A few years back I had the opportunity to see the early designs of this DCS wifi system in operation on a very extensive O Gauge layout being built. (by our forum sponsor) It looked great and operated well, on a few visits to see the progress of the layout. Our train club had the opportunity to visit the layout as well on a bus trip and were impressed. Tablets were installed around the layout for operation over many miles of track and hand held units by the operators it worked great for controlling routes and turnouts etc.
I got the system installed the last couple of weeks on my layout then did the system upgrades that came out last week getting the last update done late Friday night despite having very limited tech computer skills this was a very steep learning curve, with lots of help from this forum and Barry's book got it done in time for my layout open house and DCS Wi Fi App demo Saturday.
I still need to spend more time with Barry's book and carefully examining the system but here is a bit of feedback from initial use by our club;
A few club members dropped by to take turns exploring the new system and trying it out to run trains. To keep things simple I had just a couple of main lines running and half dozen trains in operation with a Tablet with DCS and a couple of the hand held remotes. At one point 10 trains were running.
General views. The speedo is way too big and not really needing to be that big, we had a couple of times when trying to switch screens, that on the way swiping between screens the speed dial got bumped from about 20 mph to 100 mph and it was a real scramble with a train taking off like a rocket hearing a roar in a hidden part of the layout in the train room to find which train and bring it down to speed without a full speed rear ending crash or wiping out on the corners. I know you can set top speed limits on the engines but with a lot of engines I have not had time to go in and adjust them all yet. For this reason I think the regular controller with the slow roll up of speed with the thumb dial is much safer to prevent accidents. Perhaps it might be useful to have a feature on the app if possible to set a maximum speed rate for all engines with one setting as a safety feature.
The other most used feature for switching is the un-couple buttons so it was a problem and took time to look at the screen all the time instead of the train on the layout to flip between screens for uncoupling and reversing, speed control and horn/bell. I would prefer the speed dial a bit smaller or different design side to side to make it harder to get the train running too fast to allow the uncoupling buttons on the same screen as reverse and speed, bell, whistle the most used features. For switching for now the hand held remote is much more suitable can use it without looking at the controller and it easily works with one hand.
I do like having the large tablet screen to be able to more quickly see the soft key buttons much more visible for old eyes then the small remote screen and easier to use. But I do find myself spending more time looking at the screen on the tablet then with the remote to run trains. Much easier to find and select engines to run.
We are finding that sometimes it is hard to select a button on the tablet, when trying to buy the upgraded version for example it was next to impossible to get the bottom right button to open I did not think it was an option as I could not get it to open on the first few tries and some times with trying to move between screens it was difficult to get it to work, perhaps with experience this will improve knowing exactly how to hit the screen.
Overall the members were impressed with the new system for certain jobs the tablet with big images will be much more comfortable and add fun to the operations. Overall very impressed. Much more to explore on the system.
Will install a couple of more tablets to help with operations and allow more people to operate.
Looking forward to the high end upgrade for the app to run the turnouts routes etc.
