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Sunday, November 22, 2020

LocoNet Signal Termination and The Digitrax PR3 and 4

JMRI's support for the Digitrax PR4 has been updated to reflect the PR4's inability to provide "LocoNet Data Signal termination".

This is a correction to JMRI's previous implementation of PR4 functionality. It reflects a more-accurate understanding of PR4 features by the JMRI development team.

When configuring a JMRI "connection" for the PR4, the "Command station type" of "Stand-alone LocoNet" is no longer available. Users with an existing PR4 connection which has been configured for a "Command station type" of "Stand-alone LocoNet" should change their "Command station type" to some other selection, such as "DCS100", and save the configuration profile.

Because LocoNet requires some source of "LocoNet Data Signal termination", and because the PR4 is not capable of providing that feature, it will be necessary to provide it using some other piece of LocoNet hardware. Both commercially-available and do-it-yourself options are available, as described in the "LocoNet Data Signal termination" section of the JMRI "Standalone LocoNet" help page.

UPDATE:

The Digitrax PR3 is capable of providing the required termination.The documentation pointed to above under the heading PR3 has kept up with the changes made in JMRI although it doesn't appear to since the selection "Stand Alone Loconet" in JMRI Preferences does not reflect what the documentation states. Here is the reply received when the author brought this point up to the JMRI users’ group on groups.io.

BillyBob experimenter wrote:

John G wrote about a JMRI "Documentation error" in the JMRI help which describes standalone loconet connections.

Yes, somewhere along the way, JMRI code changed, and those specific options changed.  And the documentation was not changed to match.

What is currently implemented is "Stand-alone LocoNet". It is equivalent to "Stand-alone LocoNet; interface device 'terminates' the LocoNet Data signal ".

Regards,
Billybob

Thanks to BillyBob experimenter for the reply and the outstanding work being done by the JMRI developers. No doubt this will be updated somewhere in the next couple of JMRI updates.



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