 Joined: 18/11/2004(UTC) Posts: 756 Location: New Jersey, USA
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Hi All,
I found a little time over long weekend here in the States to play with Commander and here I am with a broad smile on my face to report
on my progress 
I put together very small C track layout with two sidings and 5 digital turnouts and found trusty old M* Re460 from one of starter sets to drive around (needless to say I forgot its address long ago).
Commander manual suggests putting any digital loco on the test track and claims to recognize its address for you. Sounds like a dream, but it is a reality - after about 15 seconds a pop up window appeared with locos digital address correctly identified  .
Commander has what seems like an infinite library of loco images to choose from and you assign that image to the loco, slap a free text label on it, go through sub-menus to identify what functions it has (lights, sounds, etc) and associate these functions with nice icons and you are all set; just place loco on the main track and its good to go
Also, Commander will display all CV values for you and you can quickly change your settings and save changes back to the decoder. It also has several preset acceleration curves to chose from or it will allow you to fully customize loco's characteristics.
Of course, the "meat" of the Commander is the full layout control. But to do that, one needs to master the art of graphical layout editing using Commander's touch screen editor. All your layout elements are there - straight/curve track, manual and digital turnouts, feedback points, train location indicators, route
start and end points and signals. It took me about 20 minutes to put
together graphical representation of my layout as seen below.
Nothing fancy and the process was painless and fun. Once diagram is setup, you click on a turnout (switch) to select it and go to edit its address and digital format (Motorola, DCC). After all turnouts have been so programmed, you exit layout editor and now you can drive your
loco and switch turnouts by just clicking on them and choosing direction. Screen will show you exactly which way turnouts are situated by highlighting direction of travel in yellow.
Next I wanted to set a route and get the Commander to drive the train for me, but I run into unpleasant problem when I turned Commander on - its touch screen calibration got out of whack somehow and I could not press and select any of the menus on the right side... [xx(]
There is calibration setting, turns out, and after going through the procedure (you click on four predefined circles one after another) the problem has gone away (and has not returned thus far).
I had another issue to overcome which required a call to Viessmann - English manual is a bit skimpy on detail (and the [}:)] is in the details, of course). To setup route, or to get Commander to tell you where your train is at the moment, you need to edit your layout and add some route specific elements: route start and destination points and also train "placeholders", where Commander will display train location based on feedback. Icons were not very intuitive, but a quick call straighted everything out. You enter route editor and, basically, go through 10 menu screens where you indicate your starting and ending points, events to occur along the way (based on feedback), such as turnout switching and loco behavior, and also the route mode: from fully automatic, where Commander does everything for you, to semi-automatic and manual models, where it only does turnout switching and you do the driving. It has very cool feature called route illumination; just like train dispatchers in the control room see trains on the network, Commander will show you the progress of your train along the route! Finally, you have an option to lock out other routes you may have setup while your current route is active (to prevent conflicts ...err collisions).
And that is as far as I have gotten. I can select my route by clicking on its starting point and Commander will take care of all switching for me.
Next up: s88 feedback. I want to integrate several circuit tracks into the layout and get Commander to utilize feedback to control train movement and also to see that route "illumination" in practice.
Aside from touch screen re-calibration and a need for icons clarification, I did not run into any issues with the Commander and can only say what has already been said - this thing is pure joy and it is light years ahead of anything on the market today.
Until next installment!
Mike
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