gregj410 wrote:I’m not sure what the advantages are over DCC or Legacy...
Oh, this is such a sore spot with me, so read on having been warned! GRIN!
The big advantage is quite simply one is not sending control-packets as a carrier signal up and down dirty rail with mechanical joints, through arcing wheels and sliding pickups, praying the information will get to the decoder in some understandable form.
Just about every other animated/motion model hobby uses RC in some form, be it aircraft, cars, monster-trucks, construction equipment, or tractor trailers. They often have far more information capacity than we require, sound, lights, steering, swivelling cabs and booms and shovels and sheave-heads, and the info speed required for racecars is far faster than what any of these antiquated carrier systems like DCC or the cack-handed proprietary systems from the highrail people.
Unfortunately, in the scale world we have the NMRA and the silly notion of making DCC a standard. They have singlehandedly stifled innovation in the model railroad world simply because they can't move remotely fast enough to keep pace with the innovation the rest of the animated model is currently enjoying. The whole thing of a digital signal fired down the track over top of a voltage goes back to the 1960s and GE Astrac, that back in the day when aircraft R/C was lucky to have enough channels for rudder and elevators.
If NMRA had not become a boffin-fest over DCC, and just defined the plugs for power in and power distribution out, one could swop in a new board and new technology of ones choice in a model rather than have the whole dam thing become obsolete for most users who aren't technophiles and EEs. It doesn't matter the source of the power, track or battery; define the voltage and form, the plug into the board, let the designer keep pace with the tech as it unfolds, define the plug array/outputs to motor, speaker, lights, &c. We could be up to speed with the rest of them using R/C, Bluetooth, &c, instead of being hobbled by this horribly obsolete carrier signal nonsense from the 1960s.
Even with the hirailers ignoring the NMRA, they haven't come up with anything better simply because they just wanted their own brand-loyalty-bullshit carrier system. If you really want to see how backwards we are, go see the model construction equipment people at a show and see what they can do with R/C as it is now.
That said, Blunami sends the control signal over-air rather than through the rail. The install is as easy as any DCC decoder and you can at least get a taste of what everyone else has been enjoying. It's already a decade old or so by now, though, and still niche in our world simply because of the unholy adherence to these horrid digital carrier control systems as either an industry standard or, in the case of highrail, proprietary systems to ensure you keep buying this manufacturer's or that importer's exclusive shyte.
Oh, I feel so much better now!
