After my MTS-I died, I upgraded to a Roco z21 XL which I've mostly been very happy with.
I have an old LGB 28002 with a Massoth eMotion L. Train control & CVs & etc work fine. However, the on-board sound decoder is driven via a single output from the eMotion L. This interface assumes the old LGB "serial" protocol - pulse F1 some number of times (once per second) to simulate F1..F8. As implemented, each F1 toggles the output line A1, and the LGB sound circuit counts the number of toggles and then applies a "sound effect" 1..8 (I say "sound effect" because #3 is smoke on/off and #4 is sound on/off).
I've looked into having the decoder convert "real" F1 to F8 into a number of pulses, but I think this is beyond its capabilities.
For added complexity, some of the effects are "one-shot" (e.g. "blow the whistle"), while others are "toggles" (bell on/off, sound on/off, etc). This doesn't matter when you only have an old-style LGB handset with push-buttons, but once the interface supports (or assumes) switches it becomes tricky.
Meanwhile, on the Roco app, there are 3 settings for function keys: "switch", "push-button" and "timed". I've discovered that if I set the Roco to "switch" on F1, I can toggle the switch some number of times to trigger the appropriate effects. Two issues:
Any suggestions or thoughts?
But...Caveat: Roco's idea of state-of-the-art home networking is still stuck about 5 years ago. The z21 ships with a companion home wireless gateway and a fixed IP address that matches the settings on the gateway. This makes things easy if you don't have an existing home network.
However, we're in 2021 now, and many people have an existing home WiFi network, including a gateway supplied by their ISP. If you want the z21 to seamlessly integrate with your home network, you'll need to assign a manual IP address to the z21 that works with the addresses used by your router/gateway. Once that's done, it works very nicely.
I have an old LGB 28002 with a Massoth eMotion L. Train control & CVs & etc work fine. However, the on-board sound decoder is driven via a single output from the eMotion L. This interface assumes the old LGB "serial" protocol - pulse F1 some number of times (once per second) to simulate F1..F8. As implemented, each F1 toggles the output line A1, and the LGB sound circuit counts the number of toggles and then applies a "sound effect" 1..8 (I say "sound effect" because #3 is smoke on/off and #4 is sound on/off).
I've looked into having the decoder convert "real" F1 to F8 into a number of pulses, but I think this is beyond its capabilities.
For added complexity, some of the effects are "one-shot" (e.g. "blow the whistle"), while others are "toggles" (bell on/off, sound on/off, etc). This doesn't matter when you only have an old-style LGB handset with push-buttons, but once the interface supports (or assumes) switches it becomes tricky.
Meanwhile, on the Roco app, there are 3 settings for function keys: "switch", "push-button" and "timed". I've discovered that if I set the Roco to "switch" on F1, I can toggle the switch some number of times to trigger the appropriate effects. Two issues:
- "switch" mode acts like a toggle in the app. So if I tap once, I get a whistle, but the button is now set "on". Tapping again blows the whistle again, and turns the button "off".
- It's actually quite difficult to toggle multiple times with close-enough-to one second gaps.
Any suggestions or thoughts?