RailMaster Version 1.70 now available on the download link

[Mantagt]

Hi fellow sufferers,

 

Yesterday I updated RM to 1:70 and all appeared to be OK so decided to try my 2 android hand helds. Initially both fired up and worked but not reliably, they both kept loosing connection and restarting. I shut everthing down and restarted with just the tablet connected. Again RM worked and the tablet connected but still kept loosing contact with google. The track plan seemed to work provided the green icon was lit the loco screen however did not. The loco would move, reverse and change speed but selecting a function always seemed to give two pulses, lights would switch on and seconds later switch off, the engine would start and then swich off and the horn would sound twice seconds apart. I connected the phone app with the same results. At this point I decided to give up as the layout is not fully opperational  and RM is not used for testing.

 

Today I noticed revision 1 was now available and installed this. On starting RM it failed to connect to the e-link controller b so I shut down and restarted the computer, this time it failed to connect to the elite controller a. Eventually I got RM started and connected the tablet on port 30 and the connection seemed more reliable, the green icon stayed lit. The two pulse problem was still there, when a function was activated the port 30 light [green 1] flashed and swiched on, seconds later the port 31 light [green 2] flashed and turned it off. I then connected the phone on port 31 and the same thing happened flashing port 31 and then port 32. On the second attempt the function switched off and the unregisted screen appeared and the computer froze, the only way out was to use task manager and end task. When I restarted the computer RM would not fully load so switched off and gave up. Two steps forward and three back, Ithink step four will be to reinstall 1;69.

 

Apoliges for being long winded but have tryed to descibe what has gone wrong.

[train-domain]

Hi. I too have had the Railmaster cannot handshake with elink today after V1.7 upgrade. I fixed it by removing the usb cable (com1 on my laptop) and placing it in the next usb port. Then checked device manager and confirmed the cable is now connected at com 2 and reset the com port to com2 within Railmaster. 

Railmaster then finds the elink and the controller active icon should now be green.

Hope that helps.

[train-domain]

Further to the issue above, I have also had 2 instances today where different locos have run away on their own.

 

Firstly, I was running in my new Cock o the North while painting something on my bench. Out of the blue my Flying Scotsman TTS decided to take off and collide head on into Ketley Hall.

 

Forrtunately, they were only about 18" apart so no damage. I put the loco on the prog track and checked CV29 which was 38, so adjusted this to disable DC operation and thought that would solve the issue.

 

20 minutes or so later, Ketley Hall which is also a TTS decoder did the same and colided with another loco. When I checked Ketley Hall I had already disabled DC operation!

 

I cant understand why this happened as my other TTS loco Mallard was fine as were my other 15 which have either a Gaugemaster DCC26 or DCC Concepts Zen decoder fitted.

 

Would be very grateful for some advice here as Ive currently lost confidence with RM and elink if my locos are likely to get damaged.

 

Ive never had an issue like this before updating RM this morning.

 

Many thanks.

[Fireman_Ian]

Mmmm methinks I will wait a while before upgrading to 1.7.

Also very disappointed that HH is still a website and not a proper app, thats not good enough Hornby!

[Sincethe60s]

Sincethe60s.

.

There is a post with a similar eLink communication error report further up in this very thread on page 4. They reported that rebooting the PC cured the issue.

Thanks, Chrissaf. 

This morning I powered up the PC and Railmaster and (would you beleive it!) It all sprang into life. Amazing what a night's sleep will do! When the problem occurred I just did a Restart. and this made no difference. A Shutdown probably resolved the handshake problem. Another suggestion was to change the USB port and change the Com port to recognise the change. I nearly tried this but it was not necessary. Thanks again for your comment.

[96RAF]

I have the handshake problem but only after a third loss of comms, during which the controller (Select and Link cable on laptop Com5) worked on and off and the controller icon stayed active and hover over reported its rev state.

 

I have reported it in and await a fettle.

[BagEndJct]

Problem with TrainTech Colour Light Signal with RH Route Indicator.

 

I had this nicely set up with two signal icons, one for the signal itself, and one, with the 2nd port address, for the indicator. I noted that the handling of these signals has supposed to have improved with the new version of RM, so I thought I'd change to the "correct" icon for this signal. Mistake. As before, there is no separate control of the route indicator and it is ALWAYS illuminated when the signal is set to clear.

