L.E. v 0.7 | Mesh networking for railway modeling

This week we decided to pause our NFC research around antennas and focus on other components. We already have great performance for NFC readers if a reader is placed under rails and an unpowered tag is placed on a train. NFC in Loco.Engineering is used to detect a train's location and perform some actions when a train is detected. Before we wanted to give customers a choice where to put an NFC reader (an NFC reader should be connected to the WCC module) and where to put a tag (a small unpowered sticker around 10mm x 10 mm). There are 2 options here - install a reader under rails or inside a train. After a few months of experiments, we decided to go with the first option only (an NFC reader's antenna is installed under rails) but we'll continue working on the second option (a reader is installed inside a train). The main advantage of NFC is that the system knows which train is detected and the accuracy is just a few centimeters. For example, you can put a tag sticker on the last car (stickers are unpowered and you don't need any wires) and know when your long train exists a block or level crossing to update the signal's state.

Last 3 days our main development has been around mesh networking. In Loco.Engineering trains and layout elements are connected together and create a virtual mesh. This means that any train inside a mesh can send messages to another train or accessory inside the same mesh (network or project in other words). Of course, this communication is fully wireless. The main problem with a mesh approach is how to optimize messages that are sent between trains and elements and make communication very fast even with thousands of elements on the layout. We designed a special WCC protocol to optimize this communication inside a mesh. This protocol is open and you can use it in your own projects (documentation is here, examples of how to use the WCC protocol will be available later).

What's new in v. 0.7:

• [FIRMWARE] Updated WCC protocol
• [FIRMWARE] Improved new module provision over BLE
• [API] Added new API to work with trains
• [APP] New right sidebar with module details

If you have any questions or feedback feel free to contact us at hey@loco.engineering.