In this section, we cover the hardware and software changes of the Cab portion of the NCE radio System. To learn about basic radio system itself, go here:
IN THIS SECTION:
1) RADIO BASE STATION JOB FUNCTION
2) RADIO BASE STATION HARDWARE VERSIONS
3) RADIO BASE STATION SOFTWARE VERSIONS
4) FIGURING OUT YOUR BASE STATION SOFTWARE VERSION
5) RADIO BASE STATION UPGRADE SUPPORT
6) RADIO REPEATERS
7) HISTORIC RADIO BASE STATION (RB01/RB02) PROBLEMS
8) GOT RADIO PROBLEMS? GO HERE: Radio Problems?
1) RADIO BASE STATION JOB FUNCTION
A radio base station is the master radio controller that acts as a bridge between the command station and the radio cabs. The radio based station physically connects to the cab bus but has no address assigned to it. The radio base station since it job it to allow all radio cabs to look like plugged in tethered cabs such that the command station never knows it is working with a radio cab or not. It command station talks to a radio cab the same way it would talk to a plugged in cab. Stated another way, the radio base station's job is to make the radio system operation transparent to both the cabs and the command station. Hence there is no software upgrade required of the command station or the cabs to support radio. Just buy ONE radio base station, plug it in to ANY NCE DCC system and your good to go. All you need to do is buy radio cabs.
2) RADIO BASE STATION HARDWARE VERSIONS (Types)
There are two versions of the radio base station RB01 and the RB02.
RB01 was the original radio base station the has no radio repeater support capability.
RB02: The RB02 is a RB01 with radio repeater support. You can tell the difference by looking at the number of jackl/connections the unit has. A RB01 only has one jack where as the RB02 has 3.
3) RADIO BASE STATION SOFTWARE VERSIONS
Note: The Cab06r was released a long time before the bug in the V2.1 RB02 software was identified. Software upgrades in the field we done by selected people to address situations that needed immediate support. However since that version of software was NOT a full release version, there are RB02 out in the field that will still have the Layout ID problem. If your having a Layout ID issue, then the best solution is to send it to NCE for the production V2.1 software release upgrade.
4) FIGURING OUT YOUR BASE STATION SOFTWARE VERSION
After figuring out what hardware version of the Base Station you have as described in Section 2 above, the following are you software upgrade options.
RB01: There is only one software version released for the RB01. No upgrades.
RB02: There are multiple software upgrades offered over the years. The following is way to identify what you got.
a) Look on the bottom of the RB02 for a sticker. If there is no sticker, it is V1.0
b) Look on the bottom of the RB02 for a sticker. If there is a sticker it should show a version number: V2.0 or 2.1
c) Look at the RB02 configuration menu and check for layout ID. If there is no option for Layout ID, then you have the production version of 2.1. The procedure is found in your RB02 manual under setting the layout ID. When you power up, the ProCab display will show the value of the Layout ID after step 3 below. If you see any value other than ZERO, then proceed to change it to zero.
Setting the layout ID:
1- Unplug the RB02 from the Cab Bus. Do not turn off system power.
2- Plug a ProCab into the PORT A connector of the RB02 using any standard Cab Bus cable. If a repeater cable is already plugged into this expansion port temporarily remove it.
3- Restore the Cab Bus connection to the RB02.
4- Type the desired Layout ID number then press ENTER.
5- Unplug the ProCab from PORT A to enable radio operation of the RB02 . The radio will not operate until the cab is unplugged.
6- Restore the repeater connection to PORT A if it was removed.
5) RADIO BASE STATION UPGRADE SUPPORT
There is no USER INSTALLED software upgrade options for the radio system. All upgrades must be done by NCE at NCE unless other wise authorized.
6) RADIO REPEATERS
The radio system has a limited amount of radio transmission power per the FCC rules. This limited the range the radio based station could cover. The problem would show up on large layouts. With the introduction of the RB02, radio repeaters were introduced to allow the radio system coverage to work with very large layouts.
Repeater look exactly like radio base stations but they are not. They all have a label on them that says they are a repeater. Connection wise, they do not connect to the cab bus but instead connect to one of the two RB02 repeater jacks or a repeater jack of another repeater. A large array of repeaters can be connected to a single radio base station allowing for mega large radio coverage. However in practice there is diminishing performance returns in going past two repeaters.
7) HISTORIC RADIO BASE STATION (RB01/RB02) PROBLEMS
The RB01 and a non upgraded RB02 radio base station would start to show problems when the following conditions were met:
1) A lot of radio cabs were being used.
2) The combination of wired (plugged in) and wireless (radio) cabs being used at the same time.
3) The radio cab addresses being used.
4) Sudden complete loss of radio operation on power up from a previous operating session where the radio ran just fine.
In other words very flaky radio operation under the above conditions or complete loss of radio operation.
Version 2.x updates of the RB02 FIXED bugs and timing issues related to:
1) Key presses to get dropped
2) Runaway trains
3) Several cab addresses (8, 18, and 49) would cause the system to do bad things.
4) Cab06r response performance improvement.
5) Layout ID issues.
Updated
5/28/17
8/16/17
12/29/17