murphaph

Hey Popeye, yeah it shouldn't be physically possible because the system is a simple "create a vacuum and draw air in through trickle vents" so the grey box contains a large fan that vents air directly out through the wall and in doing so creates a constant vacuum in the three other ducts. The system runs 24/7 so there should be no opportunity for anything unwanted to make its way the "wrong way" up the ducts into the the living spaces. The spray booth obviously has a filter to catch paint over spray. When I took the booth apart there appeared to be no contamination beyond the filter in the fan area so I'm pretty confident no actual paint pigments will even get into the ducting. I like being able to paint inside as I have full control over the environment, lighting, dust, temperature, humidity etc.

Small update. Still no model making so don't get too excited... I got sick of sticking the vent pipe from my spray booth out the window and it wasn't working very well anyway as a gust of wind would just blow the fumes back into the basement. I've now plumbed into the house mechanical ventilation system. I fitted shut off valves to the house extraction ducts so I can maximise the draw when I am painting, if I need to. I'll try it without reducing the ventilation of the house first. Maybe it's enough of a draw at least for acrylics. I added some new ducting which had to be punched through the wall from utility room to my hobby room. The other big advantage is that I don't have the noise of the high rpm inbuilt fan in the spray booth. It was loud. Coupled with a good size compressor tank it should be a fairly calming environment in future. Bit of patching up to do around the hole but that will all disappear under the layout someday anyway.

Look forward to hearing how it works. I tried messaging the developer but haven't heard back yet. I mean even without Full Throttle support it's still very interesting because I couldn't justify a Loksound in every one of my locos. Just too expensive.

You'd need your head examined to pay that for what it is.

lol yeah I didn't really suspect he was trying to rip anyone off. Just hadn't a clue what he had on his hands.

Hmmmm.... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304373295680 Wasn't 085 factory weathered? Yeah, that's what's wrong here.

Looks right at home there!

The most important test would be easy to perform. From a standstill with the loco "ticking over" in idle, hit whatever F key "Drive Hold" is (if you use the US ESU files I am pretty sure they all use F9 by default) and then whack up the throttle to max. The loco should stand still with no motor revolutions but the sound should not, it should ramp up to notch 8 (full throttle) as if the loco were trying to move a heavy train from a standing start at full revs. If that doesn't happen, the developer hasn't (yet) implemented handling for FT. Notching back down the sound revs should drop back also. The throttle controls the sound not the motor when Drive Hold is engaged.

Guinness and egg sandwiches must have made a right mess of the buffet!

Yeah fantastic bit of team work to secure Aidan's legacy. Well done to all concerned.

Sean, how does the sound syncing work with full throttle features like drive hold? Have you tried it out with a FT file? The NextGen app digests messages from the z21 server (or emulator) and then acts on them but I'm wondering if it gets confused with FT. FT is not at all common on European ESU projects so I'm wondering has the developer considered how to properly handle them.

I would lol. I'd buy any new tippex ones. I have a rule that I don't buy locos to renumber so I have only one of each of anything I was interested in. It keeps me in check, otherwise I'd go mad altogether buying stuff. But then I don't feel bad buying a loco if I don't have it

Ah I wouldn't overcomplicate it. I'd stick with something like this: https://www.ebay.de/itm/272322746439 That's a Bluetooth receiver with an integrated 3W stereo amp. That's at least as powerful as a Loksound V5, which is 3W but I think it's mono so only half the power.

I'm not sure that particular module can drive a speaker directly. There's no mention if how many Watts it can drive which leads me to believe it's just a pre-amp. I think you can buy similar receivers with a class D amp incorporated into the board though and probably for the same sort of price. Fascinating possibilities alright.

I think pin 12 on a 21MTC decoder will be Vcc at +5v. The function outputs actually get pulled to ground to make them work as these decoders use a common positive at track voltage (pin 8).

