I thought that I would take the opportunity to post an update.
While I still like this device, there are some challenges.
1.
Wifi. It is not a real problem for me, but it does seem to be a problem reported on the ESU forum. My train room is down stairs from my wireless access point. So it is about 10m away and through a wooden floor. It works okay for me, but then I have a Enterprise grade access point (looks like those ones in the ceiling in offices) connected to a commercial UTM device (long story). So my reception even across the road and around the corner to the bus stop is good.
The big problem is that ESU chose to use the 2.4Ghz band which only has 3 non-overlapping channels (there are a maximum of 14 channels - depending on your Country, but they overlap). Great if you live on your own in outback Queensland, but hopeless if you live in an apartment block full of Geeks or microwave cookers. The actual overlap can be less if some knuckle head decides to set a 40Mhz bandwidth instead of the normal 20. A strange choice of WiFi band from a country with a large urban population.
Access to the 5Ghz band would have been a smart option as there are 23 non-overlapping channels (once again depends on your Country).
The other problem, I suspect, is that the radio in these devices is not very strong and there is a lot of background chatter from the Android device itself to the Internet. (I am still logging this stuff and may talk about it in another post.) I recommend that you consider buying a Wifi repeater for your train room. (For an example see,
http://www.netgear.com.a...-extenders/WN3000RP.aspx)
2.
Android version 4.1.1. As I mentioned earlier, this is an old version of Android. So if you want to buy other useful stuff from the Google store, you often can't because version 4.1.1 is no longer supported by the app maker. AND you can't upgrade the operating system.
This is a problem I found with my old, but still working, iPhone 4. Because Apple won't upgrade the Operating System past a certain point, in my case it was iOS 7 you then can't download updated apps. Why does Apple do this? Cynical people will say that it is to force the market to buy a new phone every three years or so, but the reality is that the hardware in older phones will not allow to the phone to run efficiently. (i.e. it will run very slow!) So now days it can only be used for music - even that has limitations - so I had to buy a new phone.
So the suspicion here is that the hardware inside the MC2 is low performance, which might prove a challenge for ESU in the future.
3.
Storage. My initial assessment of the storage capacity of this device was incorrect. There is two storage areas. The system area is only 500Mb, while there is a media are of 2Gb. My system storage was full yesterday (one of the prompts for this update) and I was alerted to this by an attempted update of Google Play by the device. To fix the problem, I had to go into the Google Play and delete all the updates. Unfortunately, ESU has locked the device so you can't (at least I have not worked out how to yet) delete the useless stuff like "Google Hangout" , "News & Weather", "TalkBack", "Google Text-to-Speech" to clear out more space.
4.
Battery. Every time I go to use the device, the battery is flat. I don't use it every day and I know it has been at least a week since the trains were running, but I expect the battery to at least keep charge to a week while it is not used. I need to do some more testing on this issue.
5.
Updates. I have already talked about the system updates. The update of the Mobile Control II app is just plain weird. Firstly, it is not done through Google Play like other Android apps, it uses a Windows application to update the device BUT, contrary to normal software update practice, you must be running the MCSII app on the device before you start the update. This also means that the eCOS has to be running. Crazy!
I suspect they don't want the app on the Google Play store to ensure that it only runs on their hardware - makes sense since there are not many mobile phones with a big knob located where you would stick your ear. Surely there is a less clumsy way to update these devices?
6.
Screen Size. It is too small for my old worker's hands. Even the eCos comes with a pointer stick. The easy solution is to go to eBay and buy a Stylus Touch Screen Pen. They cost about $1.70 posted to you. Unfortunately, the MC2 has a different type of screen than the eCOS so the eCOS pointer will not work.
This is version 1 of a good product. So there is a good chance that ESU will fix some of these problems - their product support is good, if a little slow. However, I suspect some of the issues may not be addressed until MC3 is available. It also looks like it is one of those great engineering ideas that have been mangled by accountants and marketing people.
Should you buy one. Yes. It is a very useful device - even for those of us using computer control. Even if you are not nerdy, this forum is a great source of assistance as is the ESU forum should you have a technical problem.
