Background

Until now, I have had a Digitrax Super Chief system  in conjunction with JMRI and Loconet controlling my layout .

While that combo worked fine, I have long felt that Digitrax have remained reliant on decades old technology for far too long.  My personal preference is too sit a wee bit behind the leading edge of technology developments.  For some time I have following the likes of ESU's ECOS system and Roco's Z21 (among others) with some envy but not necessarily the cash.   When ESU announced the Cab Control system things changed.

Unboxing

Man how I avoid this type of You Tube video like the plague.  Suffice to say that the contents arrived in good order and initial set up was very simple.

I had the old Digitrax system removed in less than two minutes.  While I plugged the MC2 into charge I read the manual and then connected the two wires for the track feed to the CC, removed all my locos from the layout, plugged in the feed from the power supply to the CC and turned it on.  Meanwhile the MC2 was now charged so I turned that on and in seconds was connected to the CC's internal Wifi network. 

I then placed an ESU decoder equipped loco on the layout.  The MC2 immediately recognised the Loco and had all the correct Function key and DCC address information displayed on screen .    I had a train running within less than one minute after placing it on the layout.    Wow that is impressive.

OK so that was the good part.  Some of the not quite so good will become apparent in my next few posts.

Looking forward (I think!) to more on this....

Peter, I too have used a Digitrax system for years now and agree they have fallen somewhat behind the times. With all the recent improvements in N scale sound decoders (I only use ESU Loksound) even the latest Digitrax throttle is simply not good enough.

I have followed the Matt Herman videos and commentary on the new ESU CC system with great interest and have now actually ordered one. Very happy to hear your immediate experience after un-boxing and installing, though have to admit a certain trepidation after your final comment above!

Look forward to following along all the same and hope to contribute when I have mine set up.

John

Welcome aboard

Great to have you on board John.  I too am very new to this so the learning curve at the moment is very steep.  What I am hoping is that this blog will reveal some of the warts that the glossy brochures won't show you.

Don't get me wrong, I have yet to find the perfect product and I think it would be totally unrealistic to expect such a thing.

Rather, by publishing my experiences I am hoping a few things will happen.

1.  That ESU (Matt Herman) will see the comments and either take the constructive criticism on board for future development and/or provide some authoritative comment on users issues.

2. That other users will share their experiences and any solutions that they have come up with.

One of the main reasons that I bought this product is that ESU publish firmware updates that can be simply downloaded from the internet and loaded direct to the CC via thumb drive.  How many of the competitors require you to return the product for upgrades?  For someone living on the other side of the world this simple factor becomes a major decider.

A premature birth?

When bringing any new product to market, there is a fine balance between having it perfect or releasing it with a few things that have yet to be fully developed.  Early release candidates are becoming quite prolific especially in the electronics and software environments.

The ESU ECOS system has been around for quite awhile and is now well developed and constantly updated.  It is however, best suited to the European market.  Hardly surprising really.  The Cab Control System has been developed specifically for the North American and Australian markets (not sure if us New Zealanders are included in that). 

I am led to believe that the Cab Control Manual (get a copy here: http://www.esu.eu/en/downloads/instruction-manuals/digital-systems/

was developed directly from the ECOS manual and that some references within the manual while available on the ECOS are not yet available on the CC.

One of the neat things about the MC 2 display is the ability to show a picture of the locomotive you are currently driving.  According to the manual you can either select from the library already supplied on the Cab Control or you can create your own Loco icons.  So if you have say a UP AC4400 with cab number 5579 you can take a photo of it and use that as the icon on your MC2 throttle.   Not so quick grasshopper.  While you can do this on the ECOS  you can't do it on the CC yet. 

The question is when will User Defined loco icons be available on CC?

While the supplied library has hundreds of locomotive images available, unfortunately, the vast majority are either European or British locos.  

The more important issue for me is that I am a huge fan of JMRI  and use a number of the JMRI options such as Decoder Pro, Panel Pro, Operations and so forth.  On my Digitrax system I connected the two with an RR Cirkits LocoBuffer and used Loconet to connect everything together.  The Cab Control has a socket labeled LNET  but at the moment that is yet to be enabled. According to the manual this will be enabled with a firmware upgrade some time in the future.  However, it provides no information of  what it will provide and when it will happen.   The ECOS system is supported on JMRI but not the Cab Control.

So next question - When will LNET be enabled, what will it do and when will a JMRI connection be established?

I know that the ECOS system has an L.Net converter  that enables users to run throttles from other manufacturers (including Digitrax).  Wouldn't that be cool if you could plug in other throttles.

That brings me on to Ecosystems which I will discuss in my next post.

Eco system vs Open Source

Much as I hate modern labels, "Ecosystem" rather than defining something in nature, has now been captured by the tech market to describe a family of products that work together.  A classic example of this is the Apple range of Ipads, Iphones, Iwatches etc.   While these tech "ecosystems" might work well together they generally are designed to preclude similar products from other manufacturers working with them.  Classic Sales & Marketing 101 I guess.

