Remotes/TIUs - Any future?

@Landsteiner posted:

While I agree there is nothing in the history of Atlas O since Jim Weaver's untimely death to suggest they are going to be a force in this segment of model railroading, the future could be different. I think a lot depends on market forces. If some combination of more people entering the hobby and pandemic induced more time at home leads to more purchases by those who are committed to DCS locomotives, Atlas O could become a significant maker of locomotives, in contrast to their recent history.  We'll see what happens.  On balance, I suspect they will be bigger than the almost nothing they've been doing, but more a niche role that Weaver had rather than a major force, as MTH was.  But I've been wrong before .

You're right, we don't really know but it's fun to speculate. One thing I do know is that in in the long run, supply and demand will come into balance. At the moment, and I stress AT THE MOMENT, the Rail King line appears in jeopardy. If that's truly due to lack of demand, it will naturally disappear; if it's not due to lack of demand, I'm confident something will appear on the market to take its place.

@raising4daughters posted:

You're right, we don't really know but it's fun to speculate. One thing I do know is that in in the long run, supply and demand will come into balance. At the moment, and I stress AT THE MOMENT, the Rail King line appears in jeopardy. If that's truly due to lack of demand, it will naturally disappear; if it's not due to lack of demand, I'm confident something will appear on the market to take its place.

I wonder if your hunch is correct about RailKing since I think many new entrants into O are more enamored with scale or very close to scale sized items.

The only items from the RailKing line that interest me are the scale diesels with 4-wheel trucks that aren’t also offered in Premier. I think this is limited to the ALCo RS-1, RS-27, EMD SW-1, SW-8/9, SW1500, NW-2, and MP15DC.

I also enjoy collecting the RailKing ore cars and 3-dome tank cars, and single dome (not modern) tank cars, again as these are mostly scale sized for the early 20th century and look great mixed in with 36’ woodside reefers and 2-bay hoppers.

Sadly, I think Lionel has all but abandoned the line of traditional rolling stock with prototypical (ie non-Disney, non-Star Trek, non-baby pictures) paint schemes.  Looking at it logically, its understandable with untold thousands of Lionel postwar, Lionel MPC and Lionel LTI traditional freight cars out there that can be purchased for under $20 a piece. Check out the 6464 remakes prices on auction sites. On top of that, there is Menards with their $17.00 freight cars.  Those same market pressures apply to Railking cars as well.

I would love it if Lionel would re-enter this market (or other companies) but I don't think so.

@MrMuffin'sTrains posted:

You can use a phone handset cord to tether a remote off of the new TIU 50-1039. The only issue is, that remote will only then communicate with that TIU. Obviously, with four outputs you can support up to four tracks. I have jumpered two smaller loops off of the same TIU port with success - we ran that way today. So if you can operate with a single TIU you are all set. For someone that operates more than one TIU, each one would need to have its own remote tethered to it.

At our layout, the big layout runs trains via our iPads across four TIUs; we have an additional layout on the east side of the building that's operated with a remote tethered to a TIU and they don't interfere with the big layout. In back, is another TIU with a tethered remote we use for our test track in the workshop. I am getting ready to add a fourth independent loop and will tether a remote once again.

I don't like using the DCS app on my iPhone, but on an iPad, even the iPad mini it works really good. It is much easier to change between trains; execute the various commands; and not nearly the delay I experience with the remote. Today, we were running over twenty trains at the same time off of one iPad.

The 50-1039 was in test last week at MTH in Michigan, assuming everything is okay, they will give the go ahead for the production. I am thinking probably another 90-120 days before they get here. I am not clear on when the new remotes will ship.

You might recall Mike announced originally, last year, that DCS would continue on in a new entity, and most recently, Atlas licensed DCS for not only the MTH tooling they took over, but for Atlas tooling as well. Last I heard, their engineers were already fitting DCS components into their products.

Bottom line, rest easy. DCS isn't going away.

Thanks for this information and update! I’m not a fan of the tethered remote approach but I am happy the production of 50-1039 will be an option for DCS in the future. If my 2002 model of the TIU ever fails (and can’t be repaired) I guess I’ll just have to buy the 50-1039 and get used to using an iPad mini. However, I really like using the untethered remote so hopefully I’ll get many more years out of my current remote/TIU combination. Also, as I understand it Atlas will produce diesels with DCS, so hopefully the MTH steam tooling w/DCS market will somehow also continue in the future as well.

@H1000 I hope I didn't miss it but what exactly is the controller you're using?

@BillYo414 posted:

@H1000 I hope I didn't miss it but what exactly is the controller you're using?

I used an ipega-PG-9083S with a Google Nexus 7 Gen 2 tablet in that video. I had to improvise a mount to the controller to have the tablet in portrait position.

I have also used this with an 8bitdo Sn30 Pro+ controller on an old Motorola XT907 phone.

Thanks. I looked it up real quick. I suspect some people won't be into it because it doesn't resemble the CAB 1 or 2 but if that works with the Lionel app, sign me right up. I dig the big red button but I could just as easily learn to use that and would be happy doing so if I don't have to look down.

It's very possible to get it to work with Lionel's apps but the there is one major hurdle that I have yet to overcome with the Lioncheif app which also looks to appear in the CAB3 app.... the speed control slider.

The MTH app had stepper buttons (remember the + & - buttons everyone loathed?), these stepper button are what allow me to interface and control the speed by 1 step increments. The lack of these buttons on the Lionel apps means I'll need to use the analog joystick to simulate up and down finger swiping motion. The problem is the Joystick always returns to center and the interface doesn't have a way to currently identify the last known position of the speed slider. As a result when the joystick centers, your speed drops back to zero. It's a work in progress... with a bleak outlook right now.

