St1ngr4y Posted October 11, 2012 Share Posted October 11, 2012 I've just downloaded a new version of Railmaster. The release notes file mentions new programming commands 'Accelerate' and 'Decelerate', and, sure enough, they are there in the dropdown command list. But there are no instructions in the .pdf guide as to how they are used. Has anyone any ideas? I tried a small test program containing two commands:- 1.00 Forward to [75] 10.00 Decelerate [70] to [20] The loco started ok, but the Decelerate command seemed to have no effect. The loco kept on going at 75. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted October 11, 2012 Share Posted October 11, 2012 You've missed out the "Forward" or "Reverse" word in the command. It should be:- 10.0 Decelerate Forward [70] to [20] For going forward, obviously. You must have deleted the "Forward" part after selecting from the pull-down list. There's a newer guide at www.powerpos.com/rail-master/guide_en.pdf which does include info on the new Accelerate and Decelerate functions (page 66). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 12, 2012 Author Share Posted October 12, 2012 Woops - typo by me on my first message. I'm fairly sure I included the word 'Forward'. Anyway, I just had another go with this program: 1.00 Accelerate Forward [30] to [90] 91.00 Decelerate Forward [90] to [30] I ran the program in 'test' mode and when the Accelerate command was obeyed, you could see the speed increasing, and on the loco's individual panel on the main railmaster window, it seemed to be increasing the MPH by 1 every second until it reached 90. I then waited for the second command to be obeyed. At 91 seconds, the command was obeyed, but then the program finished, and the loco continued at 90. I thought that this may be because the command was the last in the program, so I added 181.00 Signal Clear so that the program would have time to execute the Decelerate command, but although the command was obeyed, and the program didn't finish immediately, the loco kept going at 90. I used your link www.powerpos.com/rail-master/guide_en.pdf to have a look at page 66, but I couldn't see any reference to these new commands. Could you copy/paste these into a reply for me please? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted October 12, 2012 Share Posted October 12, 2012 It's definitely in that manual. Are you sure you're putting it all in lower case in your web browser http://www.powerpos.com/rail-master/guide_en.pdf and asving it into your railmaster folder so that you can access it from the start menu? There's even a bit in red that tells you yu need to add a final command after Accelerate or Decelerate to give it time to finish. I would leave plenty of time for your Decelerate command to finish and issue a "Stop" to be sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 12, 2012 Author Share Posted October 12, 2012 I've just clicked on the link above, which opened the file in my browser. Page 66 starts with: Forward to [] and Reverse to [] and ends with: Latching and non-latching Some functions are switched on, then switched off again (latching), however most functions are activated for a short period of time. In between, there is no mention of the new functions! I'm assuming it's page 66 as it lies between pages 65 and 67, but doesn't actually have page 66 printed on it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted October 12, 2012 Share Posted October 12, 2012 I thought I was going mad but I've just downloaded and opened it again and it's definitely there, on page 66, just after the Forward and Reverse commands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rog RJ Posted October 12, 2012 Share Posted October 12, 2012 St1ngr4y said: I've just clicked on the link above, which opened the file in my browser. Page 66 starts with: Forward to [] and Reverse to [] and ends with: Latching and non-latching Some functions are switched on, then switched off again (latching), however most functions are activated for a short period of time. In between, there is no mention of the new functions! I'm assuming it's page 66 as it lies between pages 65 and 67, but doesn't actually have page 66 printed on it! Bottom of page 66 Quote "Within programs, you can issue an Accelerate Forward or Reverse command to allow for much smoother and slower acceleration which, on the layout look far more realistic. An example of an acceleration from a stand-still to 10mph can be seen below:- Accelerate Forward [0] to [10] You can accelerate forward and reverse and also decelerate forward and reverse. To bring a loco to a gradual stop from 20mph issue the command:- Decelerate Forward [20] to [0] If an Accelerate or Decelerate function is the last command in a program. The function may not complete. Add a final program function after the Acceleration or Deceleration is due to finish, e.g. “Stop”." HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 12, 2012 Author Share Posted October 12, 2012 Rog, Many thanks for that. Did you access the file after a 1.41 upgrade, or directly from a website? Ray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted October 12, 2012 Share Posted October 12, 2012 There you go! