I tried it today. My dealer received 8 (his order was larger but he says M is out of stock already). 3 were pre-ordered, and in the hour I was there, he got 2 more orders on the phone, since he announced the "in stock" status in his webpage. They seem to be going pretty fast.

Anyway, he didn't have it connected to the track when I arrived because he was struggling with the touchscreen of one of the samples. He thought the calibration of the screen wasn't good so he decided to do it again. His mistake, apparently, because it went bezerk and no more touchscreen... The screen button required to go to the setup options where "calibrate" is located was not available via hard buttons, so we connected a USB mouse which worked instantly.

We tried the 5-point calibration again, and the crosshairs kept jumping about and 8 times out of 10, I couldn't manage to calibrate the damn thing. Then when I more or less got it, I had to unplug the mouse which goes bezerk after a calibration. Then the mouse pointer kept junping to F5 on the right and pressing it, alone, even with no mouse attached! Ghostly...

So, write one off and try another CS2, which worked fine (but we didn't dare trying a calibration procedure), so now for my impressions:

- It's bigger than I thought. Looks sturdy and feels well built, just like the CS1. It does have a more luxury look, rather than the spartan, utilitarian design of the CS1;

- The screen looks very, very good in both colour and resolution (not as good as, say, my iPhone);

- The interface is very simple and is easy to use in most respects (more on that later);

- Having the lok photos to choose from in the database listing and on lok control screen is a great feature;

- The speedos have an excellent feature: when throttling up or down, there's a red triangle that goes around the dial in a linear fashion, indicating the target speed, while the "actual" speed needle accelerates to catch up. Delta loks have the triangle "attached" to the speedo dial. A very well thought and useful feature. Unfortunately, the speed knobs are rotary "infinite" encoders, just like the CS and MS...;

- Keyboard tab: Turnouts are colour coded (red, green, grey) to indicate their status as are signals;

- The manual appears very limited;

- I couldn't find any way to reset the unit to factory settings. No recessed hard button, no software option. Weird. We didn't try the PC interface, it might be available there;

- Layout tab: very nice feature, very easy to build a layout on screen. Apparently no zoom feature though, and icons are tiny;

- The interface is not as responsive as I would like it to be: some windows take some time to show up, and some time to disappear;

- The one thing I really didn't like: the damn cursor arrow is always there! It will lag after the touch pen or your fingers, getting in the way, not letting to see what's underneath it. It should only be there for mouse uses, not always there! In the layout tab, the arrow is big enough to hide the signal icons, which doesn't allow seeing the signal status. They need to make it disappear. In my view, the best way to use the CS2 is with a mouse, not with the touchscreen. This was a show stopper for me;

When I got there, I thought that, if I really liked it, I would end up with one under my arm on my way home... But the calibration weirdness added by the irritating arrow decided against that.

Judging by this very limited experienced, I'll step back and watch a bit more.

This is however, a very complex device that will require a lot of time to really get to know it. Ideally at one's home...

Edit 04/10/2008:

- The beast searches its picture database using the name of the lok stored in the mfx decoder. For example, I put my Brawa BR 75, modified with a lokpilotmfx, with the name BR 75 005 and the CS promptly put a BR 75 onthe display. Pretty neat!

- It is silent, contrary to the CS1, which has a constant hum/buzz.

Thanks for your report Luis.

Yep, he sent me an email and I was at a client's.

I gave them a lame excuse and off I went! 15 min afterwards, I was there, hands on!

Hey Lutz, is your CS2's serial number #000000001 ?? [:O][:I]

Hi Luis Many thanks for information .. just what we needed.
Maybe better to ignore the first CS2 you saw which appears to have a problem and concentrate on the second one.
Looks like I will need to find a mouse as mine are all wireless.
I am hoping you will buy one of these and give us a full home report.
Also good to see that M have sold the first batch and are out of stock. Looks like mine will come from the next batch.
Lucky chap to have such a good dealer.

David

Frostie, I'm sure a lot of that price increase was in the exchange rate.

I usually find that new items are at their most expensive, and then you can see them being sold at a discount after a year or two.

Ray

Ahhhhhh! I couldn't resist!

I bought one already, the last of the 8 that my dealer ordered. I wasn't on time for a booster, though.

Well done Luis! Enjoy!

Well, AFAI could test up to now, all train controller functions work, It's just those side issues that don't yet.

BUT, it clearly is a version where not all things are working, which is becoming a trend not only from Märklin, many manufacturers do this nowadays, just check Apple's iPhone. It is becoming more and more important for manufacturers to be first in the market with issues than last in the market with a perfect product.

Has anybody here purchased a Viessmmann Commander?

Luis ,
COngrats and enjoy.
in you Known Issues topic you mentioned that the IP Address could not be changed from 192.168.1.255. Bit of a problem there.

DO not know anbout Europe but here a lot of Routers use either :
192.168.0.XXX series
192.168.1.XXX series
or
10.1.1.XXX
or
10.1.0.XXX

So if your network is not in the 192.168.1.XXX range you are in trouble.

N

Hi Nev,

My router is @ 192.168.1.1 but actually my CS2 managed to connect to the Internet and updated itself to 1.0.3, then 1.0.5. All that with gateway set as 192.168.1.255. Weird.

Nev, well my CS2 has IP 192.168.1.106, which I chose and then there's another option, that of gateway which it refuses to change. BUT, I didn't RTFM.... And in the manual it says the gateway options are to use only with future software, not yet released...

