MegaConsole

1. Meet MegaConsole

MegaConsole is a free Windows app for looking after MegaPoints System2 boards. It finds the boards on your layout, gathers them into one list and lets you open their settings, make backups and install board updates without remembering individual web addresses.

What MegaConsole is made of

One window on your PC, and inside it a handful of parts. Some of them are about the boards under your baseboard; one draws the railway; two of them let other things - train-control software, and tablets - reach your layout through this PC. The drawing below is the whole of it on one page. Nothing here is a separate program to install: they arrive, and update, inside MegaConsole.

Built from the workshop tool we use every day

MegaConsole began as our own workshop program. We use it to load the software, check the settings and test every System2 board before it leaves us. We now make the same tools available to you, free of charge.

That has one consequence worth saying out loud: a few of the buttons are workshop buttons. "Erase a board" really does empty a board completely. We have left them in because the day you need them, you will be very glad they are there - and every one of them is clearly labelled and explained on the screen before you press it.

What MegaConsole looks after

Use MegaConsole when you want to set up a board, change a setting, make a backup or investigate a problem. Once the job is finished, you can close it. Your layout and its System2 boards carry on working without the computer.

2. What your computer needs

Almost any Windows computer bought in the last ten years will run MegaConsole comfortably. There is nothing to install first - no Java, no .NET, no accounts. The download contains everything. The one exception is the optional USB programmer lead, which needs a small driver of its own on Windows 11 - see section 15.4.

Computers that are not currently supported

• Apple Macs and iPads. Not yet. MegaConsole is a Windows program today.
• Android tablets and phones. Same answer.
• 32-bit Windows. Very old machines only; if yours is one, Windows will simply refuse to start the installer.
• Windows 7 and Windows 8. Microsoft stopped looking after these, and so have we.

Storage space

The download is about 50 MB, and MegaConsole takes up a little over 200 MB once installed - it carries everything it needs inside itself, which is why there is nothing to install first. On top of that go the board programs it collects for you (see Downloads). Each of those is small, around 1 MB, but MegaConsole keeps the older versions so you can always go back, and over a year or two that adds up. Five gigabytes free is comfortable and leaves you never having to think about it.

3. What you can do, and what is switched on for you

You do not need a USB adaptor for most everyday jobs. If your System2 boards are already on your home network, MegaConsole can find and manage them in the same way that your computer finds a network printer.

The optional USB tools are for boards that are not yet on the network, direct access to the layout's CAN wiring, and recovery when a board is no longer responding. The table below shows which connection each job needs.

Two rows there are worth reading twice, because they look like one job and are not. Getting a brand new board onto your Wi-Fi needs nothing plugged in. A board fresh out of its box puts up a little Wi-Fi network of its own, and MegaConsole walks up to that and hands it your details, at the kitchen table, before a single wire is run. What does need the adaptor is doing the whole layout in one press, because that message travels down the layout wiring. Task 6.8 covers both.

Why a menu entry might be grey, or missing

MegaConsole is one window, but it is not one program: it is a shell with parts loaded into it, and not everybody holds every part. So the menu you see is not always the menu in the pictures in this guide, and there are exactly three reasons for that. The console always tells you which one you are looking at, under the entry's own name.

The two USB parts have to be ours

MegaConsole drives the CAN adaptor and the programmer that you bought from us, and only those. Your order is what switches them on: buy either one and it comes to life on its own, usually within a day, with nothing to type in and nothing to install.

Until then their menu entries stay grey and say "No supported device found", with a fuller sentence beside it naming the address we looked under and what to do about it. If you have just ordered one, or you think we have got it wrong, tell us and we will put it right the same day.

4. Connect the optional USB tools

There are two optional accessories. You do not need both. Most people start with the CAN adaptor and buy the programmer later, if ever.

4.1 Connect the USB programmer

One rule: OUT faces the nearest board edge

The same six pins are on every System2 board we make, in the same arrangement, so once you have done it on one board you have done it on all of them.

See it on a board

Plugging it in, step by step

1. Find the six pins on your board - a single row of six, standing up.
2. Push the small black plug on, with the OUT label facing the nearest outside edge of the board. It should go on squarely and sit flat. If it feels like it needs forcing, it is not lined up - lift it off and look again.
3. Plug your USB-C cable into the other end of the lead, and the other end of the cable into your PC. (The cable is the ordinary sort that charges a phone or tablet. Any one you already own will do; one is not supplied.)
4. Wait about five seconds. On Windows 10 the lead is usually recognised on its own. Windows 11 does not come with the driver it needs, so if this is a Windows 11 PC you have not used the lead on before, put that driver on first - section 15.4 walks you through it, and it is a once-only job.
5. Look at MegaConsole. Programmer update, Board console and Erase a board stop being grey. If they are still grey after ten seconds, see section 12.

4.2 Connect the USB CAN adaptor

Keep CAN-H with CAN-H and CAN-L with CAN-L

Plugging it in, step by step

1. Find the CAN-H and CAN-L wires on your layout - the pair that runs between your boards. On a System2 board they are labelled on the green screw block.
2. Loosen the two screws marked CAN_H and CAN_L on the adaptor.
3. Put a wire from your layout's CAN-H into the adaptor's CAN_H, and tighten. Give it a gentle tug: it should not come out.
4. Do the same for CAN-L into CAN_L.
5. Set the terminator ON/OFF switch to OFF. Leave it in this position wherever the adaptor is connected; the System2 boards terminate the network.
6. Plug the USB end into your PC and wait a few seconds. No driver disc.
7. Open MegaConsole and click "Your boards". Within a few seconds your boards start appearing, on their own. The green LIVE word appears at the bottom left.

5. Find your way around MegaConsole

MegaConsole keeps its tools in the menu down the left. Select one and its page appears on the right. The version number and the update controls stay at the foot of the menu, where they are always easy to find, and the menu shrinks to fit a short window rather than running off the bottom of it.

Here is the whole menu, in order. Yours will be shorter, and section 3 says why: the last column is the part of MegaConsole each entry belongs to, and an entry whose part you do not hold reads Not available or is not drawn. Nothing in the first group is ever hidden - those are everybody's.

The drawing at the top of Home

Above that list is a picture of your setup: this PC on one side, your boards on the other, and the roads between them. There are three, and each is drawn as what it really is - your home network, with an aerial at each end and the signal crossing the air where Wi-Fi is doing the work; the CAN adaptor; and the programming lead.

A road that is ready right now is lit and moving. One that is not is dimmed and still. It is a picture of what is connected, not a measurement of how busy anything is - so a lit road means "this way is open", not "something is going down it this second". Ethernet and Wi-Fi both count as being on the network, and your boards can be on Wi-Fi while this PC is on a cable; it is the same network either way, and the drawing says so. A dimmed USB road means its adaptor is not plugged in, or is not one of ours.

The foot of the menu

User guide - this document, fetched fresh each time, so it is always the current edition - then Check for updates and Release history, and under them the version number MegaConsole is running. Release history lists every version of every part, each line marked with the part it belongs to.

Bottom right, on some pages

A status strip: a green LIVE when the adaptor is listening, how many boards have been heard, and how busy your layout wiring is.

When a job is running

Whatever is happening keeps happening. The foot of the menu says what, and you are free to go and look at another page while it does.

6. Common jobs

Choose the job you want to complete. Each guide starts by telling you whether it uses the network, the CAN adaptor or the programmer, then takes you through the job in order.

Nothing plugged in (if your boards are on your network) - or the CAN adaptor (always)

6.1 Find every board on your layout

This is usually the first job. Select Your boards and wait about three seconds. MegaConsole finds the boards for you, so there are no network addresses to type.

