More Download questions

[Ken Z]

Jeff brought over his Hand Held tonight so we could load sound files.  When I start up my RaiPro Assistant, it shows the USB connected to the Hand Held even though we have not connected it.  It will not download, when we try it says cannot connect.  I have tried restarting the computer, restarting RailPro Assistant, shutting off and on the hand held.  My Hand held is not turned on.  My Assistant is on the 3.20 revision and both handhelds are at the current software revision.  This is slowing us up, we have trains to run!  any ideas?

Ken Zieska

[G8B4Life]

Ken, when you say the handheld was not connected you mean it wasn't physically connected to the PC by the USB cable but RPA said it connected was correct?

Is this the first time you've run RailPro Assistant or has RailPro Assistant worked before without this problem? (this is important)

From your description it sounds like there is a conflict that is fooling RPA into thinking that the handheld is connected. This is an issue I am investigating as it has happened to others here as well. I will say that this is not likely an RE fault, there is a lot of badly written device drivers out there that cause all sorts of problems; this type of thing happens to other device manufacturers as well

If this is the case what we have to find is what device driver is causing the problem. This unfortunately is not a simple 5 minute process.

- Tim

[Ken Z]

Tim,
I had this issue prior so I printed out the pages of the manual so I could follow them carefully.  I hope I don't lose my "guy card" for reading the instructions like that.  When I bought the RailPro system, I used a CI-1 to load sounds because that was the first thing I had.  When I received my HC-2, I ran into this problem but the engines worked fine and did not investigate.  When Jeff first got his LM-3s units, we had a similar problem and used the CI-1 to load sounds.  Last weekend I went down with the instructions I printed out and was able to download from the computer to the handheld.  Jeff brought his Hand Held and engines tonight and we ran into the connection problem trying to get the sounds on the handheld.  The engine already had the sound because I had loaded it last week with the CI-1.  Because I have been doing this on a Digitrax layout that has JMRI on it, tomorrow I am going to set up a small test track and power it with an MRC power pack to get just DC and try again.  This way, I will not have the JMRI interface started on the computer at all, perhaps they cause the driver issue.  Tonight I did a computer restart but did not do a full off and restart.  Perhaps that left some residual glitch in place. 
Beyond this issue, the RailPro engine worked well, did all of the switching chores required, I had good reception and was able to operated the locomotive while moving around.  There were both RailPro and DCC engines operating across the layout all evening.   
Additional notes:  We both noticed on different units that the battery charge indication does not update after charging unless you reset the HC-2.  Then it show a full charge.  This is not an issue for us, just a note.
I had an issue loading sounds from the HC-2 to the engine.  I moved another engine that was right next to the unit being updated and the problem went away.  There may have been other factors however it seems having an isolated download track cannot be wrong.  I have two units with RailPro installed and another on the workbench, Jeff has three also so the system will be pushed a bit.  Are you aware of any limitation to the number of RailPro engines that can be operated at the same time? 
Thanks for your input, I will update tomorrow after I do the test track. 
Ken Zieska

[G8B4Life]

Now this gets very interesting! more details so more questions.

You say that you used the CI-1 (with HC Simulator) and that previously worked correct? Does it still work?

Do you have a HC-2 or HC-2b? (the HC-2b does not have a separate DC charging port)

When you ran RailPro Assistant did you have HC Simulator running at the same time? You cannot have HC Simulator running and have a handheld plugged in at the same time when trying to use RailPro Assistant.

You say you have successfully downloaded to the handheld before correct?

You mentioned DigiTrax and JMRI, do you have a RR Cirkits LocoBuffer hooked up at all? If you do and you have the older HC-2 then this is possibly the cause of the problem.

The battery charge indicator not updating I believe has been discussed here before. Perhaps someone who can remember when can chime in on that one.

You won't be stressing RailPro at all with 6 locomotives running, the limit of locomotives in motion per handheld is 24.

- Tim

[William Brillinger]

Regarding the Battery indicator, your fully charged indication after a reset is probably an illusion.

Here is a thread on the subject: https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,25

Since I use the CI-1 for loading files, I don't generally worry about charging my HC's until the power indicator is in the red.

[Ken Z]

Now this gets very interesting! more details so more questions.

You say that you used the CI-1 (with HC Simulator) and that previously worked correct? Does it still work?  It works to get sounds to the engine don't the sounds also have to be on the hand held to show up on the display panel?

Do you have a HC-2 or HC-2b? (the HC-2b does not have a separate DC charging port)         HC-2

When you ran RailPro Assistant did you have HC Simulator running at the same time? You cannot have HC Simulator running and have a handheld plugged in at the same time when trying to use RailPro Assistant.          Not with the latest experience

You say you have successfully downloaded to the handheld before correct?     Yes

You mentioned DigiTrax and JMRI, do you have a RR Cirkits LocoBuffer hooked up at all? If you do and you have the older HC-2 then this is possibly the cause of the problem.   Yes, I have the LocoBuffer

The battery charge indicator not updating I believe has been discussed here before. Perhaps someone who can remember when can chime in on that one.   Thanks for the reference to the battery display


My HC-2 is all charged up and I have a note out to Jeff to see if I can meet him and borrow his HC-2 so I can do more work.  Interesting comment about having 20 engines running with one control.  Only one engine could be "controlled" at a time?  You would go back and reselect the engine you want to change while the others run?  That is interesting, is is also fine to have 6 HC-2's running separate trains at the same time?  There would be no radio interference?  I can see there are features far beyond what I am aware of now. 

Ken

[nodcc4me]

"It works to get sounds to the engine don't the sounds also have to be on the hand held to show up on the display panel?"
They do not have to be on the HC. If you tried to put all the sounds on there you would run out of memory space.

"Only one engine could be "controlled" at a time?  You would go back and reselect the engine you want to change while the others run?  That is interesting, is it also fine to have 6 HC-2's running separate trains at the same time?  There would be no radio interference? "
You can bring up only one engine at a time on the screen and switch back and forth for multiple engines. However, you could theoretically have up to 24 running at the same time from one controller. You could also have as many HCs in use as you need. They would not interfere with each other. In this case, just make sure passwords are set up to prevent someone from taking control of someone else's engine. So far, I have had four trains running at one time on my somewhat small layout. Some of them had consisted engines. That was more than enough for me.  

[William Brillinger]

Do you have a HC-2 or HC-2b? (the HC-2b does not have a separate DC charging port)         HC-2

Ken, you have an HC-2B

HC-2B has a blue label, HC-2 has a grey label.

[G8B4Life]

Ken, I'd like to you run RailPro Assistant with the LocoBuffer (and hand held) disconnected and see if RailPro Assistant thinks the handheld is connected or not. If it correctly indicates that the handheld is not connected plug the hand held in and see if if you can download etc. If this doesn't work we'll move along to the next step.

To address the other things your raised:

Sound files, light effects, pictures etc all reside on the locomotive module. They are copied to the hand held (or HC Sim) initially so you can copy them to the locomotive module. They do not need to reside on the handheld controller to work. In fact once you no longer need them to copy to locomotive modules you will probably want to delete them from the hand held to free up space.

Al has summed up the number of locomotives controlled nicely. 24 total per controller (handheld or CI-1) at the same time.

- Tim

[gcarter1945]

I once had similar problems with downloading and erroneous notification of connection on my Digitrax DCC/JMRI/Locobuffer layout.  Once I disconnected the LocoBuffer, everything worked fine after that.