Help with DCC4PC Railcom Reader with RocRail

[lyneux]

Hi,

I'm trying to use the DCC4PC Railcom Reader with Rocrail via the TAMS RC-Link compatibility mode and failing miserably!

Here is the setup:
Lenz LZV100 - v3.6 (I checked to ensure that the Railcom cutout was set propoerly).
DCC4PC Railcom Reader - Set to address 1 (rather than the default of 0, as per the manual).
DCC4PC Railcom Computer interface - Firmware updated to 1.4 (TAMS RC-Link compatibility mode).
1 single track section wired in to J1 of the Railcom Reader.
Loksound V4 equipped loco.

I have added the controller as per specified on the wiki. I have the following questions:

1) I'm not sure what to put in the sensors configuration part of the controller screen (see attached screenshot) - the wiki doesn't seem to give help with this?
2) Once I power on, I see continuous scrolling in the server trace of: "detector XX out of range". This is a lot of noise. Is it telling me anything useful? Can I switch it off as it seems to make the interface unresponsive?
3) In the controller trace I see something more encouraging: "00:13:11 detector [YY] reported address [00000] state [off] direction [fwd]" where YY loops from 1 to 24. However, when placing the loco on the track I never see this change to report the address (it stays at 0000).
4) How do I set up and address the 16 sensors? Again I couldn't find anything on the wiki to talk about addressing the sensors from the DCC4PC board via RC-Link.

Any help with the above very gratefully received!

Guy

[rjversluis]

Hello Guy,

you only have to setup the communication:
http://wiki.rocrail.net/doku.php?id=tam ... tion_setup

This is a general setup dialog used for many other command stations.
Only the fields documented in the Wiki are of interest.

And you have to provide your files for any further help:
http://wiki.rocrail.net/doku.php?id=issue-en

The 0xFC, address report, contains as second byte the reader number wich must be between 1 and 24.

[lyneux]

Thanks Rob. I'll post them when I'm back home tomorrow.

Guy

[lyneux]

Hi Rob. Files below.

issue.zip

(18.46 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

I upgraded to the latest version of Rocrail but now I have an additional problem. Rocrail freezes until I unplug the DCC4PC computer interface. So the trace you see in the file above - the last few events is me disconnecting the USB device in order to unfreeze the user interface so that I can create an issue from the help menu.

Guy

[rjversluis]

Hi Guy,

try 12.547+ and report. (Please activate BYTE and INFO Tracelevel too.)

But how many detectors do you have?
The Protocol only support a range from 1 to 239.

[rjversluis]

Hi Guy,

you tested with a Revision of Rocrail in which nothing has been changed in the RCLink library.
This revision only supports a range of 1 to 24, DCC4PC reports over 239 detectors within a very small time slice which hangs up the USB device driver under macOS, and this has nothing to do with Rocrail.
Your Mac will also freeze if Rocrail does not run and a USB device driver gets a buffer overflow.

See: http://wiki.rocrail.net/doku.php?id=cma ... e_shooting

[lyneux]

Hi Rob,

I have a single DCC4PC Railcom Reader board (this has 16 detectors). I don't really know how these are addressed? That was one of my original questions.

Regarding the Mac: it is not the OS that is freezing but just the Rocview application. The mouse is still responsive (and I can use other applications). It is just Rocview that freezes and gives me the spinning pinwheel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_pinwheel).

I will activate BYTE and INFO Tracelevel and report back again.

Thanks for your continued help with this!

Guy

[rjversluis]

Hi Guy,

just disable the Trace Windows in Rocview; The OS cannot handle so many Warnings.
DCC4PC does not confirm to the Tams RCLink Protocol.

Try this:
http://wiki.rocrail.net/doku.php?id=faq-en#rocview

[lyneux]

OK, just updated to the latest Rocrail build (12553), turned off monitoring in Rocview and enabled INFO and BYTE Tracelevel. The result is that the user interface responds better! Please see the attached files.

issue.zip

(19.87 KiB) Downloaded 2 times

I have been looking for a report from detector 1, but it seems to be missing! What I did see was this:

20170814.221710.411 r9999B rclinkre ORcLink 0331 detector [5648] already reported address 0

I don't know if it's relevant but 5648 is the address of the loco in the first detector. Is it possible that the logging has switched the detector number with the address?

Guy

[smitt48]

Hi Guy,

Are you sure you need BYTE level, that is normally used for extensive error checking. Normal would be INFO and AUTOMATIC.

Maybe Rob, will say something about it.
http://wiki.rocrail.net/doku.php?id=roc ... ce-en#byte

Tom

[lyneux]

Hi Tom. I only enabled BYTE because Rob asked me to yesterday (see above): "try 12.547+ and report. (Please activate BYTE and INFO Tracelevel too.)"

Anyway.... a bit more playing around tonight and I think that I now have a successful set-up. I added a sensor with address 1 and attached it to a block. Now when I place a Railcom-enabled loco on the block it automatically get it assigned to the block. When I place a non-railcom-enabled loco on the block, the sensor is triggered as per e.g. LDT RS-8.

So I think that apart from the possible small bug in the trace that reports the loco address as the detector number (mentioned above) everything is working properly.

Is there a smarter way to see what a sensor is reporting? At the moment, the only way I can do this is to hover the mouse over the sensor on the trackplan and I get a mouse tool-tip with the Railcom data (see attached screenshot), but this is not always reliable.

Thanks Rob for your help with this!

Guy

[RainerK]

Hi Guy,

...Is there a smarter way to see what a sensor is reporting? ...

You can try this with the Sensor monitor.
Another way the Trace filter may be.

[rjversluis]

Hi Guy,

20170814.221710.411 r9999B rclinkre ORcLink 0331 detector [5648] already reported address 0

I don't know if it's relevant but 5648 is the address of the loco in the first detector. Is it possible that the logging has switched the detector number with the address?

I corrected this wrong formatted trace line in 12.556.

BTW: You can switch off BYTE trace level.

[Dennis Cherry]

I have a new version of the DCC4PC Reader Firmware for TAMS-RC, it is Version 1.5, it works a lot better. Works with Rocrail. aiTrän and Railroad & Co.
JMRI you still need V1.3 for that.

Can post a copy if you want.

Dennis In Tennessee

[lyneux]

Ok, next problem!

Added a second DCC4PC reader board. Assigned it address 2. Updated the computer interface to v1.5 (thanks for the heads-up Dennis!). I would expect the 16 sensors to be addressable as sensors 17-32.

Added a loco and started up Rocrail... nothing. Checked the sensor monitor... none of the 239 sensors provided by the dcc4pc interface in tams emulation mode are showing as being 'on'.

I suspected a bad board so I re-assigned it address 1 just to check. When I did this, I found that the board behaved normally.

So it feels like a problem with the emulation firmware...?

Guy