# Change of DCC Standard ???



## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Bob - 

In the wireless DCC thread you posted the following:

There appears to be a dispute going on between Lenz & another manufacturer over how the standards should be changed.. Course I think Lenz has more pull than any other manufacturers because they gave the NMRA the rights to use there code.. There is also talk that maybe a new standard is needed, maybe one for the small scales & one for the large scales.. So you DCC boys better keep your eyes open & hopefully it will be backwards compatible.. 

BulletBob 

Could you elaborate?
Where did that information come from?


The only dispute between DCC manufacturers that has been going on in DCC that I know about is the issue about RailCom or bi-directional communication, but that doesn't involde a chnge to the standard.

Knut


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## Road Foreman (Jan 2, 2008)

Knut, 

I got the info off of the Lenz website.. Also I was under the impression that there was no standards for RailCom.. The other info has been gathered from various railroad magizines.. Nothing seems to be in concret yet but people are making statements that a change is needed.. I have not been reading to close yet, just getting bits & pieces.. 

BulletBob


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

I believe that the changes are additions to the current standard, not reversals of existing standards. 

The statement: "So you DCC boys better keep your eyes open & hopefully it will be backwards compatible.. " is somewhat misleading, that statement implies that your existing system might no longer work. On the contrary, many systems can support even many of the very old and early communications, like the MTS "serial function" protocol. 

New functionality will require additional definition, and of course standardization when everyone is happy. 

I believe you are talking about bidirectional communications where you can read back information from locos, etc. 

It will be nice to have that also. 

I've read about some techniques that would basically let you pinpoint the location of a loco (or any piece of rolling stock) with a decoder without having block detection. 

A TDR type of arrangement... (time domain reflectometry) 

Very cool, basically no additional wiring... 

Regards, Greg


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By Road Foreman on 31 Jul 2011 05:06 PM 
Knut, 

I got the info off of the Lenz website.. Also I was under the impression that there was no standards for RailCom.. The other info has been gathered from various railroad magizines.. Nothing seems to be in concret yet but people are making statements that a change is needed.. I have not been reading to close yet, just getting bits & pieces.. 

BulletBob 
Bob -

Do you have a link?
I can't find anything on Lenz' website. I'm sure it's there - but where?


I'm fully aware of the hassle between Zimo and Lenz/ESU wrt RailCom and RailCom Plus.

One huge problem (in my opinion anyway) is that NMRA doesn't seem to want to do anything with respect to DCC any more.
So a group of European DCC manufacturers formed a working group to finalize the RailCom standard, but since every one of them has a very strong business interest, that approach isn't getting anywhere very fast.

They have been at it for many years and **** hit the fan recently when Zimo outbid the incumbent DCC suppliers in Europe to provide DCC decoders to some large model railroad manufacturers.

Lenz has a patent on RailCom which they are not willing to sign over to NMRA (my understanding anyway), but Lenz is willing to license any of the DCC manufacturers who want to include RailCom in their product line up. However, they do have some requirements as to compatibility which is understandable and they expect the RailCom licensees to submit their products for compatibility testing.
That's understandable as well if there was an independent test organization like NMRA or MOROP in Europe, but right now the testing would be done by Lenz/ESU which of course doesn't sit well with some of the other manufacturers. 


I use Lenz/ESU in combination, not that they are the same company. at least not yet, but they are on the same side in this RailCom debate.

As to the comment that "a change is needed in DCC" - again, this is a very general statement.
I can see that evolution of DCC needs to continue - DCC has actually evolved quite a bit over the last 20 years and continues to do so - but a "change"?
What exactly do people propose to "change"? 

Any change is going to fall flat on its face unless it's backwards compatible with the existing DCC equipment and/or the existing equipment ius upgradable at reasonable cost.

Knut


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## Road Foreman (Jan 2, 2008)

Knut, 

Cann't find the info now, website does strange things, shows pages that I don't want.. 
Guess if I find it again I will book-mark it for you.. 

BulletBob


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Thanks Bob, 

Yeah, I know - web sites can be here today and gone tomorrow.......or the information is changed. 

I have the habit now to download whatever interest me as a pdf - tried either saving the URL in my bookmarks or do a Save As on the computer, but that doesn't work either in a lot of cases. 
Saving the web site as a pdf always works. 