What each card shows

On the card	What it means
Servo-8 Driver	What kind of board it is.
id 214	Its number on the layout wiring. Every board has a different one. You will rarely need it.
fw 27	Which version of the board's program it is running.
192.168.1.40	Its address on your home network. Click it and the board's own web page opens in your browser.
servos	The name you gave it. If you have not named it yet, this is worth doing - see the next task.
at platform end	The place you typed in, so you know which board this is without crawling under the baseboard.
Update to V34	A newer version exists. This is a notice, not an instruction - nothing happens unless you ask.
found over the wire	How this board reached you: down the layout wiring, over WiFi, both ways, or because you typed its address in. Handy when one board is behaving differently from the rest.
heard 10 s ago	When it last spoke. A board that goes quiet fades to grey and says how long it has been silent, but it never disappears from the list.
Little numbered squares	The board is chattering. Each square flashes as that part of it says something.

Choose cards or rows

The Cards and Rows buttons at the top switch between the picture-postcard view above and a plain table. In the table every column heading sorts - one click for smallest first, a second click to turn it round - which is the quick way to answer "which of my boards is running the oldest software?".

Beside them is an Include beta tick. Leave it off and the cards name only finished versions. Turn it on and a board will also tell you when an early-access version exists for it - "Update to V36 beta 1" rather than nothing at all. It changes what you are told, never what happens: no update is ever installed without you asking for it.

If no boards appear

What the empty page says No boards yet. Plug the CAN adaptor into this PC - or, if your boards talk through a broker, name it on the MQTT page - and they appear here on their own. Click one to change its settings.

That is the whole answer. See section 12 if it persists.

Needs: your free licence. Nothing else, if the board is on your network

6.2 Change a board's settings

Click a board's card and that board's own screen opens across the window. Every board we make now has one built for it, laid out the way that product's own web page is laid out and using that product's own words - so a Servo-8 gives you eight rows of servos, an OUT-64 gives you its mimic panel with the colours as colours, and a Route Processor gives you a route editor. It is the board in front of you, not a list of settings that happens to fit.

Where a board has more than one screen's worth in it, the screens become tabs across the top, named after the sections on the board's own page. An unsaved change on a tab you are not looking at puts a dot on that tab, so nothing you have altered can hide behind another screen.

Make and save a change

1. Click the board you want in the list. Its screen opens over the window, with a close cross in the top right corner for when you are done.
2. Change what you want to change. Every setting has its name, its units and a line explaining what it does, in plain words, right there beside it.
3. Nothing has gone to the board yet. Settings you have changed but not saved are marked, and a line along the bottom counts them: "3 unsaved - on this PC only until you save".
4. Press "Save to board". Now they go, and the board remembers them through a power cut.

Beside Save are Undo, which puts every changed setting back the way the board had it, Back up board, which files a copy of this one board on your PC without changing anything, and Restart board, which is the polite way to give a board that is sulking a fresh start without walking round to its power supply.

the first thing worth setting on a new board is its name and its location. "Front 1-8" and "under the station throat" cost you thirty seconds today and save you a torch and a crawl in two years' time. MegaConsole shows those words everywhere afterwards, in preference to any number.

Adjust a servo while you watch

Press Adjust on any of the eight rows and a dial opens with a servo arm drawn on it. The two handles on the arc are where that servo sits at Low and at High. Take hold of one and the real servo follows your finger, out on the layout, as you move it - so you set a point blade by looking at the point blade rather than by typing a number and hoping.

Nothing has gone into the board's memory while you do any of this. The line along the bottom says so plainly - "live wire connected - the gauge moves the servo, RAM only until Save" - so you can fiddle to your heart's content and walk away having changed nothing. Reset puts that servo back where it started, and Done closes the dial.

a board's own identity - the number that tells it apart from the other boards - is shown greyed out and cannot be edited here on purpose. Two boards with the same number is a mess to untangle, so MegaConsole simply will not let you make one by accident.

Needs: nothing extra. Always safe - it only reads

6.3 Back up your layout before making changes

If you read only one task in this guide, make it this one. A backup is a copy of every setting on every board, kept on your PC. Taking one never changes a board - it only reads - so there is no such thing as a bad moment to do it.

1. Click Backups.
2. Optionally type a Label - "before the open day", "as it was when it worked". You will thank yourself later.
3. Press "Back up every board now".
4. Wait a few seconds. Every board is read and copied. When it is done it tells you how many were captured.

Automatic backups before updates

MegaConsole also takes one by itself, automatically, before it writes a new program to any board - and if that backup does not complete, it refuses to do the update at all. Those appear on the same page under "settings images, taken by themselves before every firmware write". You do not have to remember; it remembers for you.

a backup lives on this PC. If the PC dies, so does the backup. Copy the backups folder onto a memory stick now and then - it is small, and it is the only copy of a layout's worth of setting up.

Needs: an internet connection, the first time. Never touches a board

6.5 Download board software to your PC

This page downloads the latest software for each kind of System2 board and keeps it ready on your computer. Downloading the files does not change any board.

1. Click Downloads.
2. Press "Check for new firmware". It talks to us, works out what is new, and fetches it.
3. Watch the ON THIS PC column fill in as the files are saved.
4. Click the little arrow beside any product to see every version we have ever published for it, newest first, each with the notes that came with it.

You are offered new versions first

The day we finish a new version of a board's software, MegaConsole has it. Boards looked after without MegaConsole are offered the same version on the 1st of the following month, along with everything else that has become ready by then - so updates arrive on one day people can expect rather than on four separate evenings.

It is the same software either way; you simply get it sooner, because you have the tools to put it on and take it off again. There is a second reason we work this way and it is the better one: if something turns out to be wrong with a version in the meantime, we quietly do not pass it on, and it is fixed before it reaches anybody else.

Why keep local copies?

• It works when the internet does not. Everything is already on your PC, so an update on a Sunday evening does not depend on your broadband.
• It keeps the old versions. If you preferred how a board behaved last month, that version is still there and you can go back to it.
• Everything is checked. Every file is verified as genuinely ours before it is kept, and checked again before it goes near a board. A file that fails is thrown away, not stored.

early-access versions live in the BETA column, and they come through MegaConsole and nowhere else. Registering is all it takes - they are part of the ordinary free licence now, so there is nothing to ask for and nothing extra to pay. The LATEST column is still the safe choice, and nothing installs a beta on a board unless you pick it.

this is doing the shopping. Updating a board is the cooking. They are separate on purpose, so the shopping can be done at a sensible moment and the cooking done when you are stood at the layout.

Needs: your boards on your network. No lead, nothing to unplug

6.6 Update boards over your home network

This is the easy way to put a newer program on a board. It travels over your home network, so there is nothing to unplug and no lead to go and find.

1. Do a backup first (task 6.3). MegaConsole will take one automatically anyway, but a labelled one of your own costs nothing.
2. Click Network update. Your boards appear, sorted by type.
3. Tick the boards you want, or press Select the whole layout.
4. Look at WHAT WOULD INSTALL. It spells out, board by board, exactly what is about to happen. Nothing has been sent yet.
5. Press "Update over the network…".
6. Watch. Each board gets its own progress bar and its own words. When one finishes it restarts itself and reappears in the list running its new version.

MegaConsole starts with one board

Even if you selected twenty boards, MegaConsole updates one and waits for it to come back working before it touches the rest. If that first one has any trouble, the other nineteen are still exactly as they were. Only when the first one is proven does it carry on, in small waves. There is a Stop after this wave button throughout, and stopping is always safe: boards already told to finish do so, boards not yet told stay untouched.

tick Several at once if you have a lot of boards and are feeling brave. Leave it unticked and they go one at a time, which is slower and calmer.

