Friday, July 16, 2010

Touchcab

For all of you who like WiThrottle, there is competition. :-) A small Danish company called Touchcab has an iPhone/iPod Touch application called Touch cab. This is a wireless throttle to control your model railroad. However, it does more than that, it also controls accesories like signals / turnouts etc, which is something WiThrottle cannot do. It works directly with Lenz or ESU commandstations, provided they are attached to a Wifi router via their ETHERNET port. I have asked Touchcab if they also support, (or are going to support) JMRI, and hopefully receive an answer from them.
Also Touchcab is available as a free lite version. You can get it on the Apple app store.

UPDATE: I received a reply from Touchcab, which stated they did not expect support for JMRI any time soon, and are focussing on support for more Xpress net systems (Roco/Fleischmann/Lenz). Today TouchCab supports the ECoS and ECoS2 from ESU and the Central Station 1 from Märklin (which is basically an ECoS inside).
Next up will be Lenz through the announced XpressNet Interface (http://www.digital-plus.de/digitalplus/digitalplus_pc.php) which will be available at the end of the year.If you can't wait and are willing to get a computer involved, (which Touchcab does not need), use the WiThrottle solution through JMRI software for now.

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