Britannia Builder

It appears that users who started using the app on Android 13 and then upgraded to 14 can still access the photo library - this is a quote from an Android developer website: Photo and video access is preserved when the device upgrades In cases where your app is on a device that upgrades from an earlier Android version to Android 14, the system keeps full access to the user's photos and videos, and it grants some permissions to your app automatically. The exact behavior depends on the set of permissions that are granted to your app before the device upgrades to Android 14. Regards, John

This seems to be a bug affecting some Android 14 users - see this recent thread: There doesn't appear to be a workaround, so you'll need to wait for the app to be fixed. Regards, John

If you navigate to page 2 of the Hornby forum and then bookmark that page in your browser, ie a url of https://community.hornbyhobbies.com/forum/3-hornby/page/2/, you can bypass all the other brands and most of the old pinned threads. Personally I really like the new format - this page that I've bookmarked shows me all that I need to know, and I haven't had to look into a sub-forum since the new software was released. I simply click on each unread thread that interests me, and I'm taken straight to the unread posts at the end of the thread. I have set the tick boxes on the sub-forum picker to include just the 6 or 7 sub-forums that I'm interested in, which gives me just 2 pinned posts at the top of page 2, so these are not much of a distraction. It would be better if the pinned posts were not given priority in the list of recent posts, but just included in date sequence according to when they were last updated. Regards, John

It seems that Android 14 has only rolled out very recently on selected Samsung phones, and it has introduced some enhancements for selective access to photos, so there could just be a genuine problem here. Regards, John

Surely other users must have successfully added loco images on a modern Samsung by now. I wonder if it's a bug in the app, trying to add a photo before assigning a decoder? Regards, John

Hi Stephen I've just tried this on my Samsung A34, also running Android 14. I downloaded the app some time ago on this phone but have never used it since all my locos are assigned to the iPad. I've just tried setting up a new loco but get the same symptoms as you - if I try to import a photo it gives the 'error opening photo library', and if I try to take a photo nothing happens. My permissions screen for the app is the same as yours. Regards, John

The pink star seems to be a thread to which you've contributed, or a red star if you've contributed and there are unread posts in it. Regards, John

I've noticed that if you right-click on an entry in the sub forum list you then get an option to open the target in a new window (in Chrome, at least) Regards, John

Another option, starting from the list of recently updated threads across all your selected forums, is to scroll down to find a thread in the target sub forum and then click on the subforum name which is a clickable link within that thread description. Regards, John

Probably the quickest option is to set up a bookmark url for each of your favourite sub forums, eg https://community.hornbyhobbies.com/forum/13-forum-website-feedback/ Regards, John

Thanks Rob, I did try the Activity/Unread, but I couldn't see a way of avoiding the cars and ships from the other forums. Regards, John

I think this new platform is a huge improvement, so congratulations to those responsible. I particularly like the ability to see all recently updated threads across all subforums with an indication of threads with unread posts, and to jump straight to unread posts at the end of the thread. A minor irritation is the number of pinned posts occupying the first page and a half of the recent posts display. I've partially bypassed this by bookmarking page 2 of the display, ie a url of https://community.hornbyhobbies.com/forum/3-hornby/page/2/, but perhaps some of these sticky threads could be combined? Or is there a way to show just threads with recent activity, ignoring pinned ones? Another minor suggestion is to add a 'favicon' so that the Hornby logo appears on the browser's bookmark bar, as it used to with the old forum. Regards, John

It might just be worth trying to run auto-calibration, which applies maximum voltage to the motor and bypasses back EMF control, and see if this makes the motor run. You'll need to be under DCC control, but you can use Bluetooth to set CV149 to 0, then set F0 on the DCC controller to start the auto-calibration. Regards, John

If the sound and lights work under DCC, then presumably the DCC address is OK. The only two cases that I've had of these symptoms have been a motor overload which cuts the motor power but not the sound (but this would affect Bluetooth as well) and inadvertently setting F27 Brake on, which prevents the loco moving. I'm not familiar with JMRI - could F27 be set without you noticing it? Regards, John

It's not just Android - I had this 'resettable' problem recently with a new 8-TXS decoder using the app on an iPad. But the implication is that it's a bug in recent versions of the app, rather than in recent decoders, and hopefully it will get fixed before too long. Regards, John

Hi Fabio This is a very interesting problem and you did well to spot that CV19 had changed. I have experienced loss of DCC control a few times in the past (none recently) and I had to reset CV8=8 to correct it. I checked that the address in CV1 had not been corrupted but I didn't think to look at CV19, which overrides CV1. I shall certainly do so if it happens again. I suppose it's possible that it's a hardware fault in your particular decoder, but it seems to me more likely that there's a software bug in there somewhere. Regards, John