An older board may need the programmer once

Some boards say this on their own line. It means the program currently on that board is too old to know how to update itself over the network - the ability had not been invented yet. It is not a fault. Update that one through the programmer (task 6.7) just once, and from then on it can do it over the network like the others.

keep the power on. A board part way through an update that loses its supply will need the programming lead to finish the job. It is recoverable - nothing is bricked - but it is a nuisance you can avoid by not doing this five minutes before you switch everything off.

Needs: the USB programmer lead

6.7 Update or rescue a board with the programmer

This is the way in when the network is not an option: a board that will not start up, a board too old to update itself, or an update that got interrupted. It works whatever state the board is in, because it writes to the chip directly from the very first byte.

1. Wire the board up as in section 4.1 - OUT towards the nearest edge.
2. Which board - tell it what kind of board is on the bench. A board that is not running cannot say what it is, so this one is down to you.
3. Which version - leave it on the newest unless you have a reason not to. It names the version it is going to use rather than making you take it on trust, and every version we have ever published is in the list behind it.
4. Programming lead - already filled in. If you have more than one lead plugged in, pick the right one.
5. Press "Install through the programmer".

if you keep several leads on the bench, the list tells them apart by the serial number of the board on the end of each one once it has asked. Plug two in and you can see which is which without unplugging either. Until a lead has been asked it says "serial not read yet", which is simply a lead nothing has spoken to yet.

It reads the chip first and stops if it is not the board you said. Then it downloads and checks the version if this PC has not got it already, and writes - checking every single block against the chip's own reckoning as it goes, so a bad write cannot pass as a good one. The log underneath tells you what it is doing, in plain words, the whole way.

Starting again and clearing settings

Back to how it left us

Erases the whole board and puts the chosen version back on it. Nothing you set up survives. This is the "start again from scratch" button.

Clear its saved settings

Erases what the board has remembered - names, channels, everything you set - and leaves the program alone. Use it when a board is behaving oddly and you would rather set it up fresh than hunt for the setting that is wrong.

if anything interrupts it - a knocked cable, a closed lid - nothing is broken. Plug it back in and run it again. It always writes the whole thing from the beginning.

Needs: nothing plugged in to join new boards - the CAN adaptor to do the whole layout at once

6.8 Put a new board on your Wi-Fi

Boards normally talk to each other over the layout wiring. They can also join your home Wi-Fi. Once connected, you can reach a board from the computer without standing beside the layout.

Doing this by hand, board by board, means typing the same password fourteen times into fourteen little web pages. This page does it once.

There are two ways to do it and they are on the same page. A brand new board is joined on its own, over the little Wi-Fi network it puts up when it first powers up, and that needs nothing plugged into your PC at all. The whole layout is given the network in one press, and that message travels down the layout wiring, so it needs the CAN adaptor.

Save your Wi-Fi details once

1. Press "Scan for networks" and pick yours from the list. (Or type its name if you keep it hidden.)
2. Type the password. Tick Show if you want to check it - passwords are worth checking.
3. Press "Remember this network". Now MegaConsole knows it and you never type it again.

If the scan finds nothing on Windows 11, it is almost never your wireless adaptor. Windows 11 will only let a program see the names of nearby networks while Location services is switched on - a list of Wi-Fi names is treated as a way of working out where you are. Your own Wi-Fi keeps working either way, which is why the PC can be online and still find nothing. The switch is under Settings → Privacy & security → Location, and on a work or family PC only an administrator can turn it on - on a standard account it is greyed out. MegaConsole now says so on the page. You can always type the network name in by hand instead.

Join a new board - or a boxful

A board that has never been given a network puts up a little Wi-Fi network of its own and stands in the doorway waiting to be asked. Join a new board, in the middle of the WiFi page, is a live list of every board doing that within earshot: one line each, with a tick box, the name the board is announcing itself under, and how it is getting on.

1. Power the new boards up near this PC. Several at once is fine - that is what the list is for.
2. Press "Look for new boards". The list fills as each one is heard - about half a minute for a board out of the box, and about two minutes for one that has been on a different network before, because it spends a while trying that network first. It then keeps itself up to date on its own while the page is open, so a board plugged in afterwards appears without you asking again, and one that is unplugged drops off.
3. Tick the ones you want, or tick All.
4. Pick your network from the ones you saved above.
5. Press "Join the board to this network" - or "Join 4 boards to this network", which is what the button says once you have ticked four.

This PC then joins each board's hotspot in turn, hands that board your network name and password through its own setup page, restarts it, comes back to your own network, and moves on to the next. When the last one is done it looks for all of them at once, and they appear under Your boards alongside the rest. Each row says where its board got to, and the row stays there afterwards so you can read the outcome instead of watching for it. Nothing in any of this travels down the layout wiring: you can do the whole box at the kitchen table before a single wire is run.

What each line in the list is telling you

Once a join is running, every ticked board carries a badge saying where it has got to, and a line under it saying what that means. Four boards will be at four different stages at once - this PC can only be on one board's hotspot at a time - so the badges are how you read the room.

The badge	What it means	What to do
No badge	Heard just now, sitting in the doorway waiting to be asked. This is every board's resting state before you press Join.	Tick it, or tick All.
Waiting	"Waits its turn - this PC can be on one board's hotspot at a time." Perfectly normal on any join of more than one board, and the commonest thing to mistake for a board that has got stuck.	Nothing. It comes round.
Joining	Its turn. This PC is on that board's hotspot, handing over your network name and password through the board's own setup page, and will restart it.	Nothing. Usually under a minute.
Waiting, during a run	Its turn came and its hotspot was not on the air, so it has gone to the back of the queue and is being waited for, with the seconds counted down on its row.	Check it is powered. Stop is beside the Join button if you would rather not wait.
Not heard	"Not heard for 24 s. It stays listed and can still be joined - a board's hotspot can blink off for a moment, and Join waits for it. Unplugged, it leaves the list after a minute and a half." A board still trying a network it cannot reach leaves its own hotspot every minute to have another go, so one missed look means nothing.	Nothing, unless it disappears. Then check its power.
Done	That board took your network, restarted and was found on it. When the last one finishes, the line above the button says so for all of them - "Done - all 4 boards are on 'Bramblewick' and in Your boards."	Go and look at Your boards.
Failed	It says which step, in words. A board that stopped answering half way through is told so rather than being blamed for a password that was right all along.	Switch that board off and on again. It comes back to the list ready to try once more.

the badges never move a board you did not tick, and a board that finishes keeps its line. That is on purpose: a list that tidies itself as it goes is a list you cannot read afterwards to find out which one of the four was the awkward one.

a board that has gone quiet is not failed on the spot. Its line says Not heard after twenty seconds and it leaves the list after a minute and a half - a board holding a network it cannot reach wanders off its own hotspot every minute to try that network again, so one missed look means nothing. If a ticked board is not on the air when its turn comes, it goes to the back of the queue and is waited for, with the seconds counted down on its row and a Stop button beside the join. Stopping is always safe: the step in hand finishes, this PC returns to your network, and boards already given the details are still looked for.

a board that stops answering half way through says so, and says what to do next. It is no longer reported as having kept your network when it has not - a correct password used to be blamed for a board that had simply gone away mid-conversation. Switch that board off and on again and it comes back to the list ready to try once more.

while a board is joining, Windows may open a browser tab by itself. That is Windows noticing the board's setup page and offering to show it to you - nothing has gone wrong and MegaConsole has not done it. Close the tab and carry on.

two boards on Wi-Fi sharing one layout number is the one combination to avoid. MegaConsole will not send point commands to either of them until you renumber one, and it says so on both. It is not being awkward: there is no way to tell which of two identical numbers a command was meant for, and guessing means throwing somebody's point. Open one of them from Your boards, give it a number of its own, and both come back.