 

OK, I'll just change it back to what it was. Now the red/green signal is out of sync with the symbol on the layout plan and "Reverse Polarity" has no effect. I've tried deleting the signal from the plan and replacing it, but still the same. "When it works, leave well alone"!

 

Any help on this, please?

[RB51]

Hi BEJ, Stingray got round a similar problem by running a program. Do you have any that you could run and see if that helps? Presumably the program needs to incorporate the affected signal. He'll be along shortly I'm sure. R-

[BagEndJct]

Hi BEJ, Stingray got round a similar problem by running a program. Do you have any that you could run and see if that helps? Presumably the program needs to incorporate the affected signal. He'll be along shortly I'm sure. R-

Thanks. I just came in from BEJ Train Shed to report I'd solved the issue. I changed (ie reversed) the default sequence that RM puts in when you click on the signal type. That did the trick. Worth remembering! If I can!!

[RB51]

Well done, thanks for letting us know. R-

[St1ngr4y]

Hi BEJ,

 

I have been discussing this with HRMS over the last 24 hours. Please refer to my earlier post on this thread to see what I had reported to them. They told me to go into the layout designer and re-select "2-aspect" from the dropdown list. What this did was to change the sequence of colours from Red/green to Green/Red. I did this for all of my 2-aspects. Unfortunately, that had disastrous results. The RM startup changed all the 2-aspects to green instead of the requested red, and program changes of the signals changed them to the opposite aspect. I reported this back to them yesterday. So I had to go through each signal again and "manually" swap around the sequence red/green spots. However, while I was doing this, I noticed that each time I clicked on a sequence spot, it actually changed the real signal. Unfortunately, if the spot was green and I clicked it to change it to red, the signal changed to green. Then I wondered whether it depended on the state of these sequence spots when the signal had originally been configured in its "learn" mode. Perhaps, if the sequence was wrong at that point in time, and the red test button was used to send the address to the signal, then maybe it sent a green instead of a red at that point and the signal has been out of sync since. I suggested this to HRMS and I am waiting for a reply.

 

Ray

[St1ngr4y]

Traintech 2-aspect signals - further update

 

I have just blown out of the water my theory, in my previous post, that it may have been the configuration of the signal in "learn" mode, which causes these problems. I have just reconfigured one signal in RM with the sequence spots Green then Red, the way HRMS are saying they should be, and I re-addressed the signal using the red test button in the signal's configuration window. It made no difference to the way the signal behaved afterwards with the green/red spot configuration.

 

Ray

[Ducky1]

With the new Ipad App the sound function button only swiches the sound on for a short period. The othe functiin buttons play the sound twice. When I change the loco on the ipad the function buttons show the text for the last loco.

I quite often have to activate a function on the ipad (ie change point, increase speed etc) two or three times.

[BagEndJct]

Just to add something on 2-aspect Train Tech signals. All of my signals still operated correctly after installing v1.70. The only one that went pearshaped did so after I changed the symbol (to one with Route Indicator to see if it worked correctly. It didn't!). Then, when I changed it back to plain vanilla 2-aspect, that is when the problem started, as described above (reverse polarity had no effect). Changing the default sequence got it working correctly again. Good luck Ray!

[St1ngr4y]

I've been having an email conversation with David from DCPMICRO who market Traintech signals, and he confirmed to me that when the signal is addressed during its "learn" mode, a packet is sent from the controller which is picked up by the signal decoder and it extracts the address and stores it in its own non-volatile memory. But not only that, it takes notice of the type of data in the packet i.e. clear/stop, red/green, but at the DCC packet level this is either a 0 or a 1. It remembers this bit of information as well when it is returned to operational mode. From that point on, the value of the bit sent to it represents the green aspect. This is why, a while back, Railmaster was changed and users were requested to use the red test button in the layout designer signal configuration window to set the signal's address in "learn" mode. This is so that the same value was always sent at this point. Now my earlier premise was that maybe RM sent different values at this point, depending on the order of the sequence spots. However, with the aid of my trusty DCC monitor, I now know that the RED test button always sends a 0 bit during the signal addressing, and this becomes the value saved in the signal decoder, giving 0 = green and 1 = red.

