WiThrottle

[asciibaron]

y'all see this yet?

http://www.withrottle.com/WiThrottle/Home.html

[wm3798]

Holy smokes.  I suppose we're just that much closer to running our trains with mind control.

Unfortunately, I already lost mine...

Lee

[DKS]

Holy smokes.  I suppose we're just that much closer to running our trains with mind control.

Got you covered there, boss.

http://www.physorg.com/news137776590.html

[Philip H]

Dag nabbit, now I have to get an iPhone and JMRI to go with the NCE Powercab that's coming in January.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Lol, just last night I was thinking I'd love to have this for my Droid.

[Packer]

Hope my brother doesn't find this, or else my engines will be all over the place. Actually as crappy as service is here, they'd all be run-aways.

[reinhardtjh]

Dag nabbit, now I have to get an iPhone and JMRI to go with the NCE Powercab that's coming in January.

It'll work on an iPod Touch also...

[Day One]

I've played with a copy of it on another persons iPhone. But, not while it was attached to a running layout. It seems simple enough and I like the layout of the throttle and buttons. I use a digitrax DT400 throttle usually and the app suits my style of operating well. I think I could use it one handed easily and make switching duties pretty easy with the throttle in one hand and a pick or car cards in the other hand. I'm lucky enough to operate on a few different layouts that could all run this app with little to no work so I'm looking forward to testing it out. I'm really hoping that it works well.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Actually, now that I think about it, I'd miss having a knob.

I feel like, as strange as it seems, the digitrax throttles actually have pretty decent in-hand usability.

I usually use my thumb for the speed,and the "clicks" and chirps work quite well for no-look operation.

I was thinking it'd be cool to have a "notch" setting for diesels, but in reality I think it'd be really difficult because there are MANY things that affect real equipment speeds (inertia, brakes, etc...) that just don't scale down.

[Day One]

OK, tonight was a Withrottle test night for our group. We had 4 guys on iphones operating all at once on the layout and it worked really well. Setup was simple since the layout is already dispatched using JMRI and the computers were already on the home network. We simply connected to the layout owners home wifi network with our iphones, launched the withrottle server for JMRI, launched the app on our phones and connected to the withrottle server and that was it. We could select and run loco's just like that and the response was quick! I'd say the lag between the app and the loco responding versus using a digitrax throttle over radio were similar. I personally like the slider throttle. Especially the yard type with forward and reverse on the same slider. I could easily shuffle cars back and forth in the yard with this setup with one hand leaving the other hand free to use a pick or look at paperwork.

Battery life seemed acceptable with the app as well. I'm guessing the phone would run the app for 3 or more hours at least which will get us through an ops session on most of the layouts we run on. We all kind of agreed that we like the app and will try using it again for other ops sessions. 

A couple of things we noticed:
-if you're running a train and the phone rings, the train stops so you can take the call. At the end of the call, you are returned to     the app ready to continue on.
-if you get a text message, your train stops, allowing you to read the preview message, and you are then returned to the app.
-in both these cases, you have to re-select your direction of travel and speed again before continuing.

All in all I'm pleased with the withrottle app and will be using it for a couple more ops session in the coming weeks to evaluate it more.
I've got a few ideas that I'm going to suggest to the apps creator for future versions and I hope that they are well received. I think this is a great app that really allows anyone to run on anybody's layout regardless of what DCC system they have. All that's needed is the JMRI software, a layout interface like a locobuffer USB, and the home network, and anyone with an iphone or ipod touch can use thier device as a throttle on your layout.