Share Wi-Fi details with boards on the layout

Select Send to the layout… beside a saved network to send its Wi-Fi name and password to every board at once over the layout wiring. This job needs the CAN adaptor.

The THE LAYOUT list at the bottom tells you where everybody stands: which boards are on the network and at what address, and which are not on any network yet, in red.

Remove WiFi from every board… does the opposite, to all of them, at once. It is there for the day you change broadband provider. Read it twice before you press it.

Needs: an MQTT broker on your network. Skip this if that means nothing to you

6.9 Find boards that use MQTT

most boards talk directly to each other down the layout wiring. Some people set them up to talk a different way: instead of calling each other, every board posts its messages into a shared postbox on the network, and anyone interested collects from it. The postbox is called a broker, and the way of talking is called MQTT.

If you have never heard of MQTT, you almost certainly do not use it, and you can skip this page entirely. Nothing else in MegaConsole depends on it.

1. Type your broker's address in the box and press Use this broker. The port is almost always 1883, which is already filled in.
2. Boards using that postbox appear under Your boards on their own, mixed in with the ones found down the wire. From then on they behave exactly the same.
3. Watch the messages fly past in the panel at the bottom - a reassuring way to confirm something really is listening. Pause freezes it so you can read.

The Find this board box is a useful side door: if you happen to know a board's address, type it in and MegaConsole goes and fetches it directly, with no discovery and no adaptor needed.

this page finds boards that are already set up to use a broker. It is the WiFi page that hands a board its WiFi name and password, not this one. That trips people up, which is why the two pages have separate names.

Needs: the USB programmer lead

6.11 Read a board's diagnostic log

Boards chatter away to themselves while they work, a bit like muttering. Normally nobody is listening. Join a board to this computer with the programming lead and this page shows you everything it says, as it says it.

1. Wire the board up as in section 4.1.
2. Click Board console, check the lead is the right one, and press Start.
3. Press "Reset board" to make it start over from the beginning - the interesting bit is usually the first few seconds, where it says what it is, what version it is running and what it found.
4. Press "Save…" to put the whole lot in a file.

this is the page we will ask you to look at if you ever write to us for help. Press Start, press Reset board, wait ten seconds, press Save, and send us the file. That one file usually answers the question outright.

This is the only page that hands the lead back when you navigate away, so another page can use it. Come back and press Start again.

Needs: the USB programmer lead

6.12 Wipe a board completely

this one does exactly what it says. The program, the settings and the saved data all go, and nothing is put back. Afterwards the board will not start up and will not appear on your network - which is what being empty means, not a sign that something went wrong.

Why would anybody want this? Rarely, is the short answer. It is here because it is one of our workshop tools, and because now and again it is the right answer: a board with something confusing on it, a board you are passing on to somebody else, a board where you would rather start from bare metal than wonder what is left behind.

To bring it back: go to Programmer update (task 6.7) and install a version over the same lead. The board is completely recoverable; it is empty, not broken.

nine times out of ten what you actually want is Clear its saved settings on the Programmer update page. That forgets the setting-up but leaves the board working.

7. Modules and services

MegaConsole looks like one program, and it is one window. Underneath, it is a small shell with parts loaded into it - and that is worth knowing, because it explains almost everything about how it behaves. The Programming Tools are a part. So are the Layout editor, the EtherBridge and MegaThrottle. Each is updated on its own, appears in the release history under its own name, and can be missing from your copy without anything else noticing. The drawing in section 1 is all of them on one page.

Most parts do nothing at all until you open them. Two of them do not work that way: once they are set up, the EtherBridge and MegaThrottle keep running in the background, listening on your network, for as long as MegaConsole is open. That is the point of them - a train app cannot reach a bridge that only exists while you are looking at its page. But it does mean there are things running on your PC that you did not start this morning, so there is a page that lists them and switches each one on or off.

Modules & services

It sits just above Settings on the menu, and only on a PC where something really does run by itself - if all you own is the programmer and the CAN adaptor, there is nothing for it to list and it is not drawn.

Every row is one thing, with a switch, what it is doing at this moment, and - when something has gone wrong - what went wrong, on the row rather than in a box that interrupts you. A switch takes effect straight away. Nothing here asks you to restart MegaConsole, and that is deliberate: a switch you have to earn with a restart is a switch people leave alone.

What is listed

The EtherBridge and each of its servers and station connections; MegaThrottle's train catalogue, whether tablets on your network can reach it, driving from tablets, and cloud sync; and MegaConsole's own update checking and the four sharing choices from Settings.

Switching one on

Turns on whatever it needs as well. Driving from tablets needs the catalogue and needs a station connection through the EtherBridge, so asking for it switches those on too rather than refusing and leaving you to work out why.

Switching one off

Takes that part alone. Anything that was relying on it keeps its own switch where you set it and waits, saying on its row which switched-off part it is waiting for - so turning the first one back on brings everything back without you having to remember the order.

The sharing switches

The same four switches as the Settings page, not a copy of them. Change one here and Settings shows it, and the other way round.

Update checks

Off pauses update checking and firmware downloads for this session, including a download already in progress. It is never saved: MegaConsole starts up checking again.

The detailed status page

At the foot of Modules & services is Open the detailed status in your browser. It opens a read-only page listing every part, every service, every connection, every counter and every address MegaConsole currently has, refreshed every few seconds.

Two things about it are worth knowing. It reports what is actually happening rather than what is configured - a station that is set up but not answering reads as not answering. And it is passive: opening it never starts a service, never claims the CAN adaptor and never sends anything to a board. Reading the state cannot change the state, which is the whole reason to trust it.

Programming Tools and the Layout editor run nothing until you open them, so they need no switch here - the page says so at the bottom rather than leaving you wondering why they are absent.

8. Layout editor

Layout editor sits on the menu among the other parts. It opens in a window of its own, so you can keep MegaConsole beside it, and it opens on a drawing of a railway.

Making Tracks 6 - our own exhibition layout - was designed and documented in it, which is the short answer to how far along it is. What is not there yet is the last link: telling MegaConsole which drawn point is which real servo channel, so the drawing and the railway keep each other in step without being told twice. That is a large job and it will arrive properly, with a guide of its own, when it is ready.

Nothing else in MegaConsole depends on it. Everything in section 6 works whether you ever open the Layout editor or not. Close its window and carry on.

Find your way around the editor

Five coloured tabs take you through the job in the order you would really do it - Baseboards, Track, Blocks, Signals and Commission - each with its own railway icon, the one you are on brighter and underlined. Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+5 switch between them.

The tool buttons down the left carry their names and their keyboard shortcuts. A bright blue button is the tool currently in your hand. A dim one is waiting for something - usually for you to select something first, or for there to be a change worth undoing.

File

Open layout, Save layout as, Import JMRI XML, Import report, Print layout.

Layout

Layout gauge, and the Track catalogue.

Detailed track / Single-line track

Top right, and it changes only the drawing. Detailed draws rails and sleepers; single-line draws one line per track, which is how the big display board at an exhibition is drawn. The choice is saved with the layout.

Import a track diagram you have already drawn

If you have drawn your railway in JMRI's Layout Editor - or in AnyRail, and exported it for JMRI - you do not have to draw it again. File → Import JMRI XML… (Ctrl+Shift+I) reads it in.

1. Choose the file JMRI saved, or the one AnyRail exported.
2. Pick the panel if the file holds more than one. The picture and the notes beside it change to match, and the notes are worth reading: they say what will come across and what wants a look afterwards.
3. Check the gauge. You are offered N (9 mm, British 1:148) and OO (16.5 mm, 1:76.2), and N is chosen to start with. Look at this one. A drawing's coordinates do not say what gauge it is, so this is a question the import cannot answer for you.
4. Choose "Import as a new layout". Before your current drawing is replaced, a recovery copy of it is saved - and if that copy cannot be saved, the import does not happen and your drawing stays open. Cancel leaves everything as it was.
5. Save it with Ctrl+S as a layout of its own. That keeps the diagram, its connections and where it came from together in one file. The XML you imported is never altered.

