Minutes of workparty:
By Norm C. 6/13/2009

Our first "workparty" of the summer was last Saturday. I think there were about 13 present. A few more would have been nice as there was considerable work and time setting this up.

1. NMRANet update, Di:
Since Di, one of the founders of the NMRANet, was there, he was able to give us an overview and update. Probably his most significant statement was that "the DCC cab bus was designed to control locomotives and it does a reasonably good job of that. Then people started to add on other functions with stationary decoders and are overloading the system."

2. Sprog w/DecoderPro, Brian:
We had another chance to see and use the SPROG. It simply connects between the program track and a computer with DecoderPro. It has three big advantages, it’s use doesn’t shut down the mainline, it’s cost is less than a PowerCab, and it programs sound locos.

3. DecoderPro, Di:
We had three computers running DecoderPro. Di gave us an "lesson" on its use and then each person got hands-on practice with the software. Once you know how, it’s fairly easy to use. It will allow you to program and then save your setup. You can also copy programs from one to another loco. It does much more, but we’re just getting started. I don’t know if our 4D laptop has enough muscle to run the program effectively.

4. ProCab use, Norm:
I went through some functions that I often get questions on, like consisting, emergency stop, programming, macros, and the program/esc buttons functions.

5. Resetting locos, Norm:
We covered this in the ProCab section

6. Macros, making, using, Bob B:
Bob went over Macros and gave people a chance to try them out on some modules he had set up there.

7. Lighting, Norm: We didn’t get to this topic.

8. Installation, Bob: We didn’t get to this topic.