Successful Proof of Concept - Controlling LionChief locomotives via CAB Remote

Once Lionel sees this, I am sure they will have questions   Sell it to them!

Great problem to have. Congratulations on the work. I suggest you first consult a patent, and trademark lawyers. You have likely created a nightmare for Lionel. I hope you talk to the folks at 3rd Rail division of Sunset models. They may have insight on how to proceed. 

@OGR CEO-PUBLISHER posted:

Once Lionel sees this, I am sure they will have questions   Sell it to them!

I have a feeling that if this is something they wanted, they would have done it already themselves... but ya never know.

@C&Osteam posted:

Great problem to have. Congratulations on the work. I suggest you first consult a patent, and trademark lawyers. You have likely created a nightmare for Lionel.

There is nothing patentable at play here that I am aware of. As for trademarks, I'm not marketing anything, and if I were, I'm not marketing as their product or trying to be maliciously confused for their product, simply that it works with their products. 

@C&Osteam posted:

I hope you talk to the folks at 3rd Rail division of Sunset models. They may have insight on how to proceed. 

 I don't know them and they don't know me - I guess an introduction may not hurt if someone is willing?

Its amazing how so many members on this forum, can "do Lionel" better than Lionel.

Nice work bmoran. Way outta my league, thats for sure!

@bmoran4 posted:

I have a feeling that if this is something they wanted, they would have done it already themselves... but ya never know.

Nice work indeed!  While like you said, you never know what Lionel is working on, it may be worth an inquiry to see if they have any desire to buy it.  Although truth be told, when any idea is submitted lately you get the "legal" email saying "we don't accept suggestions".  I think you'd really have to talk to a human there if you want to involve them.  Otherwise depending on the investment, it maybe worth just going it alone or find some investors.

Interesting and commendable technical achievement! Now the question is: what practical purpose does it serve? TMCC/Legacy and LionChief use fundamentally different RF connectivity technology, but this is not the key question here. A seasoned TMCC/Legacy user might feel more at home using the CAB2 to control a LionChief engine as opposed to using the LionChief controller, but is this enough rationale?

@BOB WALKER posted:

Interesting and commendable technical achievement! Now the question is: what practical purpose does it serve? TMCC/Legacy and LionChief use fundamentally different RF connectivity technology, but this is not the key question here. A seasoned TMCC/Legacy user might feel more at home using the CAB2 to control a LionChief engine as opposed to using the LionChief controller, but is this enough rationale?

Many operators here said they would by LC and LC+ engines if they could use Cab2.  The wrench thrown in by Lionel is now with LC+2.0 that is no longer and issue.  That being said there are still a lot of LC and LC+ engines out there to buy.

This is pretty awesome. I would love to know how to get into this sort of thing. 

Isn't this more or less how Train America Studios got started? I remember going to their hobby shop as a kid. I had no idea what was going on but I wish I would have been older so I could have learned. This stuff fascinates me and I think it's so useful.  

Nice project.  Can you still control TMCC/Legacy engines with your board attached, or is the signal modified so much a Legacy engine will no longer respond?  

@CAPPilot, no modifications necessary to any Lionel equipment or locomotives at all. It all functions the same so you can control other TMCC/Legacy locomotives at the same time. You can even control multiple LC locomotives concurrently as well.

Pretty impressive! Does the Cab2 communicate directly to hardware you built or do you still need a Legacy base?

Pete

@Norton, I can't imagine a common scenario where one would have a CAB and not a base‽

I was just curious where you were intercepting the signal.

Pete

Very interesting, good job!   Maybe consider sharing what you learned with @Ryaninspiron

See also this topic (if you haven't already!)

@Ted S, we had been in contact, but it didn't really go anywhere.

@Ted S posted:

Very interesting, good job!   Maybe consider sharing what you learned with @Ryaninspiron

See also this topic (if you haven't already!)

Thanks for mentioning this @Ted S, After all that I had been though with regards to that virus it seems me and @bmoran4's conversations got a bit derailed. So many things have happened since then such as me eventually getting hold of a legacy system myself and then resuming work on my LC gateway project that culminated in my Cab2 LionChief control video going on YouTube at the end of May (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ujb8xEGKEk) that we somehow missed out on resuming our conversation. I am currently reengaging now. As you see Ted, me and bmoran4 seem to have a lot in common.

Are you sure there wasn't somebody behind the wall with an LC remote ?   Just kidding - that's impressive work.

Maybe you and GRJ should team up and form a company selling signal boosters and LC accessories. 

I already have a Universal Remote (and of course LC+ locos come with their own.)  But I do like the idea of "one remote to rule them all."  I prefer the tactile feedback of the "big red knob" on the Cab-2 with its subtle detents, and the bar graph showing commanded speed.  If this isn't too expensive or difficult to do, I'm in!

Congratulations on your success. Put me down for a million.  Ooops, I meant one.  I'd gather no one needs more than one per layout?  I wouldn't quit your day job.  For one thing, you're a young guy and this hobby isn't likely to be growing much over your work lifetime.  Part-time work for you and Ryan doing contract consulting for Lionel?  You won't know unless you ask.  Probably the most sensible approach, and one that doesn't need you to develop skills in finance, legal, marketing, etc. which would be reinventing the wheel and not the fun part of this for a technophile such as you or Ryan.  More importantly, no need for capital investment and talking with banks, angels, venture capitalists/private equity, none of whom are likely going to be fascinated the way we are.

