Scale MPH on the dcc hand controller!

[fmodelnut]

Gentlemen and ladies; I think it would be childs play for the manufactuers to put a magnetic pickup on or near the flywheels of the loco and display the scale speed on our dcc hand held controllers. The only drawback I can see is wheel spin.

The pickups could be retrofitted on existing locos, the decoders would have to be designed for speed functions. We wouldn't have to calculate the gear ratio, we would only have to input a distance travelled, like 2 feet or 4 feet , when the loco reaches a mark punch a button, when it reaches the next mark push the button again, then the decoder can calculate the gear ratio.

In leu of a magnectic pickup, we could just place a colored decal or sticker on the fly wheel which would read by a photo transistor pickup.

Any way fellas and ladies, please keep tossing this around so the manufactuers will see or hear this and get the ball rolling.

thanks for listening, Richard Stanley  "f-modelnut".

[tstage]

Richard,

Either Loksound or QSI has a built-in function in their sound decoders where if you press F10(?) you get an audible sMPH.   Unfortunately, you can't always make out what it is - even in a quiet room.

Tom

[Vail and Southwestern RR]

Not so easy in the current standard of DCC, since there isn't two-way communication from the decoder to the controller.

For myself, the added expense doesn't strike me as worth it, in any case.  Others could disagree.

 

[Texas Zepher]

fmodelnut

wheel spin ...  we would only have to input a distance travelled, like 2 feet or 4 feet , when the loco reaches a mark punch a button, when it reaches the next mark push the button again, then the decoder can calculate the gear ratio.

In leu of a magnectic pickup, we could just place a colored decal or sticker on the fly wheel which would read by a photo transistor pickup.

The first proposal is making it way too hard. The color spot on a fly wheel is much simpler and closer to how it is being done today.   The BLI sound stock cars use an axle that has black and white stripes.  By knowing the wheel is 33" and counting the stripes the decoder knows how fast the car is moving.  The "cows" get more excited and noisy as the train goes faster.     As was already pointed out the hard part is transmitting this information back to the command unit to be sent to the throttle for display to the engineer.  That would be included in the NMRA S-9.2 DCC Communications Standard.  

 I know a some operating session I attended I have had a controller that was displaying back to me the speed of the loco.  Didn't make that big of an impression on me, or I would be remembering more.

Any way fellas and ladies, please keep tossing this around so the manufactuers will see or hear this and get the ball rolling.

Not real high on my priority list.

[rrinker]

 QSI and MTH already have an option where the speed step is the speed in SMPH, so there's nothign to do once it's set up (I think MTH comes this way, QSI you have to set the mode and perhaps calibrate it since we're talking about a user-installed decoder that could be put in just about any loco). It's not too hard to calibrate a decoder that has start/mid/max or speed table support to do the same thing. Feedback is not required.

                             --Randy

[Hamltnblue]

My thought exactly.  The Atlas Gold loco's and Mth will run scale speed matching the speed step.  As noted earlier the QSI will even tell you verbally via a function key.

[gandydancer19]

This sounds like a newbe comment to me.  I'm not sure if many manufacturers would go for it.

What I did is set up a time / distance section on my layout and set my upper speed limit to the upper speed of the prototype locomotive.  So now when my controller is all the way up to speed step 28, the locomotive is going as fast as it can go prototypically.  So now if I am going at speed step 14, the loco is going about half speed.  Most of my locos are set up at 50 MPH top speed.

[Motley]

Anyone know how to use the MTH scale speed function? Is it audible like the QSI?

[rrinker]

I *THINK* it is just programmed in, speed step 1 is 1mph, speed step 10 is 10mph, etc.

Since they have the sensor on the motor output for feedback and since they know the gear ratio they put in the loco, I imagine there's not even any adjustment.

                             --Randy