 

Ray

[Pietrarsa]

Hi all

 

I have updated RM to the last 1.70.1 version and I'm facing the comm issue, so no handshaking with e-link on com2. Tried restart does not help. Reboot also does not resolve. What I have noticed is that at RM launch, after the comm error popup, the settings window lists only com1 as available ports. Actually in the com settings of the computer everything is fine with e-link, as it occupy the usual USB port and com2. Anyway I temporary resolved this bug as follows.

/media/tinymce_upload/57425d23bbbdf4ca52eb31755f1f1b89.jpg

 

What I have done to resolve this bug? Simply pressing the "ok" green button in rm settings, wait to the handshaking (obvious) error, then reopened the settings window and... WOW! the com2 port now lists in the options. Selected it, "ok" and it works.

The problem is that everytime I start RM I have to pass this algorithm...

 

Still no operational on locos as layout is now in maintenance (changing some points) so no experience of free starts of locos.

On the android HH side, apart the warning of a new link "my-apps.eu/railmaster" instead of "my-apps.eu", and the absence of "chrome version compatibility" warning, I didn't noticed noticeable progresses.

[BagEndJct]

Ray

 

I'm thinking that I may have clicked one of those buttons when I was changing the symbol to "test" it, so that may be the reason the signal was not conforming?

 

John

[WilliamDavid]

 

I too am experiencing the following using my phone as a had held, as reported above.

The loco would move, reverse and change speed but selecting a function always seemed to give two pulses, lights would switch on and seconds later switch off, the engine would start and then swich off and the horn would sound twice seconds apart. 

[Fishmanoz]

WD and others, have you checked your doubleclick setting in your ini file?

[Mantagt]

WD and others, have you checked your doubleclick setting in your ini file?

That was my first thought and it is at 0. If you check my post you will see the pulses appears to on two ports.

I cannot recheck the set up as I have had to reinstall version 1.69 just to get RM to work again and the hand helds have gone back in draw until a working update is issued.

[Fishmanoz]

Just a thought from me too, certainly seems like command is being repeated.  Try setting to 1 and see if the command is sent 4 times?

[train-domain]

Following yesterdays problems I powered RM up this morning and found that the elink handshake problem was back again so I changed com port settings to com 3 within RM and then changed them back to com1 (without removing the cable from the usb) and RM connected to the elink.

 

I updated to 1.71 today and restarted which seems to have solved this communications issue and have not had any repeats of runaway locos today.

 

However, this update is now causing problems with controlling the locos in that the throttle sliders for all of my locos have no effect whatsoever. The locos will only respond to the shunt, cruise and stop buttons. This affects all locos fitted with 3 different types of decoder.

 

I also tried the new version of the Android HH and this will only respond to the stop button. When trying to start a loco off the speed is displayed on both the phone and the laptop but no response from the loco.

 

Ive just about had it now with Railmaster and elink, Ive had it for 6 months and its been problematic since day one.

 

Just in case anyone is able to offer any advice on these issues, I am using RM v1.71/elink v1.07 with an HP Probook 6450b (Intel i5) Windows 7 dedicated to RM only. Samsung Galaxy S8 for the HH. Bitdefender Total Security on both (which I have disabled and made no difference)

Thanks.

 

[train-domain]

OK then, I have managed to sort out the speed slider issue so the following is for anyone else who has this problem.

 

In the RM settings there is an option to send real time speed data. This needs to be ticked and then RM needs to be closed down and restarted.

 

Once I had done this the speed sliders worked again. It also sorted out the issue with handheld on the S8 which I have to admit now works better than ever. In fact its now good enough to warrant spending the extra tenner for the full version.

 

However, the handshake with eLink problem is back again this morning and had to use my previous method of switching com ports within RM and then switching back again. (no need to remove cable from USB)

I think my next move is going to be reassigning the com port on laptop to com3 and then setting that within RM.

[96RAF]

Com1 is not recommended for some reserved computer allocation reason of I remember an explanation way back, ditto Com 2, but Com 3 should work. My fixed setup uses Com 3 and 4 but my laptop is on Com 5 and playing up with dodgy handshake, RM and eLink must be in the Masons.

[Chrissaf]

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

.

Whether this is in response to those reporting eLink comms issues I cannot say. But this morning there is a new revised RailMaster installer available on the forum manual download link. The installer still reports itself as being version 1.70.1 so for those already running version 1.70 & 1.70.1 you will need to manually run this new installer over the top of your current RM installation, to get this very latest version.