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted October 12, 2012 Share Posted October 12, 2012 Directly from the web site because it was newer. I am one of their testers so get to know these things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 12, 2012 Author Share Posted October 12, 2012 I've got it. I cleared my browsing history. An old version of the file must have been cached. I still believe there's a problem with the Decelerate version of the command - I'll do some more testing tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted October 12, 2012 Share Posted October 12, 2012 I've run both the Accelerate and decelerate commands within programs and it's so much better than using just the speed and letting the CV acceleration/deceleration do its stuff. For best results don't perform any speed functions on the same loco while an Accelerate or Decelerate function is being carried out. Remeber, it can take over a minute for the Accelerate command to work if you do [0] to [90] for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 12, 2012 Author Share Posted October 12, 2012 Can I ask about another 'feature' of 1.41? I have several programs which start off with maybe 7 or 8 point changes to set up a particular route. Usually I start off spacing these changes 1 second apart, and then I rearrange the order to try and keep points attached to the same decoder apart from each other if possible. In cases where there is no option but to have 2 points on the same decoder fired consecutively, then I separate them by 2 or sometimes 3 seconds. Today, I edited one of these programs after downloading 1.41 and during the saving of the program, I was warned that in several places the point changes were less than 2 seconds apart. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 12, 2012 Author Share Posted October 12, 2012 I've just carried out this Decelerate test:- seconds 0-12 point changes...then:- 15 Forward to [10] 16 Forward to [20] 17 Forward to [50] 39 Decelerate Forward [50] to [30] 60 Stop The program ran as expected until 39 seconds - the Decelerate command was ineffective. The loco continued to run (at 50) until the Stop command. During this time, the MPH indicator on the loco's individual panel remained on 50 MPH. Ray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted October 12, 2012 Share Posted October 12, 2012 Regarding the first part, it warns about the 2 seconds because it wants you to let the optimum time between point changes to allow the CDU inside the accessory decoder to charge up again. It just makes the programs more reliable. It is a warning rather than insisting you change it. When it comes to points I would leave two seconds between firings and double that if firing two points from the same accessory decoder output. With regard to your program, it looks fine, although ... belt and braces ... I would issue the Stop command at, say, 65 rather than 60. You could also combine the first three Forward commands into a single Accelerate Forward [0] to [50]. Then the Decelerate command would need to be pushed to around 60 plus seconds. It depends on how quickly you want things to happen. The new Accelerate/Decelerate commands make for more realistic starting and stopping of locos in programs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregd99 Posted October 12, 2012 Share Posted October 12, 2012 Guys, I use the elite for computer control of my layout... with jmri rather than railMaster. Can someone explain the benefit the of the accelerate and decelerate commands? the loco decoder has a cv which you can use to set the accel/decel rates. doing it using a series of commands form your pc puts a series of extra commands on the bus but what is the benefit? as to the apparent missed command at 39 seconds mentioned above... the elite does have a "feature" which means it misses commands from the pc occasionally. my experiments show that this can be in the range of 10-30%. There has been some discussion on this elsewhere in the forum with the suggestion that commands should be sent twice. The solution that I implemented was to write some extra software to verify the success of every command sent(!). If the command was not acknowledged it was resent. Allowing for the retry mechanism I can send hundreds of commands without one being lost. I assume that railMaster has something similar built in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 There was a small problem with the Decelerate function, which they've fixed. You can download the execute file alone from www.powerpos.com/rail-master/railmaster.exe and save it into your railmaster folder, overwriting the existing one. It's not the Elite missing any commands. To answer your question Greg. I asked the same thing and the answer is twofold. a) people don't like to change CVs willy-nilly and b) when you change the CVs for acceleration and deceleraion that means if you want to change it again you have to go through all the polava of putting doing it again. Most people (and I am one of those) like to have faster acceleration/deceleration when running the trains live, but want more realistic rates when running programs. This way you can leave the CVs in the locos to set the default accerelation and deceleration rates and have nore realistic rates on programs. As a JMRI user you will be much more into the technical side of railways, happy to fiddle with lots of settings and so on. RailMaster was made to be much easier to use "out of the box" and with hundreds of locos ready-profiled and set up whereas you have to do all of this manually in JMRI. I also think the scale speed part of RailMaster is a major advance and took a lot of work to achieve. Again, to set this up on other packages is a nightmare. Hornby have done it all for you, at least with all Hornby locos. RailMaster does interact with the Elite much better than with JMRI. I've seen this myself. I run sophisticated programs and have never had a missed command. What I do to achieve this is:- 1) Use a short shieled USB cable so there's no chance of electrical data loss 2) Leave enough time between point switching commands and loco functions (sounds) I would say RailMaster is being enhanced nicely with useful functions, over time, but still being kept easier to use than other packages, which is good