Sean the MM sound files in the ESU site aren't the best anyway. There are hifi V5 files covering those engines (12 cylinder 645 Turbo file for the 071 and 12 cylinder 710 turbo for the 201). I don't believe the MM files were actually recorded from Irish locos or anything like that. The 121 one definitely wasn't IMO. They are US recordings but like you they are more than adequate for me and they are good quality recordings by ESU too. But yeah you can convert the files to v5 format. I took the above v5 prime mover sounds but the horns from the v4 projects and saved them as by and it all works so I guess the decoder application would also be able to decode them. Thanks for the links. I'm good with German so I can ask in there though it seems the developer is not a German speaker. He posts in English I think. Impressive progress for such a young project anyway. Hint: if you see NT in the ESU filename it means non-turbo. These are the ones you'll want for the small GMs.

Very interesting Sean. I had been mulling over a homebrew implementation of the above idea (using Rocrail to run an external sound player like VLC) to save money on sound decoders but it seems the tech has already overtaken me and it is possible inside Rocrail and amazingly using esu files directly? I will certainly be investigating this route before I spend any more money on sound decoders. Personally I don't think I want my locos making noise everywhere on the layout. It would just be a cacophony of sound like that. I always wanted sound at "points of interest" and fixed speakers at stations etc. we're something I was going to install regardless for other sounds like station announcements that match the actual train in question. Do you have any useful links to share? Edit: Ah I googled a bit and it seems the decoder application is external and relies on windows dlls from the Lokprogrammer software. Is that the application you're using Sean? Could still be an option for me but not sure how it would work with the system I have in mind (not z21 based but maybe I can use the same passthrough/emulation method you did with your dcc++ hardware). Definitely worth spending some time on I think.

How long did it take to sell out the A class? A few months max, many liveries sold out almost instantly. How long did it take to sell out the baby GMs? Much much longer because there were far fewer people in the market. PM created that market for high fidelity Irish RTR and the beginning was with the baby GMs really. Nobody knew then that there would be much of anything to haul behind them so people were largely buying them on spec for the novelty value presumably, never expecting that an industry would follow. That's not the case any more. The would be customer now already has the stock to haul and knows more is coming down the line. But I am not arguing for a release of the baby GM by anybody as it's not my place and they would be mad to listen to me anyway. I am happy to anticipate the other things that might be released over the coming years. Hunslets are at least as viable as "obscure" mk2b NIR diner cars and whatnot Nothing seems to be off the table. The magnesite wagons would appear non-viable too. Only ran for a little over a decade and only in the south of the country and only really with 2 liveries I believe. But here we are and they are coming so they are viable So I have learned not to try to second guess IRM. A fool's errand if ever there was one. I'm happy to sit back and be amazed!

I'd say the baby GMs would already be financially viable now given the seemingly rapid expansion of the market, but there are other fish to fry first probably.

I think he said it was running perfectly on analogue. Don't think he mentioned DCC at all.

This. A huge amount of pride felt by me too and I have nothing whatsoever to do with IRM apart from being a very satisfied customer but one can't help but have a sense of pride in an Irish firm taking the modelling world by storm like this. There is literally nothing stopping you from being the market leaders. The foundations have certainly been laid.

I had to play around a fair bit in Lokprogrammer to get the desired result on the 121s so I could lash a pair up nose to nose and have them behave as a single unit for the purposes of lighting (primarily having no nose lights on at all when lashed up but also ensuring I could hit a given F button to toggle "light power"/"hauling something" so that I could kill the red marker lights when hauling a train.

Hi Sean Nice thread. You could also have a play with RocRail in place of JMRI. It's the "European JMRI" if you will. I haven't used JMRI so can't compare them. Maybe the architecture is similar. RocRail is client/server based. The server connects via USB or whatever to the DCC hardware (in your case the Arduino+shield). My RocRail server runs on a Raspberry Pi Model B (my DCC hardware is a fairly old DIY openDCC controller), so very little computing power. You can then use your laptop or desktop running the client software in edit mode to edit the configuration. You could use the same application in "run" mode to control/monitor the layout BUT as it's client/server based you can just as easily install the android app or webapp to control it. You can have as many clients as you like. I'm not sure if RoCRail supports the Arduino protocol but Rob (the principal developer) is a fan of all things open source so I wouldn't be surprised.

Love it.

On the other hand, N gauge models are "small" so resin printing with its higher resolution could be a viable option?