer enter the IP address and port number in WiThrottle on his phone and we both about fell off our chairs when he first rang the bell on a loco here from Australia.  

Probably old hat for many, but fun times for old guys! 

Pete

Well done!

And very innovative! 

Paul

best hobby

With no reservation....I conclude...this is THE best Hobby.

Thank you Pete for posting this.  Any ideas of making a video for us other folks?

As time goes on...sadly for some reason or another...I learn/digest things better in video form.  Whereas...I used to be able to read a book for hours on end....not sure what happenned.  Guess my brain is fried.

Trying to Understand

I am trying to understand this...

The guys were running withrottle and were connecting through their own routers to the internet and then to your router and into JMRI? Or are they connecting via the cell phone network and then to the internet?

I might just have to try this if I can figure out how to get it to work. I do have the issue that my train computer, a Raspberry Pi, is not currently connected to the internet, but that can be changed.

Thanks for this, had no idea that this could be done!

Article

This sounds like it would make a great 'how-to' article, especially considering the times we are in right now. I know I would be very interested in figuring out how to make this work. How cool would it be  to operate on somebody  else's layout half way around the world from your home (or just down the street for that matter)? I'm thinking pretty darn cool myself.

Pretty cool.

I just got my system back on JMRI. It’s awesome when you get a locomotive set the way you want. My layout is a 2-4 person layout max. One of my buddies wanted to see how it works. I might try this except I don’t know if I want a noob to be remote engineer. 

Upate after the first few sessions

We've run a few sessions now and had a mix of great success and total frustration. 

Success seems to be driven by good Internet connections and the right devices and apps. Frustration comes mainly from poor Internet connections and less good apps.

The setup we're using for now:

JMRI running on my local layout PC.  JMRI Withrottle server and web server running. 

I port-forwarded from my router firewall to the layout PC to the JMRI servers.

I found my external IP address from my router admin console (you can also use "Whats my IP" etc. in your browser)

I use a free dynamic dns service but that's not necessary.

Remote egineers can select and drive locos with WiThrottle on iPhone or EngineDriver on Andriod.  As well they could do that by browser and the JMRI web server but we've not had great success with that so far.

Also, my layout uses ESU CabControl, and the cab control ICU is connected to my home LAN by Ethernet cable.  So that gives the option of using ESU MCII or ProtoThrottle (with the ESU/JMRI Withrottle receiver) direct to the CC ICU via port forwarding also. The PT config settings just need to be set to point to my IP address and port.

We've done the video calls where I as conductor communicate with the remote engineer by Zoom, Skype or WhatsApp so far.  I use my phone on the little tripod shown earlier to give the engineer a view of what's happening in the area we're switching.  It's not what the engineer would really see, but we have to compromise until we come up with battery powered Wi-Fi cameras that fit in O scale cabs.     There are a few out there but we might have tio make a mount that fits over the loco short hood. More on that soon I hope. 

The one big let down has been that the loco sounds get cut out by the video call apps which are busily trying to optimize for voice and treat the loco sound as noise to be removed. So the remote engineers can't hear the locos well which spoils the experience a bit. I've ordered a small shotgun mic to add to my phone to see if that helps.

We're hoping to capture some video soon so will post it when available.

If you're missing ops sessions, this is way better than not having them at all imho. It's limited to one local conductor and one remote engineer per session so far, but that can grow post self-isolation. 

For me as the local conductor it's been great fun learning how to get the remote engineers to make the moves required safely, and get my railroad moving again.  Well worth trying imho.    

Pete 

Remote Control

That's a neat set up Pete.

First video clip

Thanks Chris!

Here's an edited video clip from the first proper session:

Engineer Daryl Blake is in the cab for today's Train 44, the MIP Turn, and I'm the local conductor. Daryl's in Melbourne and running the locos from 16,000kms away with Withrottle on his iPhone through my JMRI Withrottle server. The video call is on Zoom, which does a great job of filtering out background noise for best voice quality.

Sadly Zoom running on my Samsung phone identifies the pleasant burble of Alco 251s as "noise" (what were they thinking?) so Daryl doesn't get to hear much of the locos.  But to me they sound like this:

  which means I'm having way more fun than Daryl so far... 

Working on a remote shotgun mic for my phone next.

Pete

16,000 km!!!

I suppose the Conductor decides who gets to stay up late or get up early?! 

