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Chris,
Thanks for asking these questions. I think this has been discussed before, but
it is always good to rehash this at least for the .trainheads! I think that
remote train operation and LDCC etc is very exciting but perhaps only for the
strong willed. I dabbled with it and have a ping pong also running.
I think your on to something here. In order to get signals to the "cab" of the
trolley (or any other engine) there needs to be DCC involved. I believe on the
"standard" DCC decoders (the part you put in the LEGO Motor) there are 2 extra
channels; one for lights and one for sound. I'm not sure if each channel has an
encoding scheme or not. It seems like it ought to, so the lights can be white or
red based on train direction. And it seems to make sense that you might be able
to control which sound is played; various chug rates, bells, horns...
I don't recall the final summery on DCC track side sensors with a data
back-channel. I do recall reading that the was someone working on the "reading"
the engine "DCC address". It looked a bit funny that the output of the RCX was
simply jumpered to the input, but it makes sense. What is really exciting about
this scheme is that logically you should be able to hook up 2^n (where n > ~8)
number of sensors to the track and have them all report back thru a single input
via an addressable scheme.
I have been a HUGE "nay sayer" about DCC for layouts at train shows. Nothing
bores people more then watching model trains running at scale speeds with the
proto pickup/delivery schedules... not that we (L-Gaugers) do much of this...
but put more then one train on one loop and you get a crash unless you are 100%
focused, which at a show I would argue that you're focusing on the wrong thing!
(of course IMHO) :)
[However] is LDCC offered the ability of having large numbers of inexpensive
track connected sensors, sign me up!!!!
SteveB
In lugnet.robotics.rcx, Christopher Masi wrote:
> OK, so I made a trolley go back and forth using NQC and my RCX. My
> wife's response to this was, "I that why you wanted a Mindstorms set?"
> Her tone implied that while whe thought it was cool, she also thought
> that I had just reached a new level of nuts. Anyway, the real reason for
> getting an RCX was not just to make a point to point trolley but also to
> dabble in LDCC. Truthfully, LDCC scars me a bit. MY trains are big, and
> I don't want to burn out my RCX, but I digress.
>
> I would like to improve my trolley. First, I would like the lights to
> stay on at the stations. Sencond, I would like to put my trolley poles
> back on. Since the trolley reverses direction, I took the trolley poles
> off because at least half of the time, the wrong pole would be in the up
> position. My thinking is that LDCC would allow the lights to stay on,
> and I could, theoretically, use a motor to raise and lower the trolley
> poles. Because I would like the trolley to remain automated, my big
> question is whether I can use LDCC and NQC at the same time. Since NQC
> and LDCC require different firmware on the RCX my initial thought is no,
> I cannot do that. I thought that Mark Riley said that the input ports
> are still active on an LDCC RCX, so I wonder how I could use those ports
> to control an LDCC'ed trolley.
>
> Thanks for anythoughts you might have on the matter!
> Chris
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