Now using the MTH app, I have actually simulated the same control of the Lionel big red wheel to control your Legacy and TMCC engines. By rolling an analog joystick on the outside edges clockwise (to increase speed) or counterclockwise (to decrease speed), you get a feel that is very similar to turning the knob except you use your thumb. You can also push down on the same joystick to change the direction (which also stops the engine).

The other issue with the Lionel app is the precision of speed control, in a word, abysmal.  It's very difficult to modulate speed even remotely as well as the big red knob.

I haven't actually used the Lionel app but that's a pretty enormous issue whether with the stick or trying to slide to a speed on screen. I can't think of a good way to cheat the analog stick and make it hold position either.

I wonder if someone makes a joystick component that isn't "momentary" so to speak.

Do you know if it would be possible to sub in a potentiometer for the throttle joystick? I'm just spitballing ideas here.

@BillYo414 posted:

I haven't actually used the Lionel app but that's a pretty enormous issue whether with the stick or trying to slide to a speed on screen. I can't think of a good way to cheat the analog stick and make it hold position either.

I wonder if someone makes a joystick component that isn't "momentary" so to speak.

Do you know if it would be possible to sub in a potentiometer for the throttle joystick? I'm just spitballing ideas here.

Well, I want to keep this as simple as possible so buying off the shelf hardware and then modifying it wasn't really what I had in mind. I'm toying with the idea of the software resetting the zero position of the analog joystick on the screen to the last set position of the throttle. This works for one engine but as soon as you switch to the next engine (in the CAB3 app), the slider will change position as the next locomotive is traveling at different speed and now you have the same old problem of finding the slider position again and setting the zero position to the new spot on the screen.

There are also some new buggy Bluetooth issues with the latest versions of the Lionchief app that have caused other problems with the Bluetooth connectivity to the controller. Lionel's latest updated versions of the app have really stalled this project plus with the CAB3 app coming soon, I wonder if the Lionchief app will remain relevant.

@H1000 you need to find something at has a rotary encoder to handle the speed issues. Some R/C airplane controls have this to set trim or stabilizers.

@rplst8 posted:

@H1000 you need to find something at has a rotary encoder to handle the speed issues. Some R/C airplane controls have this to set trim or stabilizers.

Unfortunately it won't solve the problem of the ever changing position of the slider when you change to a different locomotive in the CAB3 app. What i really need to do is developing a way for the software to find the current position of the slider and recenter the zero position of the joystick or rotary wheel so that it will begin movement up or down from that point.  This little piece will take a lot of work vs. the standard button mapping and simulate fixed finger swipes that has been done up to now. If Lionel adds a simple + & - above and below the slider to increase or decrease the speed in single step increments... problem solved!

@H1000 posted:

Unfortunately it won't solve the problem of the ever changing position of the slider when you change to a different locomotive in the CAB3 app.

I’m not sure why it wouldn’t work.  Rotary encoders spin infinitely.  It won’t matter where the on screen slider is when you bring a new engine up, clockwise increases speed, counterclockwise decreases speed.

That's tricky business. You would have trains rocketing off on you if I'm understanding correctly. I know the goal was to keep it simple. I'm just throwing out some ideas to try to spark some solutions. It sure would be nice if Lionel already had this stuff in the works in the background. I wonder if we'll get any sort of announcement with the next catalog. I'm doubtful but let's hope we get lucky I guess.

I also assumed the Lionchief app would go away once CAB3 comes out.

@rplst8 posted:

I’m not sure why it wouldn’t work.  Rotary encoders spin infinitely.  It won’t matter where the on screen slider is when you bring a new engine up, clockwise increases speed, counterclockwise decreases speed.

The rotary encoder needs to simulate a finger touch on the screen. So when you increase the wheel clockwise where is the start point for the simulated finger touch? If I use a fixed starting point at the bottom of the slider, a moving engine will come to a complete stop and start over from the slowest speed. The software will need to locate the always changing speed slider position on the y axis and make that the starting point for the rotary encoder or joystick. It sounds simple in theory but it's going to take a lot of coding to make this work right.

The latest versions of the Lionchief app and it's sloppy implementation of Bluetooth on smart devices has derailed most of the work. Since Lionchief version 2.5.05 the Bluetooth communication and support for older devices got real messy. (FYI, those who want to a stable version of the app for older android devices, download version 2.4.48a and don't update.) I'm reluctant to continue working with the Lionchief app while it will most likely go belly up when CAB3 comes out... that's where I'd like to focus my effort.

I think I understand now.  The software doesn’t accept increment and decrement commands as input.  It takes finger position on the screen.

Yeah that is a tough one.

There is a device I know of called a motorized fader.  They are used on digital audio mixing consoles.  When a “page” is recalled on the surface, all of the faders snap to the stored position. Something like that could be used.

However, reloading the position of the fader requires commanding it to so from a known stored state.  When an engine is recalled on the app, you’d still need to know the onscreen position of the throttle.

The long and the short of it is, probably Lionel would have to be the one to at least supply some sort of software interface so that these add-on's could work properly.

If you have Protosound 3 equipped locomotives, you could use DCC.  Digitrax, NCE, and other DCC suppliers still appear to be producing hand held remotes.  Neither ideal nor inexpensive, but it works.

@IC EC posted:

If you have Protosound 3 equipped locomotives, you could use DCC.  Digitrax, NCE, and other DCC suppliers still appear to be producing hand held remotes.  Neither ideal nor inexpensive, but it works.

This keeps coming up, but the same old problem still exists.  DCC and DCS/Legacy/TMCC do NOT coexist on the same tracks, you have to run one or the other.  So, unless you're going to stick to all PS/3 or you're content to run one locomotive on your layout at a time, this is a non-starter.