Friday, August 6, 2021

Well, That's Disappointing

For my birthday the lovely Mrs. Hades purchased for me a WiFiTrax WFD-31 wireless interface for my NCE PowerCab DCC system.

I installed it as per the directions, hooked everything up and got my cell phone to connect to the WFD-31. It's not happy to do so because there is no internet, but I'm not ready to put my train layout into the Internet of Things so I'm fine with that.

I opened the Engine Driver app on my cell phone, set it up to communicate with the WFD-31 and selected my locomotive. With bated breath, I dialed up the throttle...

and nothing.

Turns out, the WFD-31 only works with NCE PowerCab version 1.65B. I have version 1.28C.

Fortunately there is an upgraded EPROM available for the PowerCab (and has been since 2012) to incorporate V1.65B, and it isn't too incredibly spendy. So it is on its way, and maybe by this time next week I will be happily wi-fi throttling my trains.

Until then, it still works like it should as a tethered system, so I'm just going to go run some trains to make myself feel better about it.

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