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Enhancing & Expanding EX‑CommandStation

Out of the box your EX-CommandStation can run trains, but it is capable of so much more.

Explore this page to see how EX-CommandStation can be expanded to enhance your model railroad/railway. Some of the ways include:

Also, the Big Picture pages describe a theoretical journey from just controlling some trains, through using rosters, turnouts/points, turntables and on to automation of trains.

Rosters

EX-CommandStation has the ability to define all of your locomotives, each with their individual list of their defined decoder functions. That list is advertised to the various throttle apps, so that when you select a loco in the throttle app, the app displays the correct function labels unique to that loco.

For the decoder functions, you can provide a text description of the function. So rather than seeing F0..F31 you see a description of what the functions actually do.

The are two ways to add rosters to your EX-CommandStation:

Via EXRAIL

This capability is part of EXRAIL and is built into your EX-CommandStation. Read the following to explore this feature:

Via the EX-CommandStation's Web Browser

This capability is available to the EX-CSB1 and DIY EX-CommandStations using ESP32 and NUCLEO microprocessors, running version 6.0, or later, EX-CommandStation software. It is not available on the Arduino Mega.

See the roster entries via the web browser page for more information.

Turnouts/Points

Turnouts/Points included on your layout can be any of the following forms:

The capability to define and support these is part of EXRAIL and is built into your EX-CommandStation. See EXRAIL Turnouts/Points for more information on these.

Note: To simply control existing DCC Turnouts/Points see DCC Accessory Operation for more information.

Routes and Automation - Automating your layout

Your EX-CommandStation has the ability to perform sequences of instructions ranging from simply throwing a set of turnouts/points (a traditional 'route') to performing extremely complex control of locos, animations, lights and, of course, turnouts/points.

This capability is part of EXRAIL and is built into your EX-CommandStation. Read the following to explore this feature:

TrackManager - DC and DCC Operation

Your EX-CommandStation has the ability to dynamically configure the outputs of your EX-CommandStation as any of:

  • Main DCC track output
  • Programming DCC track output
  • DC mode
  • DCC Auto Reverse
  • DCC Booster

Any output of your EX-CommandStation can perform any of the functions listed above. And, for most of them, you can temporarily change them at will.

This capability is part of TrackManager and is built into your EX-CommandStation. Read the following to explore this feature:

Also see:

Accessories

Within the DCC-EX ecosystem, an accessory is anything you can connect to or control from your EX-CommandStation which also includes our other products such as EX-FastClock, EX-IOExpander, EX-SensorCAM, and EX-Turntable.

Accessories are broadly divided into two categories:

See Accessories for more information.

Also see:

Distributed Layout Nodes

Distributed Layout Nodes offer a simple way of physically distributing layout control (usually wirelessly) over a wide area, using additional microprocessors, running essentially the same EX-CommandStation software (with just a slight configuration change) in each node.

See the Introduction to using distributed layout nodes page for more information.

Tools

The DCC-EX team also provide a number of tools to support your EX-CommandStation and your layout generally. These include: