Has anybody managed to connect a select to jmri?

[Hipwell]

Just curious to see if anybody has managed to get a select to work with jmri?

The jmri website suggests that it will work using a lenz expressnet to USB adapter, but then I don't recall ever seeing anybody having had any success with it.

Would he great to get it working so I don't have to buy an elite.

[ColinB]

I suppose it all depends whether the interface software in the Select actually works. I assume jmri stands for Java Model Railway Interface. I think the Elite gives you a lot more than a Select and if the Select doesn't support the extra functionality by a set of remotely called commands, it is probably not going to work anyway.

[Fishmanoz]

Short answer - not possible. Slightly longer - not since Hornby decided not to market an already working design for a smart cable to connect Select to a USB port.

[rpjallan]

Once you get an Elite you wonder why you ever bothered with a Select...

I heard someone recently (can't remember where) saying they were having problems with JRMI (not Hornby related) and someone replied saying a lot of the code is not very good which causes problems & they would never use it!

[ColinB]

I get the opinion the Select was developed as a low cost option to get people into DCC with the ultimate aim of getting people to buy an Elite or go down the Railmaster option with elink. So developing the USB link was a good development exercise but probably they assumed if they marketed it, it would take sales away from the other two products. I don't know if Hornby publish a list of USB commands that their products support, Fleishmann on their two dcc controller publish the commands available over their RS232 remote interface in the manual. Before you could even consider using a JRMI interface you would need to know if JRMI supports the same commands.

[96RAF]

There was a tech report many years ago by Greg99 a forum member about connecting an Elite to JMRI in the early days of the package. Many firmware updates have been issued for the Elite and many iterations of JMRI have come into play since then and there is no problem using an Elite with JMRI or Decoder-Pro. I never got on with the control panel but used Dec-Pro for a long time to set up decoders.

As Fishy says the abandoned Hornby Select-a-Link cable would likely have worked as I had a prototype working with RM and other software packages.

A pity the Hornby bean counters canned it as a result of poor pre-order sales. There was even the possibility of being able to update the Select firmware via PC like the Elite, although that would have been motherboard version dependant.

Gaugemaster do a similar cable bundled with their version of Decoder-Pro but it was quite expensive to buy as a trier just to see if it would have worked. https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/magento/gaugemaster-dcc55.html

The Hornby cable was one third the GM price, and required no installed drivers other than those in Win10.

[ColinB]

Reading your post 96RAF I assume the cable was a standard USB cable but with some level shifting logic at the Select end and a different connector.

[96RAF]

You can see it laid bare in my picture Colin, one end is RJ12 and the works end is USB A plugged into the laptop.

Essentially a opto isolator to cater for the disparate voltages end to end i.e. 12v vs 5v, and a 14-pin translator chip to pass the DCC commands across. I don’t have a schematic so cannot tell of the detailed circuitry.

[ColinB]

These are what most people use :-

https://ftdichip.com/product-category/products/

It is a bit academic really but interesting. When Hornby developed that cable there probably weren't off the shelf ones available, there probably are now if you search hard.

[ColinB]

These are what most people use :-

https://ftdichip.com/product-category/products/

It is a bit academic really but interesting. When Hornby developed that cable there probably weren't off the shelf ones available, there probably are now if you search hard.

[Hipwell]

Ah well, it was worth a go I suppose.

I've also got an e link so had a go at getting that to work with jmri and it connects but only responds to the first command such as turn lights on, but then it stops working.

The main reason for wanting it is so I can use engine driver on my phone. The mobile version of railmaster is terrible, it just reconnects all the time at the most inconvenient times, usually when there's about to be an incident!

[96RAF]

The eLink has a specific handshake with RM that is different to the way the Elite does it.

I couldn’t get the eLink to work properly with Rocrail, whereas the Elite does.

Forum member StingRay has sussed how the handshake works as he uses twin eLinks as controllers for his own self-written version of RM, but I doubt any of that info would read across to using an eLink with other software packages without a knowledge of their programming languages, etc.

Another forum member had a go at cracking the handshake used by RM’s yet to be released loco detection system so that other commercial detection kit could be used instead but again the handshake proved tricky.

[Hipwell]

Ah right, fair enough, seems a strange decision from hornby to allow the elite and not the e link.

Although, I have found a workaround to the terrible railmaster android interface, and that's to use Google chrome remote desktop. It's fantastic and free and full screen control of railmaster on my tablet/phone.

[96RAF]

Ah right, fair enough, seems a strange decision from hornby to allow the elite and not the e link.

 

 

Not sure what you are saying - allow them to what?

 

 

[Hipwell]

Allow the elite to connect to other software than railmaster, but with the e link use some sort of code which means that the handshake is difficult to bypass and use it with other software

[rpjallan]

I always thought the Select was meant to compete with the cheap Bachmann DCC controller at the time...

[96RAF]

Allow the elite to connect to other software than railmaster, but with the e link use some sort of code which means that the handshake is difficult to bypass and use it with other software

 

 

Probably more by luck than design. Who knows how these boffins minds work when they set out to produce a bit of kit for a purpose. You would think if it was NMRA compliant it would connect with any software designed to run those format commands.

 

 

I always thought the Select was meant to compete with the cheap Bachmann DCC controller at the time...

 

 

Select was introduced as a basic DCC controller and as such has some limitations, which in the early days got the unit a bad name but those same boffins pulled a rabbit out of the hat when they updated the firmware to be able to write CVs and even handle 3-digit numbers on a 2-digit screen. A pity that could not have been rolled over into loco addressing. However it is what it is and much better than it was.

[ColinB]

I imagine the limitations of the Select are more to do with the display and the switches available. An external link to a PC would have removed that. It is all in hindsight, but perhaps they would have been better putting the functionality of the elink into the Select and ditching the e link. Less products, more time to develop existing ones. Sadly after watching the Hornby program, I get the opinion is it a case of "just jobs" decided by you know who.

[96RAF]

As you say Colin - its his train set so . . . his Rule 1.

[Hipwell]

Yeh agreed, I actually really like my select for programming, really fast and easy once you've memorised the steps.

The only downside I've found on it is that functions like horns which play until the function is turned off is a pain because it takes about 5 seconds from been able to turn a function back off after it's been turned on, which is the main reason I've gone back to railmaster and e link (and was trying jmri for the same reason)

[ColinB]

I suppose what you really need to do is buy one of those USB analysers (on a different laptop) put it on the USB link between Railmaster and the Elite or ELink and then you would know what the command structure is.

[96RAF]

If connecting devices sharing USB links between different PCs be wary of common earths. Many USB cables have the GRND wire strapped to the sheath and these common ‘earths’ may not be at the same potential, machine to machine resulting in possible damage to one or ‘tother.

e.g. i have to beware using my USB scope to measure Elite outputs if Elite is connected to the PC by USB for say running RM.