After using it for several weeks, like all things there are good point and bad points. Having to enter all the locomotives by hand into the system is a ridiculous situation. It does not recognize previously setup locomotive consists. For example, I have a consist of Kato SD70MAC's with a consist address of 72, but placing them correctly on the track and selecting the consist address does not work. The locomotives just sit there. What I had to do to make this work was to remove all of the consisting settings and add each member of the the consist individually, and then use the ESU consisting tool in the throttle to recreate them. Since there is no way I have found to link the CabControl to my JMRI system, all of this is entered by hand on a sleazy Android device. This system is fine if you only plan to run maybe a couple of dozen locomotives. But if you have a larger number of locomotives. It is a living nightmare. The throttles sometimes have issues connecting to the CabControl system. This is not to be expected when the distance from the CabControl to the throttle is less than 36 inches. It is not all bad, it does a nice job once the locomotives are loaded into the system. But the weak link is the Android based throttle. Once the locomotives are loaded into the system, they can be run semi easily. The problem is finding the locomotive you want in a reasonably quick amount of time. The problem is you have to scroll through the list of locomotives on the system to find the one you want to run. To get to a BNSF SD70MAC, I have to scroll past all of the ATSF locomotives, and all of the BN locomotives before getting to the BNSF. In my case I have to scroll pas 322 ATSF locomotives, 182 BN locomotives before my first BNSF. That takes about 8 minutes to get to BNSF, because the listing is in alphabetical order. There is no real search capability. Once everything is setup correctly, it is a wonderful system to run. But that just plain takes too long. The life of the Android Throttles is about an hour or so, and it takes 4 hours to recharge them. And that is also when the are able to connect to the CabControl System. This is a good system for a single roadname and a more normal number of locomotives, say less than 50. It does not always detect RailCom+ like it is supposed to, but seems to work about 60% of the time. It fails to detect the RailCom+ Zimo decoders for some reason, but that should not have ever happened. RailCom+ detection should be only any and all RailCom+ enabled decoders. I give the system a C- grade based on the lack of a strong computer interface for loading and managing a fleet of locomotives, and the mediocre throttles and their mediocre usable time. In some ways it is better than Digitrax, and in many ways it is way behind.
I thought these systems were supposed to be JMRI compatable . JMRI has a groupsio list I bet they can figure it out . Mike
I can connect to CabControl, but not transfer all or any information into CabControl. Only read information from CabControl.
I second trying the JMRI groups.io list. There are a number of UK and European contributors who might have better insight into ESU.
That is not my main problem with the system guys. It is the mediocre Android throttles that are a continuing problem that make this an untenable situation.
Final entry - Gutted out using the system to capture my whole collection of locomotives. There are workarounds for the quirks that should not be needed. The weak point will always be the throttles. Not made for larger hands. Also it seems to lose connection to the base unit a lot and it is only 3 feet away. That is very frustrating. Last but not least, the battery in the throttles still drains with the throttle turned off, and the system off. It is the only device I have seen that bleeds it's battery dry. So they have to live on the charging cables all the time. German Engineering really disappoints!