Knut


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## StanleyAmes (Jan 3, 2008)

Lenz has a patent on RailCom which they are not willing to sign over to NMRA (my understanding anyway), but Lenz is willing to license any of the DCC manufacturers who want to include RailCom in their product line up. However, they do have some requirements as to compatibility which is understandable and they expect the RailCom licensees to submit their products for compatibility testing.





Just to clarify some misunderstanding. There are currently 2 key patents for bi directional DCC. I have one and Lenz has one. Both of these patents were given some time back to the NMRA and they form the basis of RP-9.3.1 and RP-9.3.2.


The NMRA has the ability to grant liciences for these patents so long as the products are tested to conform to the standards and RPs. This restriction was made to ensure that in the future real compatibility could be achieved.


Alas I do not believe that the NMRA has ever granted a licience in this area in part because they have developed no test procedures to date.


Currently a group of manufacturers in Europe have expanded upon these specifications and have evolved RP-9.3.2. 


Hope this clarifies the above.





Stan


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By StanleyAmes on 03 Aug 2011 11:16 AM 
Currently a group of manufacturers in Europe have expanded upon these specifications and have evolved RP-9.3.2.




Great to read your comments here on mls, Stan.


It's that Lenz patent on bi-directional communication that goes beyond the original ones that seems to create the current issues within that group of manufacturers in Europe as well as the concept of RailCom Plus. Can you provide any clarification on those two items?

Zimo and Lenz seem to be in opposite trenches and it would be nice to get an independent assessment of what is actually going on.


Knut


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Stan, I would love to hear a fundamental explanation on the bi-directional RP's.... or you might point us to reading sites 

(would much rather get your distilled-down version and your personal opinions, but will understand if that is too much typing) 

Regards, Greg


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## Axel Tillmann (Jan 10, 2008)

This topic has been at length discussed in the European forums. And actually it is not only ZIMO but other manufacturers too that are objecting to the licensing terms of Lenz/ESU. At the root is the fact that (Greg and you will appreciate this),..... let me make it clear in an example of the Internet world.

TCP/IP (the foundation of all our Internet activity) is an RFC standard. The "community" has agreed upon to work over TCP/IP and now CISCO wants to stand up and say you have to send all your products to CISCO before you are allowed to sell them.

We can easily see how much BS that is. First of all Lenz is too small of a company to even have the bandwidth to "certify" the products, second of all who needs that certification body or are you buying a certified PC that has an XYZ certified TCP/IP protocol stack in there? Nope, you bring it back if it doesn't function. The free market is an excellent control organization, and in the datacom world the most successful implementations were made through liberalization and not through control. Control always failed, DecNet, AppleTalk, Novel(IPX) they all wanted control and license fees, look where that got them.

Now back to RailCom. ZIMO was originally the only other manufacturer that had (without the control requirement) a RailCom license, at that worked for your. Now Lenz is on the tail end of his market and it looks like that Lenz/ESU are merging. ESU wanted the Lenz patent and Lenz needed to enhancement technology that ESU already had (developed originally for Maerklin HO). Now ESU used to be the dominant OEM source for all model manufacturers. And then came along Roco/Fleischmann and asked ZIMO to produce for them.

That started the whole ball of wax. shortly thereafter RailCom+ was discussed and many restrictions were put on the table. Some of them have been retracted, but the "CONTROL" still remains. This is of course designed to interrupt the business of the competitors. Any new software release (under the license agreement) needs to be re-certified. ZIO issues frequently issues new releases to address customer demands, extensions and of course bugs. ESU at best twice a year. Handicapping a more flexible manufacturer is ideal.

In addition ESU/Lenz never showed any interest in outside proposals of changes and enhancement, basically freezing the technology status to a limited implementation.

ZIMO had for year bi-directional communication and in order to give the market a wider choice Dr. Ziegler at the time starting working with Lenz and Lenze's RailCom proposal in order to give the market a wider choice, because Lenz was technically not capable to implement the ZIMO technology at that time.

So unless Lenz/ESU gives up their CONTROL desire and supports open standards and free markets there will be no resolution. However, ZIMO's OPBID proposal (Open bidirectional DCC) is freely available and manufacturers are singing up for it. The door for ESU/Lenz is closing fast.


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