I doubt it is the same ones complaining, and no one has yet asked for LC/+ to BE legacy. when you look at the functionality of LC/+ it IS TMCC Lite. remote control on constant voltage, 16 speed steps, some limited crew talk, and on the Plus engines, speed control and operating couplers. I'm unsure what the complaint is in the idea of simply offering products to bridge the control gap between a full command system and the entry level system with unique remotes.
The original question posed about a Wifi remote is particularly interesting because it is likely to require no additional components, depending how open the programing options are in iOS and Android platforms. I've never developed any apps so I'm unsure how much control a programer has over the wifi radio in the smart devices.
In any case, if the issue is 'Why didn't they make TMCC lite instead of making a new and incompatible system?" my answer comes in two parts. First, Likely because someone had the bright idea of using a cheaper, more reliable technology that wasn't obsolete 15 years before it was ever put into a train engine. (See home lighting control units in the late 70's that used house wiring as the antenna) Second, I'm unsure why folks that want a TMCC lite product seem opposed to the idea of a product that would allow TMCC to talk to LC/+ engines. Isn't that exactly what you're asking for? Limited functionality of TMCC features from your CAB1 remote?
Now there are some things I think Lionel got wrong on LionChief.
1. I think they should have designed the original LC with the option for transformer control. I suspect they weighed the costs and decided it wasn't needed for the target market of buyers to whom the LC set would be their first, and likely only train set.
2. I think they should have added a direction button or switch to the remote, allowing the range needed on the control knob to allow 32 speed steps. Other than the addition of such a button/switch the hardware would be identical in design and cost, and the software would need perhaps a dozen lines of code changed. I suspect they went with the 16 steps because the potentiometer used only has about 40 positions and they wanted to have a simple-for-kids, forward and backward knob.
3. On LionChief Plus engines, I wish they had chosen to modify the remote, rather than use the same remote, such that there were actually 2 new buttons for the couplers. The double click works just fine for the most part, (though it is funny to me watching some reviews of the product on youtube where people think you have to press on one side for whistle and the other for coupler, not realizing it is just one button). My issue is only that due to this they added a bit of lag between a button press and when the whistle starts to sound. The processor has to wait to see if it is a double click or not (for exactly 400 milliseconds) before it starts sounding the whistle or bell. This I would suspect was done because it was easy and cheap. having to have a 5 button remote made when the 3 button one you have will do the job at no additional cost is a no brainer. I do want to find out if the programing is on the remote side or the engine side, as if it is on the remote side, than a wifi app or Legacy bridge could eliminate this annoying 0.4 seconds of lag.
I'm sure there are some other little quirks I've forgotten about, but these are the big ones for me as far as flaws with the LC/+ system. Other than these, I'm unsure what has folks boxers twisted about LionChief. You have replaced conventional with a simple remote system, kept the cost the same or less than conventional starter sets, and in every LC/+ engine I've seen in person the quality of the model it's self is the same, or better, than the conventional engine it replaced.
Now when it comes to the idea of LC being as good as legacy, thats where I think folks understanding of what Legacy is needs to be looked at. For example, Every single thing that a legacy engine can do, that a TMCC engine can not is defined in one additional bit of data. a single 1 or 0 is all that separates the commands available to TMCC engines and Legacy engines. The technology that delivers the information from the base to your engine is the same in both Legacy and TMCC, though from what I understand they did use modern 2.4GHz bi-directional commutation between the base and remote in Legacy. The actual electronics package hardware's only difference is a few more transistors on the outputs of a micro-controllers I/O pins to turn on and off more features.
What Legacy does offer is a much more detailed, well built model that will look much better than any entry level product, a much better drive train that took some smart engineer a butt-load of hours to design, giving you much better low speed control (though to be honest my LC+ engines seem to do just fine at 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 SMPH), and a high quality sound processor that no doubt took someone countless hours to put together the tiny sounds in such a way as to make realistic sounds that adjust to engine speed.
What it isn't, is high tech.
JGL
