Questions about Elink and Railmaster

[81F]

Having obtained elink and possibly more significantly Railmaster (I will probably use the latter through my elite), I have a couple of questions before I get started.

 

1. Once installed on a PC is it possible to uninstall it and reinstall it on another (I know some software will not allow this)

 

2.I see that an internet connection is reuired to set up Railmaster but do I need a permanent internet connection when I'm running the railway? (No WIFI or hard wire in the Railway Room) note I do not intend to use a tablet or phone;

 

3. If no to 2 above how much setting up do I need to do on line or is it just product registration, updte downloads etc?;

 

4. I notice that it is possible to attacha photo to the loco control. Are these standard Hornby products or can I upload my own photos (Ihave several non hornby locos and conversions);

 

 5.  Although all my points are electrically operated I've not joined them up to a lever frame yet so am thinking about operating them using DCC - what is the maximum number of points/acessory decoders it can cope with (There's probably around 30 points) Also can it cope with three-way points, single and double slips.

 

4. Some of my points a are wired together (I think the most is four) to give ixed routes through storage loops and to prevent conflicting point motor operations at 3 way points and single slips. Can a decoder cope with trowing up to four motors at once.

 

Many thanks,

 

Steve

[Chrissaf]

Answer 1) It is possible to do this. First you have to deactivate RM on the old PC (see pages 131 - 132 in RM manual). I believe that if you want to reactivate RM on a completely NEW different PC, you have to contact HRMS to have them clear your activation account on their servers (but not completely sure of this as I have never tried it). The reason being, is that I believe the activation server holds information relating to the PC that RM was originally installed on, trying to reactivate RM that has been re-installed on a NEW different PC throws up a mis-match in the server data.

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Someone (other forum member) who has reinstalled RM on a NEW PC for their own use can probably confirm this to be so or not.

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It has definitely been done though, as others here have documented it. What you can't do though, is reactivate on a NEW PC that is not yours. That is to say, selling on your RM key to someone else. When you reactivate on the NEW PC, the details you provide i.e name, e-mail, address etc are cross matched against the details you gave originally. These, of course, would be different to those of a new user.

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Answer 2) No you do not need a permanent Internet connection. Even if you did use a phone or a tablet. You would only need a 'Wi-fi' router in the room to facilitate communication between RM and the Hand-Held device. The 'Wi-fi' router itself would not need to be connected to the Internet for this function to work. This is proven to be the case, because this is the way some 'Exhibitors' use their own 'Wi-fi' router to facilitate communication between RM & HH devices when away from their home base at a show.

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Answer 3) Internet is just product installation to ensure latest version is installed. Product 'activation' - a one off process. RM updates (this can be done manually via manual download instead). Note: some very minor updates, allegedly happen silently during RM start up over the Internet, these minor updates would not happen without the Internet, but could be captured manually via periodic manual update.

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Answer 4) You can add your own loco images, no problem. RM even includes an image resizing wizard to ensure that user provided images are resized to suit RM.....'How to' is in the manual, pages 43 to 45.

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Answer 5) Supports up to 2,048 point and signal addresses. Complex point configurations (three ways and slips) can be accommodated via work-around. Not particularly elegant compared to native support, but is doable.

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Answer 6) You can definitely wire two point motors to a point decoder port. For four point motors you can have multiple accessory decoder ports with the SAME DCC address, thus you could have many multiples of two point motors firing together. Additionally, RM supports setting routes, thus you could pre-define a route as having any number of points in them and they will all fire sequentially from clicking one single RM link.

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[NormanQ4]

You don't actually re-install on the new computer simply install and activate (not reactivate).

But as Chris says you must deactivate on the original computer first.

You only need to contact HRMS if you fail to deactivate first.

[Chrissaf]

I do recall one forum poster, who couldn't remember what e-mail address and other details he had used during the original installation. When he went to install RM on a new replacement PC, the activation failed because the data did not match on the HRMS servers. Well, at least that is what that forum poster claimed.

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I suggest, anyone installing RM for the first time keeps a note of this information with their RM activation key for future reference, to be on the safe side should it become needed.

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A correction to my original Answer 1) above.

The RM manual page 131 clearly states that provided the 'deactivation' process is performed. The 'user' can re-activate RM on a completely different NEW PC without their (HRMS) involvement. The manual goes on to confirm, that a NEW USER can not activate a previously deactivated RM installation.

[81F]

  Thanks all, that looks very positive - All I need to do is find room for a PC in  the Railway Room - Off to tidy up under the layout, a somewhat dauntig task!

[RDS]

@81F

Good Luck.  Elite and RailMaster is my prefered choice.

However, rather than installing the version of RM from your CD, download the trial version from the Hornby Website and use the activation code from your CD.  This way you will get the latest version immediately.

[81F]

 I will need all the luck I can get. I've just costed it up and it may take years to install!

If I can group points to gether from the same terminal the cost will probably be around £300, if not nearer to £500!

 

Can someone tell me if you can mix and match accessory chip suppliers as you can with locos. I'm interested in the Train tech PC1s and PC2s (are cthey ompatible with Railmaster and the elite) as my points are not conveniently grouped together in fours but usually have the odd 1 or 2 over

[St1ngr4y]

 I will need all the luck I can get. I've just costed it up and it may take years to install!

If I can group points to gether from the same terminal the cost will probably be around £300, if not nearer to £500!

 

Can someone tell me if you can mix and match accessory chip suppliers as you can with locos. I'm interested in the Train tech PC1s and PC2s (are cthey ompatible with Railmaster and the elite) as my points are not conveniently grouped together in fours but usually have the odd 1 or 2 over

I switched over to DCC Concepts DCD-ADS accessory decoders a while back, and I can highly recommend them. They come in 2-output or 8-output and those with a -FX suffix have a microswitch attached to each output port which can be used, for example, for switching frog polarity on electrofrog points.

Ray