HM6000 2 circuits

[Eva67]

I see that the HM6000 can control 2 circuits (or tracks).

I understand how that works when there is 1 loco being controlled independently on each circuit, but how does it work in practical control terms when a loco traverses from 1 circuit to the other - i.e. from inner circuit to outer circuit ?

Thanks for any advice.

[96RAF]

You simply match direction on both circuits, then approximately match speed, flip the point(s) and drive from one circuit to the other. No different from how you would do it with a twin channel normal controller or two single controllers.

If you didn’t ‘calibrate’ your tracks during set-up so that a loco goes the same way on every loop then you will get a short indication and the track power will cut. Amend the direction, reset the short and off you go again.

Ideally you would have insulating rail joiners between each controlled track sections so that you could operate each section independently for speed and direction with affecting the adjacent section.

[Eva67]

Many thanks - very helpful! May be tempted to give this bit of kit a go as most people seem reasonably happy with it. Not so sure about the accessories set up though - with 25 points + signals etc, probably a bit too expensive!

[Chrissaf]

Eva,

If I have read the tech spec correctly, it would appear that the HM6000 system supports a maximum of 3 HM6010 units. This means a maximum of 12 directly wired point motors. So it would appear that there is not enough expansion capacity to support your 25+ points plus signals anyway.

[96RAF]

Adding to what Chris has said about there being a finite limit of modules the app can handle there is a work around to get over the limit.

You can mount another copy of the app onto a separate device - phone or tablet and populate that app up to the number of modules limit also.

The tricky bit comes if you want to hand off control of a particular module from device to device, so a bit of layout pre-planning is necessary to minimise any such requirement. A bit like running a large layout having separate districts each with their own controllers alongside but interact-able with each other.

The accepted work around if running in mesh connectivity mode is to de-provision (unpair) a module on the fly and disconnect it from device A, then re-provision and reconnect it to device B. A tad onerous at best.

If operating in BLE connectivity mode then handover is more simply by way of disconnecting from device A and reconnecting to device B.

In practice one would likely never need to hand over accessory control but one may need to hand over loco control such that a single device could take a loco right through the total layout.

The above assumes that each device has scanned for and saved all possible modules before picking and provisioning each module as required for task to each device. Once a module is provisioned to a device then it becomes invisible to a second device scan.

As I said - cumbersome but possible.