FAQ:NCE Serial Communications
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NCE / Wangrow Serial Communications
The serial port works at 9600 bps. Setting it to a faster speed will not work, as the system lacks the handshaking capability to manage communications. JMRI does not allow speeds greater than 9600 for this reason.
This mostly impacts the Power House Pro and the Wangrow System One command station. (NCE supplied the software to Wangrow.)
NCE Serial and USB Interfaces
A number of commands present when using a serial cable are not available when using the NCE USB interface. Of the commands that are available, the computer interface can send any command it wants.
Compatibility
For connection to a computer, the following interfaces are compatilble:
NCE USB
- Power Cab
- SB3
- SB3A
- SB5
Serial Connection
- Power Pro DCC System
A USB to Serial bridge can be used for this connection.
Drivers
The NCE USB uses the SiLabs CP2102 chipset. Use the SiLabs CP210x drivers from SiLabs available here. There is a universal driver for Windows10. You also need to know if your OS version is 32 or 64 bit, and install the appropriate driver.
Limitations of the USB Interface
All Systems
Clock unavailable. Turnout monitoring unavailable.
SB3
No programming track support, operations mode only.
Power Pro
No multifunction decoder programming.
Auxiliary Input Unit (AUI) Support
- USB versions 7.x and above, Smartbooster with firmware version 1.65 and above support the AUI
- USB versions less than 7.x, no AIU support