Very interesting use of technology! Could be helpful to me just to see operating sessions. My entire "fleet" consists of one Tsumani controlled GP-7 and two pieces of rolling stock. Absolutely no layout nor any transmitter, not even an old 'power pack'! Strictly club running and that venue is closed for the duration, of course.  Looking forward to some more great video! 

Thank's Pete

Excellent post thanks.  I have all the doings to give this a try.  Will give it a shot locally first and then may give the long distance stuff a go.

Now this is virtually cool as heck!

Hat’s off for getting this to work!

Thanks for sharing, l am going to try it out

Question: in opening up a port what external port number did you use and what internal port number did you use. Thanks again and stay well stay safe

Ports

MIke, I started off with the standard ports for JMRI Web server and Withrottle server, 12080 and 12090 respectively at the firewall end and for the JMRI (my layout) PC's internal IP address.

Turns out I don't need JMRI web server for now anyway so closed that again. I'm not sure how secure or not this is. I only give my external IP address to those who I invite to operate remotely. I open the port in my router's WAN admin screen as the session starts and close it after. I might change ports to other unused ones from time to time but tbh I have no idea what I'm talking about in this regard! 

Actually the hardest part was figuring out how to get my cable company's crappy router into bridge mode so I could use my own LAN/Wi-Fi router as the firewall and open the ports.   

PM me if you want to try it out on each other's layouts! 

Pete

Pete Would like to try

Pete

Would like to try operating on each other's layouts but not sure how to get in touch with you directly. Perhaps you could send me an email at parkvalley@shaw.ca with your particulates and we could go from there.

Mike

Genius

That's genius. I kept thinking of this, wondering how to do the video part. I was thinking on-train camera, but having each conductor stream on a phone is genius. It's almost just like being there at an op session. It should work with the TCS UWT-100 as well using the same method. I was over-thinking it and thinking a VPN setup, but it's not like it's the end of the world if someone intercepts your unencrypted JMRI commands. Your method is easy, at least for the JMRI/WiThrottle end of things. I'd just recommend closing the port back up on your router once you're done running the JMRI server for a while.

Static DHCP

If you're not already using Static DHCP, I'd recommend it for the layout PC. Static DHCP, if you're not familiar, assigns the PC an IP in the router so that the PC thinks it's using DHCP because it is, but it gets the same IP assigned every time, so in practice, it's a static IP. A straight up static IP would work as well, but Static DHCP is a lot easier to manage, and a laptop can have multiple different static IP assignments on different networks, or revert back to regular DHCP.

In terms of security, I wouldn't worry too much about it for an op session. I wouldn't leave the port open for a long time, however.

...

I was talking about this 10 years ago and everybody was like "nah, I want the real thing in person, screw the people who for whatever reason cannot be in the room.  They should just join a new club in their new area."

Yeah...I knew this was possible ever since MIT had their model railroad you could log into and run.  That setup has been since taken down, but as a proof of concept it was there.

As a concept it will go a lot further if we had true remote couplers.

For those of you who are getting this to work, there's a series of articles here that should be published, starting with a rudimentary setup (what we have now) and working up towards something that has a more secure login method and user interface so that you do not have to work about having an open IP address.

Nice work!!

Security

The tripod...

Where did you get that tripod? 

Tripod

Here's the tripod Bremner:

https://www.lifewire.com/joby-griptight-micro-stand-review-4798940

It only has one problem: It's not terribly good.   I would go for something a little more robust, ideally with plastic or rubber covered legs (or you could tape over bare metal) to avoid shorting the track when you're going in for the "conductor's eye-level" view.

The shotgun mic I've ordered comes with a tripod so hopefully that will be better overall:

https://www.maonoglobal.com/products/shotgun-video-microphone-kit-au-cm10s

Pete

DCC couplers

Benny- there have been a few implementations of DCC couplers. Problem is they're only on the loco, not on each car. There's also magnetic uncouplers, although they seem to have fallen out of vogue with wireless DCC throttles and walkaround layouts.

Pete- individual ports should be safer than DMZ'ing the whole machine. Even better if the layout PC is dedicated to being a layout PC and doesn't do anything else.

Benny- there have been a few

There's nothing that keeps you from putting a decoder in every car for uncoupling but expense and hassle. Having to acquire a car every time you want to uncouple woud get old in a hurry.

If you used a "stationary" decoder, though (more properly an accessory decoder in this case...), you wouldn't have to acquire the decoder, though you'd still have to enter the address (car number) to uncouple. You'd also need to be able to determine  whether you wanted to uncouple the A end or B end of the car.