Afterwards, File → Import report… shows the notes again and tells you where the recovery copy went, and Open layout (Ctrl+O) will open it.

What comes across, and what does not

• Straight and curved track, ordinary turnouts, crossings and slips all come across. A crossing or a slip arrives as one four-ended piece with its separate routes kept, rather than as several pieces laid on top of each other.
• Turntable outlines are kept. A working bridge is not modelled.
• Open track ends are listed for you to look at. The import does not guess a connection the drawing does not contain.
• A connection it cannot support is explained before anything of yours is replaced, not after.
• Block names and boundaries are kept. Detection and the hardware behind it still have to be set up.
• Signals, routes, device addresses and automation stay in the saved XML as reference. They are not turned into working signals.
• Imported track keeps its own shape. It is not matched up to Peco product codes.
• JMRI Panel Editor icon panels and roster files are not track diagrams and cannot be imported. It is the Layout Editor drawing you want.

Size, gauge and the track catalogue

Drawing mm per source unit, on the import preview, sets how big the imported picture comes out. The default of 10 draws a 100-unit line in the source 1,000 drawing millimetres long. A bigger number spreads the drawing out and a smaller one draws it tighter; the shape and the connections are the same either way.

Layout → Layout gauge… changes the gauge of a drawing you have already imported, or of an empty layout, keeping its dimensions and connections. A recovery copy is saved first. Catalogue parts already laid in another gauge are not converted by it.

Layout → Track catalogue… picks a Peco section by code and name. Choose for laying puts it in your hand and the next click puts it down; choosing one does not disturb the drawing. The N catalogue holds all 32 sections - Setrack straights and curves, both hands of straight and curved turnouts, crossings, a single and a double slip, the supplementary sections, and Code 55 and Code 80 Flexitrack with wood or concrete sleepers. Flexitrack starts at its 914 mm stock length and bends.

9. EtherBridge

The EtherBridge lets layout software drive your System 2 boards and lets the boards answer back. iTrain, JMRI, RocRail or the Z21 app on a phone says "throw that point"; the bridge passes it to the board over the CAN cable or over Wi-Fi; and the board's own "it has moved" comes back the same way. It has long lived in a small box on the layout. The EtherBridge card is the same bridge brought onto this PC as a part of MegaConsole, so a layout whose software already runs on a PC needs nothing extra on the shelf.

How it arrives

You do not download it yourself. Once your licence carries it, the next update check brings the card down on its own - about a third of a megabyte - and the bottom of the menu reads "The EtherBridge 0.10.5 is downloaded and verified - restart to update." Press Restart to update and the menu entry comes to life. If the card ever fails to start after an update, MegaConsole puts the previous version back on its own and says so on Home, exactly as section 11 describes for every part.

It runs in the background, and every piece of it has a switch

The bridge is not a page you visit - it is something that runs. Once it is set up it listens on your network for as long as MegaConsole is open, whether or not you are looking at it. So it has rows of its own on Modules & services (section 7): the bridge itself, each language it listens in, and each command station or layout bus it connects out to. Turn any of them off and it stops at once; turn it back on and it starts. Nothing needs restarting, and the change is applied while the rest carries on.

The box or the card: which one is right for you

You run iTrain, JMRI or RocRail on a Windows PC beside the layout

The card. The software is on that PC anyway: it talks to the bridge at 127.0.0.1, there is one fewer device on the shelf and one fewer thing to update.

You drive from a phone with the Z21 app and there is no PC on the layout

The box. Nothing is running to host the card.

A club or exhibition layout, several operators, whoever's laptop

The box. The bridge has to survive people coming and going.

You own a YD7010, a Z21 or an ECoS and want it in step with your boards

Either. The two homes speak to those centrals identically; choose the box if the PC is not always on.

Your boards are in MQTT Native mode and you have no CAN adaptor

The card. Only the card has an MQTT side.

You want phone throttles, MERG CBUS or NMRA LCC first

The card. They arrive as card updates long before the box has room for them.

That is which one will suit you rather than which one to order today: the card is not on sale yet. It is worth knowing the answer in advance, because it decides whether you need a PC by the layout at all.

Setting it up

1. Open EtherBridge from the menu. The first time, a short set-up card asks what you drive with: iTrain or the Z21 app (the Z21 language), JMRI (LocoNet over TCP), DCC-EX, or a central of your own - a YD7010, a Z21 or an ECoS - that the bridge should follow. Choose, and the right listeners and connections are switched on; everything else stays off.
2. Point your software at the PC. The Status tab shows this PC's address, with a Copy button, and each server on the Servers tab says what to type and which port. On the same PC 127.0.0.1 also works. Where iTrain offers to search for a Z21 it may or may not find the PC - typing the address always works.
3. Let Windows Firewall through. Windows asks once for each port the bridge listens on. If it did not ask, or you said no, the Status tab names the port that is being refused and offers to add the rules for you - one Windows prompt, and done.
4. Throw a point in your software and watch the board move. The Activity tab counts the message going out and the feedback coming back, one row per language.

One tab per job

The page is arranged by what you are doing, not by protocol. Status is this PC right now: its address, what is listening and how many are connected, what it is connected to, the concentrator, and Windows Firewall. Servers is the languages software connects to this PC in, each with the address and port to type. Stations is the command stations and layout buses this PC connects out to, and what Find turned up. Concentrator holds everything that job needs on one tab. Advanced is the tuners the box has, with the box's defaults. Save sits above the tabs, in view from every one of them, and says when something you typed is not yet saved.

What else it does, once it is running

• It keeps your throttles alive when the track power is off. Motion pauses at zero and each train stays reserved to whoever had it; when power comes back, a fresh speed command is needed before anything moves, so nothing lurches off the moment the power returns.
• It notices a command station that has been swapped. If a different station answers at the same address, the bridge picks up its identity by itself rather than carrying on with the old one. A programming job in progress is left undisturbed.
• JMRI's turnouts are confirmed properly. A LocoNet-over-TCP message is echoed back to whoever sent it and both switch-input states are reported, so JMRI's screen agrees with the point rather than waiting for a confirmation that never comes.
• There is a connection map beside the concentrator switches: what traffic has actually been seen, which pipe is shared, where the bypass runs. Settings you have typed but not saved, and links that have dropped, are drawn differently from the live route, so the picture cannot flatter you.
• Trace options stay put while the packets scroll underneath them - you can change what you are recording without losing your place.
• If a connection cannot be set up, MegaConsole stays open and tells you which one was switched off and why. It does not take the window down with it.

Two base stations: one for the main line, one for programming

With two or more DCC base stations switched on with an address, EtherBridge → Stations grows a box called What each station is for, one row per station. Leave a station on Main line and programming and nothing changes. Set one to Programming and the tablets stop driving through it altogether - it is kept for decoder work, and taking a programming track out of service can no longer take the main line with it.

• The box is hidden while only one station is on, because a duty means nothing then: one station does everything, whatever its row says. Unplug the other station and the layout keeps running.
• You cannot switch the layout off with it either. Set every station to Programming and they all go back to doing both, and the line under the box says so.
• Where the programming station can read and write CVs either way, a CV programming row appears: Automatic, Conventional or RailCom. Automatic prefers the station's programming output, because a service-mode read is answered by any decoder rather than only a RailCom one. A station that can only do one does that one whatever you choose.
• What this does not do yet: the Z21 app's own CV traffic still goes to the Z21 client. Sending programming to a different station than the one being driven is still to come.

