Switching from Railmaster to JMRI or Home Written Control Software
I had always found Railmaster excellent for what it did but it had one major limitation
That was because it was purely time scale driven when I wanted to be able to send instructions to it from elsewhere and have it respond as if it was interupt driven
In October 2024 I decided, due to limitations I was finding with Railmaster, to start investigation into the use of JMRI (a free option) and also the "ExPressnet" rules that contrpl the Hornby Elite Controller
My reasoning here was that JMRI is an open ended JAVA setup which should make it possible to get things to respond to instructions from my own sofware (and, of course, would give me endless control if I could get it to work)
After trying JMRI and studying Xpressnet rules I decided to extend my current VB.Net control program to use Expressnet and bypass the need for Railmaster
I had several problems understanding the Expressnet architecture and several head aches ! - but got there in the end and wrote new panels to :-
Enable Point Control
Enable Loco Control
Enable the construction of scripts that could automate the running of the layout
Details of the New Panels can be seen here
(a few notes)
andy@/Hk01
On the C Drive and updated with the package