Xpessnet - Railcom and other DCC protocols...

[96RAF]

Various bits of Hornby kit use the subject protocols (Elite, Select, Sapphire, probably eLink - and what else?).

I am a little vague as to what each connection does and how it could maybe be used to better/full purpose within the Hornby products market

 

for our model railway enjoyment.

What do I know at the moment (sticking just with Hornby kit)?:

1. Xpressnet is a communications protocol that allows bits of hardware such as the Elite and Select (and maybe boosters) to talk to each other and software

 

applications such as RM?, Rocrail, JMRI and others.

(The Lenz Xpressnet spec is linked to by Greg99 in the RM baud rate thread and makes interesting but bewildering reading).

2. RailCom is a protocol that allows some kit (Sapphire and possibly the future

 

RM detection system) to report its current state to a command station (Elite/Select/software application). What the command station/software does then I have no idea, apart from the Sapphire fuel gone scenario.

Can someone please explain these protocols

 

to me in layman's terms and possibly offer suggestion as to what a layman can do with it all.

 

[Fishmanoz]

Form a lay perspective, they are just particular formats for sending data and communicating between devices. You don't need to understand them as all you can do is use the controller or Rm via their user functions, knobs and buttons etc. the one thing

 

that will be relevant is that you won't be able to connect to them anything that doesn't use the protocol for its communication.

 

Even using JMRI, you don't need to know. The programming you do is at a lower level of computer language so you need to

 

be more tech savvy to use it fully, but again you won't need to know the protocol unless you are getting into the very advanced programming end of things.

 

At least that is my understanding of it. Happy to be told I'm wrong and why.