192.168.1.255 would normally be the broadcast address for a subnet with a 24 bit subnet mask (255.255.255.0). You therefore should not use it for any devices. Not sure why Marklin would set the gateway on the CS2 to that address.

To get out to the internet, the CS2 needs to know the gateway for the subnet it is on, otherwise it will never connect to the internet. Does the CS2 allow you to obtain IP setup from DHCP? In that case it should then receive the proper gateway info and be able to connect outside of the local subnet.

Was about to say that but you beat me to it BigDaddy. Very strange choice by M* although I suppose that it means that nobody can get it wrong really as almost EVERY home network in the world uses 192.168.1.x
You should still be able to change it though...[}:)]

Hello everybody!

Just a simple question: Was anyone of you able to mapp functions of a mfx-loco?

Regards

A new CS1 costs now € 299,- (as seen at various dealers at the fair in Houten today). The CS2 costs € 629.-. The ECoS does € 450 so an CS1 + 3.0 update costs a much a an ECOS (and results in an ECoS...).

René - paid € 495 one year ago for an ECoS -

If a European orders a CS2 from a US Dealer do you have to declare the VAT and pay the VAT when if arrives in your home country ?

Flash Dave, I think this set is one that originally came with a CS1. The dealer has removed the CS1 and put a CS2 in its place and increased the price. You can see where the polystyrene has been cut to allow the CS2 to fit in.

The other thing about that set, Flash Dave, is the price. If I convert it to NZD it comes in at about $3000. Deducting the NZ retail price of a CS2 ($1369) gives me $1631 left, which is about $70 shy of what this starter set cost retail in NZ, with a CS1. Methinks this dealer is ripping people off with this set. Can anyone remember what the price for the 29840 set was in euros, I think it was around 800. If so this dealer is charging 800 euros for this set without the CS1, plus another 600 euros for the CS2. I'd be asking him where the CS1 is, for that price!

And the pillock states "A delivery without VAT is not possible", making this set even more expensive for overseas buyers, plus you need to pay 4% paypal fees, plus we would have to pay another 12.5% GST when the set comes into NZ - total would be around $3600.

Cheaper to buy the 29840 set with CS1 plus a new CS2 in NZ at retail prices:

29840 $1750
CS2 $1370

Total $3120 (and I'd have a spare CS1)

Dave, I like your style . I can email you my bank account details!

TBH, my impression so far is that the CS2 is, again, an incomplete product and I am a beta tester as are all early adopters.

For my current case, where my layout is not yet operative, I don't really mind, I even like to test beta products occasionally, and this is actually fun. It won't be fun, however, if Märklin does not complete the feature set and correct the bugs in say, a month or two.

My feeling is that Märklin wanted to beat ESU to the market (v3.0) by a comfortable time margin.

My advice is then: if you have an operative layout or if you don't enjoy testing products to the fullest for the sake of it, the CS2 is not for you yet. I'm confident it will, but it isn't as of v1.0.5.

Yes and No, as the broadcast address depends on the subnet mask. In any IP network, the number of hosts is always 2 to the power of n, - 2. Where n is = to the number of bits equal to 32 - the number of bits in the subnet mask. So, in the example above you have a 24 bit subnet mask (255.255.255.0), so 32 - 24 = 8. Two to the power of 8 is 256, so in the network 192.168.1.0 / 24 you can have a total of 256 - 2 usable hosts, which is 254. The first address in any range is always the network address (192.168.1.0) and the last is the broadcast address (192.168.1.255).

In your example, the 10.0.0.0 network is a Class A network, so normally the subnet mask is 255.0.0.0 (8 bits). We have 24 bits for the number of hosts (32 - 8), so we can have a maximum of 16777216 - 2 (16777214) hosts. Our network address is 10.0.0.0 and our broadcast address is 10.255.255.255. If our broadcast address happened to be 10.0.0.255, then we would be using a 24 bit subnet mask (255.255.255.0), and our number of permissible hosts would be 254.

Luis,
How did you update the CS??, Did you have it connected Via a Network Cable to the Router?
or did you download the updates and connect another PC to it?

Reason I ask is that my internet connection is about 10 Metres away from where the CS2 will be if I got one. I have a Wireless Router. with the CS1 I download the upgrades to my laptop via Wireless and then open Explorer to the CS location and do the upgrade. Laptop is connected to the CS.
Thanks in advance ,
Nev

Hi Luis. Glad you are enjoying testing the CS2 but having paid for up front it would have been better if it had worked as you expected. I would have thought Marklin would have learned from the first CS not to supply until all the features were present and working.
However you seem positive that in time all will be well and I will take your advice not to buy yet until there is a complete product on the market.
If you get in touch with Marklin and give them your comments it would be nice to know what they say.

David

Fully agree Dave, they should have known better.

I can understand some features not working yet, from a markrting standpoint: beating others to the market.

I really can't understand the keyboard screw up, though. This should have been picked up by testing, plain and simple. Testing was not thourough, that's for sure. One would have noticed that when you try to rename a lok and press "b" a "V" shows up, and if you want a "z" or "Z", there is none! You do have two "y", though quite useful, in case you forget where the normal one is...

Also, function mapping not available is not acceptable, as it is not the fact that automatic address fetching is not working.

I have sent them my issues, let's see how it goes.

BUT, I have to say this: this the best and most complete controller I have used so far (I haven't tried the Commander), and I don't regret getting it. It is a shame that not everyone has a dealer with a demo unit connected to an actual layout 10 min away from home like I do....