Open Source on the other hand is also a growing trend.  As I understand it Open Source in the tech environment makes the hardware, firmware and software designs for a given product openly available.  This has been done under the premise that having thousands of developers available worldwide will rapidly improve any given product.  Open source is very common in the consumer 3D printing market and believe it or not companies that have made their products open source in this arena are reaping significant financial and other rewards.

A classic example of open source in the model train world (while clearly not for profit) is JMRI.  Another is the Protothrottle. I am a huge fan of the Open Source philosophy and will choose manufacturers who support it  over those that don't

While DCC started out as an open source standard developed by the NMRA in conjunction with a few manufacturers, I would contend that we are now staring to see the development of Ecosystems within the Model Trains environment.   Many posters on this forum have moved to a single source of sound decoders due to the difficulties of mixing and matching the competing technologies (Tsunami and Loksound are good examples).  

At the moment ESU seems to be a bit of both with their sound and accessory decoders and Lokprogrammer very much the basis of a tech ecosystem.  On the other hand, their  use of the Android operating system on the MC2 and collaboration with Steve Todd (designer of the Engine Driver app) suggests an Open Source approach.

Anyway enough philosophy for the moment - time to run some trains with my new DCC system.

Peter,   Thanks for sharing

Peter,

Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. 

I was about to purchase a Cab Control when they disappeared. Now that they are back in stock, I again started to get one when you said you would be getting one and letting us know how it worked. Decided to wait for your thoughts.

I was under the impression that it did work with JMRI. Don't remember where I got that, but if it doesn't, that is a show stopper. Can it be connected via the network connection? I'm going to spend some time on the ESU forum today and see if I can track down where I read this. I'll let you know if I have any success.

Don

JMRI works great for me

I connected the CC ICU to the same LAN as the PC by the Ethernet port. I made the  ICU IP address static in my router. I chose Ecos as the system type in the JMRI connection and entered the IP address of the ICU. 

A few seconds later I have full use of JMRI and Wifi throttle. I can use MC2 with CC app or EngineDriver, and my ProtoThrottles all at once. 

Plus I get fast programming and readback of CVs in programming on the main from Railcom enabled decoders (thanks to the ecosystem for that bit  ) . A huge benefit imho!

Hello Matt Herman

Matt, if you are following this thread, any guesstimate on timeframe to implement LocoNet into the CC?

Also, what is ESU doing toward LCC?

Thanks in advace for your response.

JMRI

@Pete M thanks for sharing your experience.  I was about to go on another long trawl through the internet as to how to connect the CC to JMRI and you have answered the question.  I new ECOS was set up to work with JMRI but wasn't sure if that would also work with CC.

When I attempted to connect my CC to my LAN, I pinged the IP address of the CC but got no response.  Does using your home Wifi network make the difference?

Don hopefully Pete M's post gives you a good deal of reassurance.

Peter, for CC ICU to my home LAN...

I first disabled the ICU's Wi-Fi. Then I connected the Ethernet socket on the ICU to my home Wi-Fi and LAN router and the router gave it an IP address through DHCP. Then I set that IP address to static and entered it in the JMRI Ecos connection screen. I didn't have to enter a port, it figured that out for itself. 

Then for the MC2s I connected them to my home Wi-Fi and they found the ICU by themselves. Which was good as have no idea what I'm doing!    I do find the home Wi-Fi connection more reliable than the ICU's own. I did upgrade the antennas in the MC2s as well. 

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2308

Pretty much eliminated loss of connection. My home Wi-Fi router is in the basement with the layout. 

I hope I answered the right question here!      

@Pete

Many thanks for that.  Perfect info to describe the process.  I will report back later with how I got on.

WiFi Range?

I read a review somewhere regarding a short range of the wifi throttle.  Off the top of my head, the reviewer was saying they could only use the throttle 10 or 15 feet from the main unit.  Is that what the antenna booster was for?  I was considering purchasing the system for use on our modular layout which right now is 24 feet long and could grow.  I was hoping you would be willing to tell me:  What is your experience on the range and also, the system operation with cell phones?  We want to have the ability to have members and visitors run trains using their phones.  Thanks, Eric

MC2 range

My basement is "L" shaped, about 39 x 25ft. The layout is around 3 walls plus one peninsular. Using the CC ICU built-in Wi-Fi and standard antennas in the MC2s I found range marginal. Positioning the ICU at the middle angle of the "L" above about 50" from the floor seemed best. But the MC2s still dropped off the W-Fi every few minutes.

Adding the gain antennas really helped and reduced the dropouts to one or two per 3-hour ops session. Still a bit awkward as the MC2s would come back online with a different loco "live" than before the drop-out which caused a few scares until we learned to re-select the right loco. Hopefully that has been fixed in an app update.

Switching over to using the home Wi-Fi and the gain antennas was the best solution for sure. No dropouts after that, although we only ran a few sessions with them. My ProtoThrottles arrived soon after and the MC2s don't seem to get much use now.  

ESU Cab Control

Thanks for starting up this discussion Peter!