If a base station stops answering

With two or more stations working the main line, one that stops answering no longer takes the tablets with it. After about eight seconds MegaConsole moves them to a station that is up, and it will only move them to one that has been answering for three seconds - so a reconnect is never mistaken for a failure, and they are not handed to a station that is itself coming and going. They go back to the one you chose once it has been answering again for twenty seconds.

You are told wherever you happen to be looking: the WiThrottle driving route row on System status says which station they are on and why, every web page this PC serves carries a bar across the top, and the tablets that administer the estate show it. Drivers are not interrupted - they are driving.

Address map, trace and activity

The Address map tab is the table that says which point number in your software is which port on which board. It reads and writes the same file the box does, so a map exported from a box drops straight into the card, and back again. The Trace tab records every message in every language at once and saves it as a file, which is the thing to send us if something does not add up. The Activity tab is the live picture: connected or not, how busy, and the last thing each side said.

Phone throttles, CBUS and LCC

The card also speaks WiThrottle (EngineDriver and the WiThrottle app drive locomotives through your DCC central), MERG CBUS and NMRA LCC. Each is off until you switch it on - WiThrottle on the Servers tab, CBUS and LCC on the Stations tab. Phone throttles are a technical preview for now: they work, and we will call them finished once they have been through the WiThrottle compatibility process.

Concentrating the Z21 app's tablets (a club layout)

A club layout may have twenty tablets running the Z21 app, every one of them a separate client of one Roco Z21. The Z21 keeps a session for each and sends every change to each of them, so its work climbs with the number of tablets. The card has a mode for exactly this: Concentrate the Z21 app's tablets through this PC, on the EtherBridge page's Concentrator tab, which holds everything the job needs. Switched on, every tablet connects to this PC as if it were the Z21, and this PC is the one client the real Z21 sees. Loco, turnout and programming traffic passes through unchanged - the Z21 still drives every train - and the Z21 sends each change once, to this PC, which passes it to the tablets that want it. Nothing crosses to or from your System 2 boards while it is on.

What it actually does with a message

Three things happen on a club layout, over and over, and the concentrator treats each of them differently. This is the whole idea in one place.

1. Somebody drives a train

It passes straight through. A tablet sends a speed or a function; the concentrator hands it up the shared connection; the command station puts DCC on the rails. Nothing is cached, nothing is answered on this PC's own authority, and nothing is held back - a driving command has to reach the station or the train does not move. What changes is only that the station sees one session carrying twenty tablets' commands instead of twenty sessions.

2. A tablet asks what a locomotive is doing

It is often answered here. Twenty tablets showing the same locomotive ask the same question twenty times. When the concentrator already has a fresh answer it gives it straight back, and the station is never asked. When it has nothing, or what it has is too old, it asks. That is where the load goes: it is the asking, not the driving, that multiplies with the number of tablets.

3. The station reports a change

It arrives once and is shared out. The station tells this PC; this PC tells the tablets that are following that locomotive. The station sends one message instead of twenty, and every screen still keeps up.

Setting it up - the address swap

The tablets know the Z21 by one typed address (from the factory, 192.168.0.111). The trick is to give that address to the PC and a new one to the Z21, so no tablet has to be touched.

1. Prove the problem first. Before switching anything on, capture the Z21's traffic for ten minutes with five, ten and twenty tablets and run it through z21-capture-stats.py (it is in the MegaConsole tools folder). If the number of messages the Z21 sends per throw or per throttle step does not climb with the tablet count, this mode will not cure your lock-ups and the cause is elsewhere - the firmware, the power supply, the heat, or the Wi-Fi.
2. On your network controller (a UniFi controller, or your router), give the PC a fixed address reservation for the address the tablets know, and give the Z21 a reservation for a new address. Restart the Z21 so it takes its new address, or change it in Roco's Z21 Maintenance Tool if it was set by hand.
3. On the Concentrator tab, put the Z21's new address in The real Z21 box (it is the same setting as the Z21 client on the Stations tab), tick Concentrate the Z21 app's tablets through this PC, and press Save above the tabs. The Live box reads "Concentrating N tablets for Z21 ..." with the real Z21's serial number, hardware and firmware once it has learned them, and On the tablets shows the address the tablets type.
4. On the tablets, type the address - do not search. The Z21 app's search finds both the PC and the real Z21, with the same serial number, and shows two entries. The tablets already have the right address typed in; leave them alone.
5. Expect the Z21 app to object, once per connect. Since its version 1.4.8 the Roco app shows Attention: Foreign control station detected whenever the thing answering is not genuine Roco hardware, and this PC is not. It then drives one active locomotive per tablet until the app's in-app unlock is bought; points and signals are unaffected. One train per tablet is what a club evening is anyway, so this works as it stands. To change trains, set the first locomotive inactive in the app before selecting the next.
6. Watch the Live box. It shows one row per tablet (its flags, the locos it holds, the traffic each way), the Z21's rates beside the tablets' rates with the fan-out factor by class, and a counter of programming refusals - a second tablet that tries to programme while another is doing so is told "no acknowledgement" at once, which is what the Z21 app expects.

Why that popup cannot be switched off

It is worth knowing what the app is actually checking, because it saves you an evening. The Z21 app looks at the network card address of whatever answers at the Z21's address, and Roco's own hardware addresses are registered to them. A PC's network card is not one of those and can never be made into one. It then checks the serial number and the hardware and firmware it is told. Nothing on this PC can pass the first check, so no setting anywhere in MegaConsole will clear the popup.

It is not a fault in the bridge, and it is not something we can fix. Genuine Z21 owners meet it too - with mobile data left on, or a router between the tablet and the Z21 - and Roco's own answer is that the app wants to see the Z21's own network card. The EtherBridge box, the card and the concentrator are all in the same position.

Identify as a Z21 base station

There is still a switch worth knowing about, on EtherBridge → Concentrator: Identify as a Z21 base station. It is off to start with and does nothing while the concentrator is off. With it on, this PC answers the tablets with an identity of its own rather than repeating the real Z21's, and the Live box shows both at once - what the tablets are being told, and what the station upstream actually is - so you can always see which you are looking at. The serial number it presents belongs to this installation of MegaConsole.

It will not clear the foreign-station popup, for the reason above. What it is for is the case where two things answering with the same serial number confuse an app's search list. Tick it, press Save, and reconnect each tablet; to go back, untick, Save and reconnect. Nothing about the addresses changes either way.

If the Z21 still locks up

The card keeps a flight recorder: the last minute of everything it said to the Z21 and everything the Z21 said back. When the Z21 falls silent, that minute is written to a file on its own (modules\bridge\flight\z21-<date>.jsonl under your MegaConsole folder, with a small text file beside it saying how many tablets were on). Keep the last minute on the Concentrator tab writes the same file on demand. Send us that file: it is the first record anybody has had of what a Z21 was doing when it locked up, from the one client it was talking to. Export CSV beside it writes the tablets, the rates and the counters.

The box has its own guide covering the hardware, its button and its relays. Everything about how the bridge behaves - the settings and their names, the address-map file, what happens on the wire - is the same in both homes, which is the point: one product, two places to run it. The concentrator is the one thing the card has and the box does not: it needs the room of a PC.

10. MegaThrottle

MegaThrottle drives your trains from Android tablets. The tablets run the MegaThrottle app; this PC keeps the list of what there is to drive, and the commands go out to your DCC system through the EtherBridge. Several people can drive at once, from their own tablets, and they hand trains between each other rather than each keeping a private list.

The train catalogue

The catalogue is the heart of it and it lives on this PC: your locomotives, their pictures, their names, their function buttons and their settings, in one place that every paired tablet reads. That is the point of keeping it here rather than on the tablets - set a locomotive up once and every tablet at the club has it, including the ones that were switched off at the time, which pick it up when they next connect.

