Phil Haigh

This afternoon I finally finished properly educating myself on the subject of DCC addressing with respect to sensors, and specifically how sensor boards work on LocoNet - and that block occupancy seniors occupy the same addressable space as, say, point feedback sensors.

Now that probably seems obvious but what wasn’t obvious to me was how YaMoRC sensors get their LocoNet ID - just subtract 1 from the first address and then divide by 16 and add 1. Took a bit of experimentation but now I have six IDs for Digitrax boards and four for YaMoRC boards, with no overlapping addresses 🤦🏻 and space for growth (that I almost definitely don’t need).

Now I’m just writing up documentation before I reconfigure JMRI. It’s a big step forward even though it doesn’t look like one.

#ModelRailway #DCC #digitrax #progress

Apr 11 at 9:55pmWeb
Show threadrainynight652d ago
@gulfie Whats your DCC central? I always find it a bit weird when they make you do these calculations. I use homebrew LocoNet sensor boards and I just configure them with a portion of the LocoNet address range. In my software (not JMRI) I just configure each sensor directly with its address. It doesn't need to know what type of boards I have.
Show threadPhil Haigh2d ago

@rainynight65 I have a Digitrax DCS210+ at the heart of my system and whenever you add one of their boards you have to go through a process to assign an ID to it. When I started adding YaMoRC boards there was no mention of either assigning an ID or calculating the ID(s) that would be generated (based on the first accessory address you give the device).

When I started monitoring LocoNet traffic via a third party windows app used to program the signalling boards that’s when I noticed that the YaMoRC boards had an ID (sometimes two) and that in some cases it overlapped with some that I had explicitly assigned.

Turns out that YaMoRC derives the IDs, hence a bit of a re-number yesterday. I’m now in the middle of drawing up some documentation on everything because by I have 11 sensor boards and 10 accessory boards, and I need to properly track what does what and on what addresses, so that I can update JMRI, which will then start working properly again…

Show threadrainynight652d ago
@gulfie oh, are you running accessories through LocoNet as well? I only use it for feedbacks.
Show threadPhil Haigh2d ago

@rainynight65 well no! All sensors are LocoNet, and all accessories are non-LocoNet (except signals which are LocoNet). The YaMoRC 8116 16 channel accessory boards are so much cheaper than the Digitrax equivalents. Everything is run through the Digitrax command station, though, which in turn is connected via USB to the Raspberry Pi that runs JMRI.

And while the sensor boards each have 16 sequential addresses (and an ID) the accessory boards allow you to assign any accessory address you want to each (and don’t have IDs). Non-LocoNet boards are all run on a separate power district so that they carry on working in the event of a short.