Sean

looks like that post detailed separating lights and markers on 121 class, sorry for any confusion.

i used them from uk when parcel motel stopped northern ireland operations. got a disproportionately large customs bill with absolutely zero means to appeal and havent used it at all since.

in my mind the sounds would sum and be too insignificant to cause any sort of perceptible phasing, however it wouldnt surprise me either, perhaps it might come down to the sound getting thrown everywhere without any sort of enclosure as opposed to it being more directional if coming from an enclosure. yep had a think about that, even if you started the engines seperately as soon as you notch the engine the next set of wavs are going to be triggered at the exact same time bringing it all into sync, altering the wavs of one loco to loop in at a different point would solve that but it still wouldnt be entirely realistic as the 2 engines would ALWAYS still be exactly in sync just firing at different points. in real life no 2 engines can be exactly the same off the factory floor and that becomes even more apparent as components wear and they will run at marginally different rpm's and the sound will overlap in and out of itself. particularly as rpm changes. theres a certain randomness in timbre between 2 running motors that would just be difficult to fully capture within a piece of software looping wavs on cue. you would nearly want to have 2 entirely different recordings of the same prime mover type and somehow randomly delay one of them by a random 1-100ms interval at a notch change, I dont know if ESU even know how to do stuff like that yet lol. a DAW on the pc could do it with nextgen running but feck thats even more moving parts that im not going to even consider investigating my thinking was i could have 2 nextgen files running to a single bluetooth module in mono with a mover panned to each speaker and a speaker in each logo. no good unless all the above aforementioned stuff is first solved.

I dont think you would have much of a problem with destructive phasing as the engine tone oscillates rather than sitting at one specific frequency. the sound of the 2 prime movers would not be in sync if the motors started at different times also so the 2 sources should harmonise into one perceptually. any losses in fidelity due to phase would probably only apply if sitting in between the 2 speakers however these losses would also be experienced in the real world also, particularly if walking around 2 large running prime movers, you will always hear some audible anomalies between the 2 engines. issues with phase in the real world in my experience has mostly been confined to recording with a stereo pair of microphones or in large line array PA systems in large venues where the sound has to actually travel a distance before it gets to the audience who will be hearing the performance from multiple sound sources and phase or delay can occur due to the same sound reaching them at different times from different speakers. it is not something i had ever considered in speaker design all that much before seeing it demonstrated on that video a few weeks ago with the train speaker although even then i found its importance to be limited as the guy took care of it quite easily and designing any sort of speaker cabinet at all really tends to seperate the front and back of the cone, with the back sound being completley different once it finally bounces around and gets out the port on the back of the speaker. you see thats the thing. my hardware (dccpp) runs under both however the rocrail version seems very buggy and the command station routinely crashes leaving a loco running with throttle applied until rocrail is restarted which leaves me stuck on JMRI as that is going to cause an expensive accident on my end to end before long and with the prices of this rolling stock that will make me very sad. when my next paycheck arrives im very tempted to just order the z21 multimaus off ebay de and run nextgen via that, i genuinely dont think the nextgen dev has intended for jmri or rr compatibility it just so happens to be a bonus that they do work, the fact that my z21 protocol apps are connecting to jmri but not sending or recieving throttle commands has me optimistic too, theres a few different z21 protocols available with jmri depending on the age of said z21 equipment so it may still be down to giving it a bit of a tweak till it works, sadly there is no jmri forum to ask one and the documentation is a bit sparse

if the developer of nextgen used literally any other protocol except for z21 this would be a lot easier for jmri lol. is it normal to only use a single sound decoder when consisting? obviously itd save 100 quid but i feel like a certain characteristic of hearing 2 engines running together would be lost with only one speaker/engine. edit: JMRI does actually list multimaus as supported so maybe i simply need to look a little closer. edit2:my z21 app is now connecting to jmri but nothing works yet, this is very promising.

VID20220420202842.mp4 Drive hold working on a lokpilot with a JMRI virtual sound decoder! not the best of videos but you get the idea. note that the function is tied to the headlight for testing purposes. @murphaphit seems that drivehold is actually a feature of the lokpilot as well as the loksound. when i did a bit of digging into the logical functions in decoderpro i was greeted with these options so theres a bit more under the hood than we think in these lower end chips, no reason it shouldnt also work on nextgen too as its actually seperate to the sound suite and works just the same as if there was no sound at all. the 201 is also done and works although its not perfect and i really needed to take some time away from it before getting back to it as the keep alive was a bit of a head melter. will upload a video of that soon i still need a windows pc to run nextgen on so im at the mercy of whenever i can borrow the laptop again. rocrail and nextgen wont run on the same pc either(bug)so that adds even more complexity lol. (im considering using some virtual machines but thats getting super advanced.) at this point im not sure if ill use rocrail or JMRI both currently have their pitfalls and neither are easily allowing me to stream audio to multiple different outputs. nextgen seems to be way better than the jmri solution however on the flip side rocrail is not the most stable using my setup as there are a lot of moving parts and the arduino itself crashes regularly. nexgen within JMRI would be the stuff of dreams although i dont think that is possible at the moment. im maybe a little tempted to get the cheapest z21 i can get my hands on to run nextgen this way but i am a big fan of JMRI so we shall see. porting prime mover sounds into JMRI seems to be a fairly trivial process once i have decent source files ready to go. perhaps someone on the JMRI community would be interested in modifying the sound decoder for multiple outs. in my head it would be easy but i dont know a line of java lol. all that being said im still running everything off the linux netbook so i need to get around to building a proper pc for this soon anyway from the parts pile. all in good time though.

