Ray

[Ray]

Hi R. v/d Meulen,

Your config files look valid by me, so I’m thinking that’s not the issue.

At controller startup a message is displayed stating:
Setup: Number of locos to discover hubs for: 3

In this case the controller has found three loco’s in the (combined) controller configuration files.
What does your controller output to serial/logging at startup?

Cheers,
Ray

[Ray]

Hi R. v/d Meulen,

With the latest MTC4BT firmware the direct fn function configuration is no longer supported. You should use the new and more flexible event driven configuration. You can check the options and syntax here:

MattzoTrainController for Bluetooth (MTC4BT)

Cheers,
Raymond

[Ray]

Great to hear and thanks for the feedback! We’ll add it to the list of tested hardware.

[Ray]

That’s correct. There’s currently no way you’d be able to specify the credentials to use to connect to MQTT. It’s probably a small addition though, so we’ll try to add it asap.

[Ray]

Great Steven! I’ve added the DOIT DevKit to the list of supported boards for MTC4BT: https://mattzobricks.com/controllers/mtc4bt#board

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Ray.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Ray.

[Ray]

Correct!

[Ray]

We don’t know as we haven’t tested BuWizz. My assumption would be the BLE protocol used by BuWizz differs from the PU BLE protocol. Just like the SBrick BLE protocol differs from the PU BLE protocol.

This would mean MTC4BT currently doesn’t support BuWizz and we would need to implement a third BLE protocol in MTC4BT, next to the protocols for PU and SBrick.

[Ray]

Hi Steven,

The controller has read your configuration fine, found your PU hub with MAC address 90:84:2b:be:e2:11 and connected to it. So far your controller is working as expected.

It also attempts to connect to WiFi and MQTT, but I don’t see successful connection messages. So I’d focus my attention on that first, before going to Rocrail. Your next step should be setting up WiFi and then MQTT (both are configured in network_config.json), which will function as a gateway between the controller and Rocrail. More information can be found in the General controller section, under WiFi and MQTT: https://mattzobricks.com/controllers/general

Please ignore any references to other configuration files as those don’t apply to MTC4BT.

Cheers,
Ray

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Ray.

[Ray]

Actually that’s a valid point. I known for Windows it doesn’t matter, so I’ll change the default lib folder path in the platformio.example.ini file we distribute. Thanks Ulrich!

[Ray]

You’re welcome! Good to hear your train is running now 🙂

[Ray]

Upload and Monitor only updates the firmware of the controller. The configuration files network_config.json and controller_config.json are in SPIFFS storage, which you upload separately from your data folder using Upload Filesystem Image. After you’ve done that the controller will reboot with the new configuration.

Make sure you stop the monitor first or the upload will fail. After uploading the new configuration you can re-attach the monitor using the Monitor option.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Ray.

[Ray]

We do know auto-lights is not working. That’s a known issue we hope to fix in the next firmware release as well.

[Ray]

You can find the YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJC-R9E95Jota2XcKQIjt3g

[Ray]

In the platformio.example.ini file the folder ..\lib is included. That folder contains a subfolder MattzoBricks, which contains the mentioned files. The path is relative to the platformio.ini file, so that would point to the \lib folder in the root of the firmware zip-file. As far as I can tell and verify the location in the firmware zip-file and the path in the example platformio.ini file are fine.

Do you have the right lib folder referenced in your platformio.ini file?
lib_extra_dirs = ..\lib

Would you mind sharing your platformio.ini, leaving out any sensitive stuff?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Ray.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Ray.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Ray.

[Ray]

Hi Dirk,

I don’t think the ESP or the Rocrail version has anything to do with it. Last night I found a bug in de code that stopped f0 from working when assigned to a light on a hub. You already verified f1 (or higher) does work, right? If so, this bug (f0 not working) will be fixed with the next release of the firmware.

Cheers,
Ray

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Ray.

[Ray]

There is nothing else to configure in Rocrail for functions to work, accept for the loco address.

[Ray]

Hi Dirk,

Nice to hear you have trains running on MTC4BT! Have you uploaded this configuration to the controller and tested it? The second PU has a bad direction value for channel A. It says “reward” where you probably mean “reverse”? It will probably have the effect that that motor runs in “forward” mode, as that’s the default.

Other than that your config itself looks fine. And obviously that doesn’t resolve the lights issue. I need to look into that some more.

[Ray]

Glad to hear you found a solution, but have you figured out at which location the XmlParser files needed to be placed?

[Ray]

Hi Ulrich,

Did you open the MTC4BT-workspace.code-workspace file from VS Code? And did you copy the platformio.example.ini file to a platformio.ini file?

The XmlParser.h and XmlParser.cpp files are in the \lib\MattzoBricks folder. This folder is automatically included in the compilation by these lines from the platformio.ini file:

***
lib_extra_dirs =
..\lib
***

If you’ve created the platformio.ini file and have opened the mentioned workspace file in VS Code, then you should be good to go.

Cheers,
Ray

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Ray.

[Ray]

Hi Piet,

I think it shouldn’t be a problem. You can configure each channel of a MTC4PU controller as a motor or a light channel, so it’s all up to you, I guess :-).

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Ray.

[Ray]

Hi Zoltan,

When using the AZDelivery ESP32 NodeMCU Module WLAN WiFi Dev Kit C you should select the ESP32 Dev Module under Tools\Boards\ESP32 Arduino in the Arduino IDE.

Just tested it myself and was able to upload the firmware.

Cheers!
Ray

[Ray]

Hi Ulrich,

We are (and will be) gathering intel on the matter of power loss over time. In the end we hope to compensate for it by adjusting the power level while the battery depletes. If we have more info to share, we put it here. Thanks for starting this topic!

Cheers,
Ray

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