for the hobby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 13, 2012 Author Share Posted October 13, 2012 LMSTim said: Regarding the first part, it warns about the 2 seconds because it wants you to let the optimum time between point changes to allow the CDU inside the accessory decoder to charge up again. It just makes the programs more reliable. It is a warning rather than insisting you change it. When it comes to points I would leave two seconds between firings and double that if firing two points from the same accessory decoder output. With regard to your program, it looks fine, although ... belt and braces ... I would issue the Stop command at, say, 65 rather than 60. You could also combine the first three Forward commands into a single Accelerate Forward [0] to [50]. Then the Decelerate command would need to be pushed to around 60 plus seconds. It depends on how quickly you want things to happen. The new Accelerate/Decelerate commands make for more realistic starting and stopping of locos in programs. Regarding the point change warning, it is precisely because of the CDU recharge delay that I re-arrange the sequence of point changes so that no two points on the same decoder are fired consecutively, if possible. I know this might sound trivial, but could the software not be changed so that, when examining the time between point changes, it takes into account whether the two points concerned are attached to ports on the same decoder. It's a fairly simple calculation to carry out. I just get frustrated when warning messages such as these pop up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 13, 2012 Author Share Posted October 13, 2012 Thanks, LMSTim With respect to the corrected version of railmaster.exe for the Decelerate fault, would you please tell me the best way to copy this individual file into my railmaster folder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMSTim Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 All you do is type that web address into your browser, hit Return and choose "Save as" then navigate to your c:program filesrailmaster folder (or c:program files (x86)railmaster folder if you have Windows 64-bit). It'll ask if you want to overwrite the existing file. Answer yes and after downloading you can start RailMaster again. Remember to close RailMaster before downloading the updated program file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 13, 2012 Author Share Posted October 13, 2012 Thanks again, LMSTim - I'm learning something new every day, thanks to you. I've got the latest version, and Decelerate now works as described. As you mentioned earlier, you have to be careful where to place the next command. My first attempt included a Stop command after the Decelerate, but I miscalculated slightly and it tried to obey the Stop command before the Decelerate had reached the end of its range. What happened then surprised me a little - control seemed to pass back to the Decelerate command, so that it continued to decelerate down to the end point of the range, but because the Stop command had been obeyed already, the loco continued at the end speed of the Decelerate Range, and the program continued with other point change commands which appear in the program after the Stop command. However, this is a minor problem and is easily recognised and 'tweakable'. If I'm correct in my assumption that the Accelerate and Decelerate commands work by adjusting the speed by 1 'step' per second, then it's just a matter of subtracting one speed from the other to roughly calculate how many seconds one of these commands will take. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted October 13, 2012 Author Share Posted October 13, 2012 Gregd99 said: Guys, I use the elite for computer control of my layout... with jmri rather than railMaster. Can someone explain the benefit the of the accelerate and decelerate commands? the loco decoder has a cv which you can use to set the accel/decel rates. doing it using a series of commands form your pc puts a series of extra commands on the bus but what is the benefit? as to the apparent missed command at 39 seconds mentioned above... the elite does have a "feature" which means it misses commands from the pc occasionally. my experiments show that this can be in the range of 10-30%. There has been some discussion on this elsewhere in the forum with the suggestion that commands should be sent twice. The solution that I implemented was to write some extra software to verify the success of every command sent(!). If the command was not acknowledged it was resent. Allowing for the retry mechanism I can send hundreds of commands without one being lost. I assume that railMaster has something similar built in. Greg, I'll have a go at explaining a benefit from my own experience. My layout is essentially a double main line oval, with hidden sidings at one end, having tunnel mouths at each end of these sidings. The programs I run usually start a train from one of these hidden sidings, emerging from the tunnel mouth at more or less 'coasting' speed, then decelerating into either the main station or a goods yard siding. The distance from the hidden siding to the tunnel mouth isn't that far so it needs a high rate of acceleration from standing until the train emerges from the tunnel mouth i.e. far greater than a realistic acceleration would look. But once into the 'visible' area of the layout, I want the trains to decelerate and accelerate at as realistic rates as possible. Now I know that some decoders can be programmed with very good speed curves etc. but I don't think I could achieve what I want with CV's set in this way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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