No one says you can;t have a second cheap access point in the railroad room, using a different SSID, just to run trains.The only requirement is that it supports one of the wifi protocols that the phones support. This would connect directly to the JMRI computer, not to your home network.
Where things are mounted makes a huge difference. The ground plane of a typical wireless router it the base of the device. With the antennas sticking up, signals below that plane will be severely attenuated. That's where people get it wrong witht he Digitrax radio bases, too. Oh it's a radio, need to put it up high. Well, the circuit board on this is the ground plane, and the antenna (on the Simplex one anyway) is the two little wires that stick up. If you mount the device right side up, above head height, when most people hold their throttle down at their waist they are well below the ground plane and getting a very reduced signal. If you mount them up high - turn it upside down so the radiation path is towards the throttles not away from them.
In a larger house, or one with lots of metal walls, you can get wifi repeaters to extend the coverage. I have decent coverage throughout my house and extending to the back porch, so I probably don't need one. It gets a little weak in the basement, below the router, so when the layout gets underway I may have to put a repeater down there.
Also, the 900Mhz of the simplex has better wall penetrating power than the 2.4GHz of the duplex and wifi which has better wall penetrating power than the newer 5.8GHz wifi. Remember the old cordless phones, with the long antenna to extend? They could go MUCH furhter from the base than the newer 2.4 and 5.6GHz models - it's just that with the higher frequencies come shorter wavelengths and the antennas could be completely internal. Back in college, a friend and I got a plain old cordless phone to work from his dorm in one corner of the campus to a building diagnonally opposite, almost as far as you could go and still be on campus. Without high gain directional antennas, that would never work with 2.4GHz wifi.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Here's a good free app for checking wifi signal strength and signal/noise ratio www.netspotapp.com. Installed on a laptop you can wander around your house and see where the weakspots are, where best to install routers and add extenders.
Interesting that several of you get better connecvtivity with WiFi than with the wireless throttles from DCC manufacturers.
Personally, I'm not a big fan if WiFi. I've had all kinds of WiFi issues in my home, I believe, at least partially, if not wholly, because of the way the house is built vereses where the router has to go. However, since upgrading the speed to 75Mbps (I'm typically getting 90 to 100Mbps) and relocating the router to a more central location, connectivity issues have pretty much dissapeared. So maybe this is now the way to go. I really like what I see on the Engine Driver app. Hopefully I can get this up & running this week.
Ed,
Connectivity via JMRI/Wi-Fi is better at our club than either Simplex or Duplex throttles.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
My sister went through a phase where she was upgrading her Kindle Fire tablets every few months. As a result, several were passed along to me and after several months of collecting dust I decided to try the Engine Driver app and link two of them to my JMRI interface.
I was extremely pleased with using them as a throttle. I think one is a 9" screen and just a bit too big but the 7" is nearly ideal. I have a case for it that folds into a handy wrist strap. I'd like to find some kind of neck strap for it so when I need two hands free I can let it hang around my neck. Sometimes there isn't a convenient place to set it down.
One big advantage is that if your Decoder Pro roster is set up properly all your locos are listed and easy to select and as Arto points out all your function labels are tagged with the proper names for the functions! I never edited any of the function names, just used the defaults that came up but thanks for the link, Stevert, now I know where to look if I want to modify them
I actually get better connectivity with the Wi-Fi/network/Fire than I do with the duplex Digitrax throttles!
Neat Stuff!
Ed
I haven't relabeled any of mine, but yes, I believe you can do that. If I'm not mistaken, you do it in the loco's entry in DecoderPro.
Yup, found it. Here you go:
http://jmri.org/help/en/manual/DecoderPro3/Adv_FunctionLabel.shtml
When you have JMRI questions like this, try the "Search JMRI" function on any of the JMRI Web pages. It invokes a Google search of the site that usually works pretty well. If you don't get the right results on the first try, just alter your search terms a little and try again.
EXCELLENT!!
The Engine Driver app has a couple features that make doing what I want to do very easy - like dedicate a "button" for F26 for crew sounds. Maybe I can label it as such too?
Arto,
You are correct, when JMRI is set up properly, it will "advertise" itself on your home network. When you install Engine Driver on your Android phone, as long as your phone is also on your home network it will "look for" that advertisement and make the connection.
You can control your layout using both LocoNet-based "hardware" throttles such as your DT402D and "software" (JMRI) throttles at the same time. After all, by virtue of your PR3, JMRI in this application is really just another (very smart) throttle plugged into the LocoNet.
I have a similar setup, and use both types of throttles all the time. Works great!
More info here:
http://jmri.org/help/en/package/jmri/jmrit/withrottle/UserInterface.shtml
My current setup uses Digitrax. I use the DT402D throttle to run two trains on two mainlines. I want to use a third throttle to control advanced sounds (F26) on a third throttle for a loco sitting on a siding. I can get it to work using only the DT402D but its kind of a clumsy process to get it all working.
As I understand it (so far), it appears that if I use my android cell phone as a throttle with JMRI, my cell phone (throttle) will be connected to JMRI via my WiFi home network. I have a Digitrax PR3 USB interface to a PC.
Can I use my cell phone as a throttle with JMRI/PC to control the third loco and still use the Digitrax DT402D/LocoNet to control the other two trains all at the same time, or do all the locos have to run either with Digitrax LocoNet, or JMRI exclusively?