The first cab control I received was unresponsive and I was unable to operate any of the touch sensitive functions on the device. It just didn't respond to pressure. I contacted ESU and they were great to work with and they sent me a replacement unit. Unfortunately, the replacement unit had one of the 4 quick program buttons broken and since I had already been without a throttle for about a month I decided to just live it with. I haven't seen a need yet to program any of those buttons. 

I wish I could update the images of the locomotives right now they are all of European design and I run modern USA stuff! I thought I could update them prior to purchasing the CC but I guess I just misunderstood the information

By the way I've had no wifi drop out issues (room is 26 x 12) and the controller is located at one end of the room. 

Overall, I'm pretty happy the CC with its ease of use and I think that it continue to improve with updates. Sometimes when you're an early adopter you have to accept that sometimes things are a bit rough around the edges.

Cheers

John

@John

Hi John

Thanks for your input.  One of the great benefits of forums like this is the ability to share experiences on common products.   Thanks to Pete M, I was having a look at the Proto Throttle group and noted that Matt Herman (ESU) had posted on there to say that he was watching that group so he could contribute on any ESU related issues.  I am hoping he will do the same here.

Have you tried doing a firmware update?  The version I have has several North American Loco icons in the library but of course they are all different colors and road names from what I have.   To me the advantage of the icons is you can see at a glance which loco you have selected.

One thing I did find that made it easier to find a specific icon  is to select the current icon in edit mode and the start typing the loco type you need.  The search function takes you straight to that spot in the library.

@Pete M

Thanks to your post, I have successfully registered the CC on my home Wifi network (I am Using a Google Wifi Mesh so that task is real easy).  I then switched JMRI over to the Ecos  option and registered the new fixed IP address.  It was also straight forward to switch the MC2 to my home Wifi network.

All I need to do now is get Engine Driver to connect to the JMRI Wi throttle server.  This has been a problem for me since well before switching to the ESU CC.  The app starts, sees the Withrottle server and connects at the app end.  I can then select a loco in the app but none of the controls work.  Meanwhile the Withrottle screen in JMRI doesn't show any connected devices.   As I said I have had this sort of connection problem on a number of different layouts.  It seem to be the way you hold your tounge.

Firmware update

Thanks for the suggestion Peter. I'm pretty sure I'm on the current version but I may not be. 

I'm heading out the door right now to go night skiing ... -18C  ...with a bunch of Kiwis from Dunedin, Christchurch and Greymouth! 

Cheers

John

Wi Throttle Success

After poking around in JMRI preferences I finally resolved the connection issue between Android/Apple  and JMRI.

First stop was under Wi Throttle Preferences.  Allowed Controls was set to NMRA Format. When I changed that to Brand Specific, the Phone showed up on the Wi throttle connected devices list.

Second change was under JMRI Defaults   when I changed the Throttles from Internal to ECOS  everything started to work.

So in summary I now have the CC established on my home Wifi network, JMRI is setup and working on the ECOS option, my MC2 is connected and working  and I also now have the ability to use either Engine Driver (Android) throttles or Apple WiThrottle.   A successful day

While all that was going on, I have also started 3D printing my own design MC2 throttle holder..

Glad you got it working Peter!

I should have mentioned that JMRI Defaults thing, sorry.  It seems from the JMRI forum that the defaults are never to be set to "internal" when using any other control system, always to the system you're using.  But they seem to default to "internal" sometimes when you make changes elsewhere. I do believe there's a fix for that either in the most recent release of JMRI, or coming soon.

So... if you have any Loksound Select or V4 decoders, or TCSWOW (I think) you can set Railcom to "on" in the MC2s and the decoders and get full read-back of all CVs when programming on the main. Saves a lot of decoder programming and fine-tuning time.   

And with ESU's Railcom Plus enabled, each Loksound loco will also auto-register, including all specific functions set, in the CC/MC2 loco list. As well they'll get registered in the DecoderPro roster. But I found the DecoderPro side tends make duplicate entries sometimes, so for now I disable just the Railcom Plus checkbox in the Loksound decoders once they've registered for the first time. No doubt the excellent folk at JMRI will have this polished up shortly.  

Let the fun begin!! 

Wi-Fi Throttle App

I have the ESU command station with the ESU wireless throttle, I love them both.

I'm wondering if ESU will release an app to allow  us to use our phones as a throttle? 

The free  version of  touchcab works, but I'm having trouble with the paid version, it won't work for more than a few seconds before shutting down. The free version also isn't available anymore.

I'm planning on having an op session soon, but nobody else uses ESU, so I only have one throttle, it makes it hard to have an op session! At $300 a throttle, I can't buy one for everyone.

@Michael

The app already exists.  For android phones and tablets  it is called Engine Driver and for Apple phones and IPads it is called WiThrottle. Both apps are free and if you have a look at the posts above the process required to combine the apps with the ESU command station and JMRI has been described.

Once done anyone with a smart phone can run trains on your layout whil you use your ESU throttle.

Not sure what Touch Cab is. I haven't heard of that one.

Apple

I was told JMRI doesn't work with Mac, is that correct? 

JMRI for Mac

http://jmri.org/install/MacOSX.shtml