Thursday, January 9, 2014

The move to JMRI begins

There has been some discussion about how long I'll be able to stay with the DOS system I'm currently using. Currently I'm using four computers and I have a couple of spares and as long as they work I'll be fine. We all know that things last forever, and at some point the older computers won't be readily available.
I took time over the last month to learn the basics of JMRI. Through a tutorial I successfully drew a track and made a CTC panel. The next step is to make a small test track using at least one of every component that is currently on my layout and get them to work so my understanding will get better before I tackle the full layout.
I built a small test track and installed some of the components needed to start this test. I decided to stick to just the turnouts to keep the complexity down while trying to get the computer to talk to the I/O board.
Yesterday I finally attempted to get the turnouts working and it took all day, but it was successful. It was a combination of many things from learning how to wire the USB-RS485 connector, JMRI lingo, how the "CMRI like" board acted like the true CMRI boards.
The important thing is I got them working and have a much higher understanding of the connections.

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