It has been a while since I reported on our progress.? We have had a number of items we had to overcome to connect more throttles.
We did manage to get our two WLANmaus throttles to connect to the YD7001, and I enabled an additional set of cell phones to use Engine Driver (Android) and WiThrottle (iPhone).? Plus we got another one of our UWT-100s working properly with the YD7001 (see Tip below).
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Karst also suggested we turn off the internal YD7001 WiFi to provide additional?resources to the LAN connected throttles using WiThrottle.
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Tests done? September 5
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Test 1 - Internal WiFi off on YD7001, all throttles?connected through router and LAN port on YD7001
- Connected 15 throttles, but very unstable?with throttles receiving connection lost messages.? Only 4 of the throttles were actively?doing anything with a loco
- Backed off to 10 throttles and connections stabilized, again with 4 active throttles
- Unclear if the router or the YD7001 was severing the connections,?and decided to try another router.
Test 2 -. Internal WiFi off, all throttles?connected through a replacement router and LAN port on YD7001
- Connected 15 throttles, all connections stable with no disconnect messages. Note that only 4 of the throttles were actively?doing anything with a loco.? We added activity on another 4 throttles managing locos, but doing simple things like sounding the horn and bell.
- Based on what we had accomplished, we decided we will give this set up a test on our next operations night.
Tips -Things Learned
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- LAN LED behaviour.?? It is very similar to what you would observe on a PC LAN adapter.? If it?is off you do not have?a connection to the LAN. If it is on solid, you have a connection but there is no activity on the YD7001 LAN adapter.? If it is flashing on and?off, that means that there is traffic from throttles connected to the WiFi/Lan and they are activity sending commands for the command station to handle.
- All routers are not equal.? We found that even modern home routers have wireless connection limits after which they become unstable, and as you add more connections, older connections are forced off.?
- UWT-100 throttles.? At this point I would not update the firmware beyond 3.0.1.?? One throttle UWT-100 was back on firmware level 2.4 and could not operate with the YD7001, so we used the TCS Depot tool to update the firmware.? After doing this it could not acquire a loco when connected to the YD7001, but could acquire a loco through our LNWIs.? We determined the firmware had somehow been updated to 3.2, when our other throttles were at 3.0.1. So we downgraded the throttle to 3.0.1 and it could then acquire locos when connected to the YD7001.? This observation has been reported to TCS. Note, firmware level 3.2 does not appear on the list of firmware releases for UWT-100s on the TCS site.
Once I digest the results from our first operations night I will post again.
Jay Lennox - Toronto
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