I have mine and have been messing around with it and testing it. On my desktop it works great....basically exactly like a HC-2. The only difference is the speed control....it is controlled by the mouse wheel in the middle, which is not as accurate as the Railpro knob. Therefore you can't get the speed to move by 0.1%, but rather 1.0% at a time.
Loading sounds to the simulated controller is much faster. Downloading from RE still takes a while, but loading from the computer to the sim HC is very quick. The storage space assigned to it is the same as the HC-2. It seems like it could be arbitrarily set that way....I don't see a reason why it couldn't be increased to whatever you needed.
The range on the CI-1 is less than the HC but still good. I can discover, load, and control trains from the desktop which is ~30 ft away through 3 walls. If you are using the CI-1 to control trains in a large layout room you can use a long USB extension cord to place the CI-1 in a central location that can reach everywhere. It also works with Railpro repeaters, the same as the HC so if you have Railpro power supplies then the signal is repeated through those.
The only issue I have had is that I can't get the CI-1 and the HC Simulator to recognize each other on my laptop. Windows 10, USB 3.0. CI-1 is recognized by the USB and installs fine, as does the separate HC Simulator program. However the HC program says that no CI-1 is present. I've reinstalled the drivers on all my USB ports and controllers, as well as uninstalled and reinstalled both the CI-1 and HC Sim many times. I still can't get them to connect to each other. I believe it's a Windows or USB problem but I'm having a hard time pinning it down. Any ideas on another strategy I could try out here? Once I get the laptop issue resolved I'll make and post a video.
-Kevin