It starts switched off

Until the catalogue has been set up on this PC there is nothing for it to serve, so its switch on Modules & services reads Not set up on this PC yet with a Set up… button beside it. A PC that has never set one up does not try to start it, and so never reports it as having failed.

Once it is set up

It starts with MegaConsole and stays running while MegaConsole is open. You can switch it off any time you like, and it stays off until you switch it back on.

If it will not start

The reason appears on its row on Modules & services, with a Try again button. It is a state on a page, not a window in your way at every start-up.

The four switches

On Modules & services, MegaThrottle has a group of its own. Each one takes effect while MegaConsole stays open; moving one of the lower three restarts the catalogue for about a second and the tablets reconnect by themselves.

Train catalogue

Your locomotives, pictures and settings. Everything else here needs it, so switching any of them on switches this on too.

Tablets on the network

Whether tablets on your Wi-Fi can reach the catalogue, on port 18446. Off, the catalogue still runs and this PC can still use it; the tablets simply cannot see it. MegaConsole will add the Windows Firewall rule for you if one is missing.

Driving from tablets

Whether the tablets can actually move trains, which they do through the EtherBridge - so this one needs the bridge and a station connection, and switching it on switches those on as well. Switching it off closes the driving connection cleanly and stops every train it is holding as it goes.

Cloud sync

Keeps the catalogue on this PC and the MegaThrottle portal in step, so a change made in one shows up in the other.

The web pages, and who may open them

The catalogue also serves a set of web pages, and its address is printed on the MegaThrottle page with an Open MegaConsole web menu button beside it. They open in an ordinary browser on any computer on your network, which is how you manage the catalogue, administer paired tablets, and see what is going on from the other end of a club room.

Pairing a tablet

A tablet is paired once and then remembers. Tablet administration is one of the web pages, and it is where you approve a new tablet, see which ones are connected, and remove one that has left. Under Connection identity on the MegaThrottle page is this MegaConsole's certificate fingerprint - a public number the tablets use to be sure they are talking to your PC and not to something pretending to be it. You never need to type it in anywhere.

11. Keep MegaConsole up to date

You met the two SmartScreen gates once, in section 15. The good news is that you do not meet them again: after that first install, MegaConsole looks after its own updating, quietly, with no warnings and nothing to click through.

How automatic updates work

1. You open MegaConsole. While you are getting on with something, it asks us in the background whether there is a newer version.
2. If there is, it downloads it - quietly, in the background. You will see "Downloading version 0.10.24…" in small letters at the bottom left of the menu. Nothing interrupts you and nothing is installed yet.
3. It checks the download really came from us before it will use a byte of it. A download that does not check out is thrown away and the version you have keeps running.
4. A blue "Restart to update" button appears at the bottom of the menu. Press it when you are ready. MegaConsole closes and starts again as the new version - a couple of seconds.

Check for an update now

If you do not want to wait for the automatic check, click Check for updates at the bottom of the menu. It goes and asks straight away and tells you either way - "Version 0.10.23 - up to date." is the answer you will normally get, and it is printed at the bottom of the menu at all times so you can see it at a glance.

Reading what changed

Every release carries a short note about what is new, and you can always see the version you are running at the bottom left of the window. Release history, at the foot of the menu, lists every version of every part with its date and its note, newest first. The megapointscontrollers.co.uk/megaconsole/ page carries the story of the current release in more detail, and section 17 of this guide lists everything that has arrived since the last edition.

Updates that change only one part

From version 0.10.0, MegaConsole is delivered in parts, and there are five of them: the console itself, the Programming Tools, the Layout Editor, the EtherBridge and MegaThrottle. When only one has changed, only that one is downloaded - an EtherBridge update is about a third of a megabyte rather than the whole fifty - and the same blue Restart to update button appears.

Two consequences worth knowing. The number at the bottom left may not move after a restart, because that number is the console's own version and the update may have been to a part; Release history is where you see the rest. And a part can require a newer console than you are running - a release note that says "Requires MegaConsole 0.10.22" means exactly that, and the update will bring both. You never have to work out the order; it is worked out for you.

If a part fails to start after its update, MegaConsole puts the previous version of that part back on its own and says so on the Home page. The rest of the program carries on running throughout: one part falling over has never been a reason to take the window down.

Downloading a fresh installer by hand

You should not need to - but if you ever want to install MegaConsole on a second PC, or start completely fresh, go back to megapointscontrollers.co.uk/megaconsole/ and download it again. That link always gives you the newest version. You will meet both SmartScreen gates again, and you handle them exactly as in section 15.

12. Solve a problem

13. Plain-English glossary

We have tried hard to keep jargon out of MegaConsole. Some of it is unavoidable because the words are printed on the hardware. Here they are, in plain English.

14. Help us improve MegaConsole

MegaConsole exists in this shape because customers told us what was awkward. Nearly every plain-English sentence in it replaced something that was correct but unhelpful, and quite a lot of it was rewritten after somebody said "I did not understand that".

So please: tell us. We would especially like to know about -

• A word you had to read twice. That is our fault, not yours, and it is the easiest thing in the world for us to fix.
• A moment you were not sure what would happen if you pressed the button. Every one of those is a bug in the writing.
• Something you expected to be there and could not find.
• "I wish it could just…" - genuinely, these are the best ones. Several of the pages in this guide started life as one of these sentences.
• Anything that went wrong, however small, and whatever you were doing at the time.

What to expect

MegaConsole is not finished. It is at version 0.10.23, and the "0." is deliberate - it says we do not consider it done. Things will move, be renamed and be added, and we would rather put something useful in your hands and keep improving it than keep it in a drawer until it is perfect.

What will not change: it stays free, it stays a single window with everything on the menu, and every page will go on explaining itself in words a person can read. If you ever find a screen that does not, that is a defect and we would like to hear about it.

15. Install MegaConsole

Windows may show two security warnings because MegaConsole is not code-signed. The first appears while the installer is downloading and the second appears when you open it. The screens below show exactly what to select at each stage.

Why Windows shows warnings

Windows uses a code-signing certificate to identify a software publisher. The MegaConsole installer is not code-signed, so Windows describes it as coming from an Unknown publisher. Download it only from the MegaPoints Controllers address shown below, then follow the illustrated steps.

Download MegaConsole

15.1 Keep the download in Microsoft Edge

This happens in the browser, before the file has even finished arriving. These pictures are from Microsoft Edge, which is what most people use; Chrome does something very similar with different words.

Look carefully at that panel. There is nothing on it that lets you continue. The way forward is hidden behind the three dots (…) beside the download.

15.2 Allow the installer to run

Open the file and Windows itself steps in with a big blue box. This is a different piece of Windows from the one that just stopped you, which is why you get told off twice for the same thing.

15.3 Run the installer

From here it is an ordinary, boring, three-click Windows installer, which is a relief after all that.

Where it goes

Into your own account, at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\MegaConsole. You will never need to go there.

Admin password

Not needed. Windows will not ask.

How long

Under a minute on any reasonable machine.

Start menu

Always added. Search for "MegaConsole" and it will come up.

To remove it later

Settings → Apps → Installed apps → MegaConsole → Uninstall. It keeps your downloaded board programs, your licence and your backups - because those are yours and a rescue might need them - and removes everything else.

15.4 Install the driver for the programmer lead

This one is only for people who have bought the USB programmer lead. If you have not got one, or the only extra you own is the CAN adaptor, skip straight past it - MegaConsole is installed and there is nothing more to do.

Windows 11 does not come with the driver the programmer lead needs, and it will not go looking for one either. Until that driver is on, the lead is simply invisible: you can plug it in, your board can be in perfect health, and MegaConsole will still show Programmer update, Board console and Erase a board greyed out. It is a couple of minutes' work, and you only do it once on each PC.