The people to talk with about coming up with such a product and marketing it are the following.  Train America was Mike Reagan's baby and Bob Krivacic developed the product for TMCC retrofits.  Jon Zahornacky developed ERR and worked as CTO for Lionel.  If you can get hold of one of these folks they could give you advice based upon experience in developing technology for this industry. If it were me, unless I yearned to be in business for myself, I'd definitely try to work with Lionel first.  That said, Lionel hasn't shown much interest in modifying previously sold products with aftermarket devices. ERR was one example that they wanted to ditch. Look forward to hearing more of what you folks come up with. 

The use of the CAB2 to run LC trains seems to have a great deal of appeal. It seems to fly in the face of newer approaches like smart device apps which are quite popular as well. Also, I cannot forget one of the last comments Lionel made in one of its recent youtube presentations: "we are looking into voice control". (Has anyone ever operated that StarWars BB-8?)

The voice control is expected to be a component of the LionChief application extending the voice recognition capabilities of the smart devices ecosystem. Technologically, it isn't anything substantial or difficult in this day in age. I'm not sure how practical it really will be, but it definitely is an attention getter. It will probably work better than this too:

Ryan, kudos to you too. Looks like you guys are working along parallel paths.

One thing you mentioned that surprised me is that when you get your Legacy system upgraded you expect that Lionchief engines will be able to be lashed up with legacy engines. I wouldn't have expected them to be both capable of the same number of speed steps.

Pete

The newer LC 2 locomotives with TMCC will be the easiest, but also not all that interesting to lash up as you would just simply do that with TMCC.

As for the remaining LC family, there is a lot to consider. The newer releases of LC have 32 speed steps (depending on how you count), where as the earlier releases only have 16 if I recall correctly. Note that the 32 speed steps match in number the TMCC speed steps. It isn't apparent that these 32 speed steps are all the same between LC locomotives and if that is also the same with TMCC out of the box. However, there may be ways to compensate for any differences in hardware and/or software. This isn't an area of immediate focus of mine at the moment.

Very impressive functionality.   It would surely increase Legacy users interest in adding Lionchief engines to their rosters.

Is your product is a combination of hardware and software, based on a microprocessor platform? Is the hardware off the shelf or did you need to assemble components or hobble together different boards?

 If you can offer it as a plug and play product, it is reasonably marketable.   If it is offered as a component kit,  your market may be rather small.   Gunrunner John's products are good examples.   His projects that are offered as kits seem to have a relatively small following.  Indeed, in some cases, he only offers board Gerber files since there is not enough interest to package kits.  At the other end of the spectrum, his passenger car lighting modules are already built up and require a minimum of skill to install.  I presume these sell quite well.  (If I am way off base on this, I hope GRJ will correct me).  Also he can sell one unit for every passenger car, whereas your product will sell one unit per layout.

Years ago, I designed several software utilities that were add-ons to a medical software application that I used in my office.  They filled gaps that were not addressed by the application.   I marketed one of them, but it was only purchased by a small number of users.   That was probably a blessing, since I was not interested in supporting a lot of customers.  Ultimately, the vendor of the application agreed to market and support my product.  Later, they integrated a similar utility in their product and retired my utility.  I had no regrets.  The utilities were useful in my office.  I had no interest in the work required to make a business out of it.

Collaboration with Lionel would likely be your easiest path.   At the very least, get their blessing so you are not entangled in legal conflicts.

Bob

I'll go out on a limb and state that Lionel no doubt could do what I have done here no problem if they so choose. The idea isn't the rocket science and there isn't anything technologically magical about what was demonstrated besides the effort of learning the LC protocol, which Lionel already knows! It could be that they correctly (or incorrectly) determined that there isn't enough demand for say a $70 PDI unit or similar...

@Norton posted:

Ryan, kudos to you too. Looks like you guys are working along parallel paths.

One thing you mentioned that surprised me is that when you get your Legacy system upgraded you expect that Lionchief engines will be able to be lashed up with legacy engines. I wouldn't have expected them to be both capable of the same number of speed steps.

Pete

 

Thank you, and yes indeed, I since that video I did get the system upgraded, but now that you mention it I haven't tried the lashup yet. As Bmoran as saying in his reply the 32 speed steps for LC match up well with TMCC, but converting form 128 steps in legacy should not be that big of a deal,one option is to continually have the board bump the speed up and down a notch to simulate the missing in between speed steps. At this moment the big delay for that on my project is implementing legacy protocol on my board which is currently configured for TMCC formatted data.

I have been dedicating my time lately to reverse engineering the IR system to add sensor track capability to LionChief LCs. Basically a from scratch remake of the discontinued sensor car.

After that I am working on making Amazon's Echo(Alexa) into a yardmaster that I can use to do voice request switch changes. (Planning on posting a thread and youtube for my channel on that soon). Here is a video from two years ago when I interfaced an Amazon Echo(Alexa) with my car's stereo and internal computer system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGVFmaB8YEI

That is something that I could use!

A few years ago I designed and built a system for running two trains on the same loop using track-side IR detectors which controlled track voltage at various track segments. The engines were, of course, conventionally powered. An interesting project would be to have the IR detectors communicate with a LionChief universal controller and run two LC trains at the same time on the loop. I believe that this can be currently accomplished manually with the universal controller.