A few hours later....

Some more construction was definitely needed so filler had to wait. The wall now marks the slope of the incline coming upto the bridge. Not sure how it's going to turn out around the retaining column just yet. Trying to make it not too steep as I don't want a overpass wall blocking the trainspotters view but I also want it to be a rolling embankment where it does stretch down into the yard so I'm probably just gonna wing it and so how it goes. Maybe some rock face will be there by the end of it. On the other side I'm cheating and the bank is lower than the retaining wall so it just looks like a standard wall for the road.

Excellent news! 5 of your beet doubles are high up on my shopping list as soon as funds allow once more.

I had considered the archways DJ but decided against them as they feel a bit too urban to me. Never really see them in Ireland either. What I have in mind is more of a rural backwater depot at the end of a random branch line somewhere. That being said I have made a cutout at the end of the embankment so that siding can be just that little bit longer.... Picked up this javis tunnel mouth today at the show however when I got it home it was massive and completely unsuitable. Spent the evening in the shed doing some cut and shut magic until I arrived at what you see here. Pretty pleased with that. Definitely a little tempted to mix up some filler and getting to work forming the hillsides now.

Then there was two! And JUST enough space to run a double

Chuffed to have gotten this for a little lower then rrp And to think I was going to settle for an IE one not five minutes before seeing it sitting there waiting for me Now to figure out the double heading lol

Anybody in the know know if there will be a retailer with 121's in attendance tomorrow?

when i was about 10 or 11 i brought my h0 mehano train to the wexford exhibition at gorey and the exhibitor very kindly coupled it up to a set of toothpaste somthing or other coaches and did a few laps of the layout alongside all the irish stock. made my week that did.

Once again little has happened since the last post as I have once again been lost in DCC land... I did however do the street delete and cut out the turntable. Definitely makes a huge difference to this end of the layout and the transition is hidden much better now. A slight oil siding extension is being added but only to preserve the original length of the siding. To deal with the gradient I am imagining a very steep climb to hump back bridge style layout as is built at arklow and that should fit okay within the given space without it being too vertical looking.

is that the bachmann 1938 tube stock youve got there? i really want one.

hmmm, upon reinspection my 141 does NOT have the head and marker seperated at the moment, so what the hell did i do to think i did

when you extract the wavs from the MM201 .ESU file for a closer look........

Sure pull a rake of spoils with one. it wont spontaneously combust

yes, playing with toy trains has provided great relief and distraction from worries regarding world events over the past few months.

not a bad idea, those pictures are taken using linux off a 10 inch netbook so leave a lot to be desired. JMRI runs really well on really old crappy hardware so i like being able to upcycle what i have lying around and watts consumed are always on my mind so it was ideal candidate for JMRI. sounds complex but its simples really. JMRI(java model railroad interface) reads all of the data off an esu decoder without the need for an expensive lokprogrammer. (screenshot is the A class decoder but its all the same) its a bit like a spreadsheet then. the first column deals with each function and what it does in each direction. the second column programs just what the function does. i.e each aux corresponds with a physical connection wire somewhere within the loco and turns it on or off. take for example Forward.F4 - Aux 3 and Reverse F.4 -Aux 4 (rows 8 and 9) When forward is selected and you turn on F4 it will turn on Aux 3( the front headlight) but when reverse is selected it now lights aux 4(rear headlight) and aux 3 turns off because it is no longer selected. you can tie as many aux to a single function as you like and they dont have to be directional as can be seen on F2 which is currently linked to toggle shunting mode instead of a physical wire.. when everything is tweaked to your fancy, you simply hit write changes to sheet and it will reprogram the decoder with no need for an expensive lokprogrammer, my dcc base station/programmer combo cost me less than 20 quid to put together and can be reliably driven from an app on my phone for throttle control. its only 1.5 amps though which limits the amount of trains that can run at one time without some kinda booster.

is that confirmation on the IRM GM and Toothpaste range so? "POWERED ITEMS"

hey gph. take a look at my dcc workbench thread. this post will show you exactly how to change the F0 issue for the markers and headlights being tied together on the 141/181. thats using a 121 esu decoder in jmri. not sure about 071 i have never used one but im sure it would be a similar sort of nuance.

And just for fun here's the latest gl8

so here we go again. Admittedly the train to skaville soon blew up due to a myriad of issues with the design. I'll discuss just WHY when I give an overview soon, all issues came down to trying to run a 6 watt amp with a rather underpowered 5v converter and windows insisting on 100% volume everytime the Bluetooth clicked off and back on and trying to have a stay alive with no diodes. It worked for about an hour before going kaput However now impressed with the tech I'm after spending a few Bob on components that should bring the desired outcome with all of my locos. New soldering iron,, glue gun the lot. Will update soon with hopefully a working loco.