Hi Joe Re the speed curve entries in Resource.mdb, these only apply if you are using scale speeds in RailMaster. They translate a selected speed in mph (or kph) to a speed step value for the decoder. The separate optional speed curve in for example an HM7000 TXS decoder then translates the speed step value to a voltage. The field SpeedCurve in the database is a comma-separated list of factors that apply to speeds of 5mph, 10mph and then steps of 10mph up to the maximum speed for the loco. For example the default speed curve for my A1 is: 2.316,1.881,1.411,1.131,1.021,0.936,0.876,0.816,1.446, RM interpolates in this list to get a factor which is multiplied by the speed and the Factor field (and if I remember rightly another constant for mph versus kph) to give the speed step. I went through a phase a few years ago of updating these speed curves to try to get accurate scale speeds across the speed range, but now I don't bother - I just adjust the Factor field (which you can also do within RM) to get a reasonable speed at 40mph. I've uploaded my two Excel VBA macros to my website at www.britanniabuilder.com/RMresourceeditor.txt for you to look at. These can be inserted into an Excel spreadsheet and triggered by for example ctrl-i to read and ctrl-u to update. You set the field names that you want to read in the first row of the spreadsheet, and ctrl-i will then read these fields for each loco into rows 2 onwards. Ctrl-u will update the fields after editing in Excel. You could use similar VBA logic to move entire loco records around within or between databases. Regards, John

Hi Joe It's interesting that you were able to read and modify the resource.mdb Access database. When I open it with my ancient 2002 version of Access it says that it was created in an older version of Access (ie I assume even older than 2002!) and can't be updated. I tried to do this a few years ago in order to tinker with the scale speed settings for each loco which are held in the database record. I therefore took an alternative approach of setting up an Excel spreadsheet with a couple of fairly simple embedded VBA macros to read the records from resource.mdb into the spreadsheet and to write them back again, thus allowing me to edit the loco data within Excel and update the database. This works very nicely and I still use it to adjust speed factors and speed curves. It strikes me that you could if you wished take a similar approach in order to manipulate your enormous database, for example to read all the smaller databases into a single spreadsheet and write them out as a single database, or to sort the locos into a different sequence more easily than within RM. If you're comfortable with Excel VBA macros and want to explore this further, I'd be happy to let you have examples of the macros. Regards, John

I wonder if the speaker socket has come loose on the circuit board? I think there have been previous reports of this. Regards, John

Yes, the CV changes that you suggest will remove the bell (F18 in SD002) from the AFC sounds. You will still be able to ring the bell manually on F18. If you want random whistles when running you could increase CV60 by 4 for F2 sounds or 8 for F3 sounds. Regards, John

HRMS have replied saying 'We have done some work on the function buttons for the next update, to be released shortly. Hopefully, this will resolve this issue.' Regards, John

Hi Ray I did for a time adopt the same solution, changing the brake squeal sound to be an on/off function to avoid the unfortunate buffer crashes, but since I operate manually rather than under program control it got a bit tedious to have to turn the function off again. When starting off from the station I've got into the habit of sounding the whistle or horn immediately after setting the throttle, rather than before. Now that I've upgraded most of my locos to TXS I rely on the AFC starting and stopping sounds, so it has become less of an issue. Just need better TXS horn sounds for the Class 47 before upgrading that from TTS. Regards, John

I think one of the most annoying things about RM is that when you use a spot sound function it greys the button caption out for about 3 seconds, and any other function or speed control during that period is ignored - indeed it seems to restart the 3 second timer if you do try. Before I sussed this out I used to sound the brake squeal prior to stopping in a siding, and kept frantically trying to stop the loco without waiting long enough, until it hit the buffers! I assume that it does this in order to reset the Elite (even if you're using eLink) and they chose to block other interactions rather than queueing them up. Regards, John

No, I haven't received the confirmation email either - I think it said that it would be sent within an hour when I submitted the bug report and it's been over a day now. Hopefully they've received it! Regards, John Edit: confirmation received 12 Jan pm

I've now noticed that F27 (Brake on/off) has the same problem. I only discovered this because I pressed it twice before F28 to avoid the F28 problem - I guess it would rarely be used as the first function in a normal running session. It's particularly confusing because two presses of F27 leave the button grey but the brakes applied - it took some time to work out why the loco didn't respond to the throttle! I'll report this to HRMS as well. I haven't tried F22-F26; F21 is the highest function that I know works correctly at the first press. Regards, John