1. Take the programmer lead out if it is already plugged in. Windows picks it up more cleanly when the driver goes on first.
2. Open the address above and choose the Downloads tab, then click CP210x Universal Windows Driver. A zip file lands in your Downloads folder.
3. Unpack it. Right-click the zip, choose Extract All, and take the folder it offers you.
4. Find the file called silabser.inf in that folder. There is no setup program to run - that one file is the whole thing.
5. Right-click it and choose Install. On Windows 11 you may have to click Show more options first before the word appears. It is done in a second or two and barely tells you it has happened.
6. Plug the programmer lead back in and give it five seconds.
7. Look at MegaConsole. Programmer update, Board console and Erase a board stop being grey. That is the driver doing its job.

15.5 First launch

MegaConsole asks you two questions before it gets out of your way, and then never asks again.

Choose what MegaConsole may store and share

This one is about your privacy, so we would rather you read it than skip it. There are four switches, and they are separate on purpose: nothing quietly rides along on somebody else's answer. Three of them start on and one starts off, and you can change any of them here or later.

There is a fifth switch above those four, and it is not about privacy at all. Pause downloads and update checks until restart stops MegaConsole looking for new versions and stops any firmware download in its tracks, the moment you turn it on - useful on a metered connection or a slow evening. Files already downloaded stay where they are, a banner reminds you while the pause is on, and closing Settings does not lift it. Turn it off and checking resumes at once. It is never saved: MegaConsole always starts up checking again, so a pause cannot quietly become a permanent setting you have forgotten about.

All four sharing switches live afterwards on the Settings page - the last button on the menu - and changing one there takes effect the moment you click it, not next time you start up. What each of them covers is set out in full in our privacy policy, on the website under Privacy Policy & Warranty.

Choose whether to register this PC

That is your free licence, and it has a section of its own, next.

16. Register your free licence

Needs: nothing plugged in

Registering this PC

MegaConsole is free, with no purchase or subscription. Registering this PC links a free licence to your email address. There is no account password to remember, and the licence renews automatically.

1. Open MegaConsole. On the Home page, near the top, there is a line saying "Not registered - viewing only" and a blue button, Register this PC…. Click it. (If the box has gone, it will come back next time you start up - or it may already be done.)
2. Type your email address and press the button.
3. We send you a six-digit code. Go and read your email - it takes a few seconds. If it is not there in a minute, look in your junk folder.
4. Type the six digits in. That is the whole thing.

Typing that code in is the licence. It is issued to you there and then, downloads by itself, unlocks by itself and renews by itself - covering every board we make, and the early-access versions as well. There is nothing to activate, nothing to ask for and nothing to type in again. It used to be that a licence followed on when we got round to it; it does not any more.

Two things sit outside it, and it is worth knowing which. The CAN adaptor and the programmer are switched on by your order for them (section 3), and the Layout editor is switched on by asking us (section 8). Everything else in this guide is covered the moment you finish registering.

What the registration box says Enter your email address and we will send you a 6-digit code; enter the code and this PC is registered to you. That is also your licence: it is issued on the spot, then downloads and unlocks everything by itself, now and every time it renews. No account, no password, nothing further to do.

Without it, MegaConsole is a viewer: you can see your boards, settings and firmware, and every recovery is always available.

If you prefer not to register

Press Not now. Nothing is held against you. MegaConsole carries on as a viewer: you can see every board, read every setting, download every board program, and - importantly - every rescue and repair still works. We were not willing to build a tool that could refuse to save a board. What you cannot do without registering is change a board's settings from MegaConsole. The board's own web page still works for that, exactly as before.

register even if you are only having a look. It costs nothing, takes half a minute, and it means the day something goes wrong you are not doing paperwork with a dead board on the bench.

Taking the licence off again

If you are selling the computer, handing a work laptop back, or moving to a new machine, you can take the licence off this one. Go to the Home page and click the licence line itself - the one across the top that names the address this PC is registered to. It asks you first, and nothing happens unless you say yes.

Nothing is cancelled anywhere by doing it. The licence is yours, not the computer's: your boards carry on, every backup and every downloaded version stays exactly where it is, and registering the same address on the new machine gets you a licence straight back, at no cost and with no ceremony.

When internet access is needed

Only for the half-minute the registration takes, and afterwards whenever you want to fetch new board programs. Day to day, MegaConsole works perfectly well with the internet unplugged - it is talking to your railway, not to us.

17. What's new in this edition

MegaConsole gets a new release most weeks, and each one carries a short note you can read in Release history at the foot of the menu. What follows gathers three weeks of those notes into the shape a reader wants: first the things worth knowing about, each pointing at the chapter that explains it, and then every release in order.

How a release reaches you

Every release goes out on an early channel first, to a small number of people who have asked to be on it and who tell us when something is wrong. Once a release has been used in anger for a while it moves to the main channel, which is everybody. This edition of the guide marks one of those moves: nine releases of the console, and everything the five parts gained alongside them, arriving together.

That is why some entries below mention each other - a part that says "Requires MegaConsole 0.10.22" is not something for you to arrange, it is a note that the two travel together and the update sorts the order out itself.

The things worth knowing about

A switch for everything that runs by itself

Modules & services, a new page just above Settings, lists every part of MegaConsole that keeps running in the background and switches each one on or off there and then, with nothing to restart. Switching one on switches on what it needs; switching one off leaves the things that depend on it waiting and saying so. Anything that could leave a train moving stops every train it is driving before it goes. 0.10.22, 14 September · section 7

A detailed status page

Behind Modules & services, a read-only page in your browser listing every part, service, connection, counter and address, refreshed every few seconds. It reports what is actually happening rather than what is configured, and reading it never starts anything or touches a board. It is the single most useful thing to send us about something that will not connect. 0.10.20, 13 September · section 7

Joining new boards to Wi-Fi is a list, not a box

Join a new board now keeps a live list of every board within earshot waiting to join, ticks several at once - or All - and works through them one after another, showing on each row how that board got on. A board not on the air when its turn comes is waited for rather than failed, with Stop beside the button. A board that goes away part way through is no longer told it kept your network, and comes back ready to try again after a power cycle. 0.10.21 and 0.10.23 with Programming Tools 0.10.4 to 0.10.6, 14-15 September · task 6.8

Two Wi-Fi boards sharing one layout number are held back

Neither gets point commands until one is renumbered, and both say so. There is no way to tell which of two identical numbers a command was meant for, and guessing means throwing the wrong point. 0.10.21 with Programming Tools 0.10.4, 14 September · task 6.8

MegaThrottle

Driving your trains from Android tablets, with the list of what there is to drive kept on this PC so every paired tablet reads the same one. New to this guide entirely, and new on the main channel: it moves from 0.4.1 to 0.14.67 in this release. Its catalogue, whether tablets can reach it, driving, and cloud sync are each a switch on Modules & services. 0.10.11 onwards, with MegaThrottle 0.14.67 · section 10

The Layout editor is on the menu

It used to be a link under the buttons. It is now an entry in the list with everything else, and it is no longer drawn at all for an account that does not hold it - so if you cannot see it, that is why. 0.10.22 with Layout Editor 0.10.7, 14 September · section 8

The Layout editor reads JMRI and AnyRail drawings

If you have already drawn your railway in JMRI's Layout Editor, or in AnyRail and exported it for JMRI, it can be imported rather than drawn again - with a preview, notes on what wants looking at, and a recovery copy of whatever it replaces. N and OO gauge, the full Peco N catalogue including Code 55 and Code 80 Flexitrack, crossings and slips, and a choice between drawing rails and sleepers or one line per track. 0.10.15 to 0.10.19 with Layout Editor 0.10.2 to 0.10.5, 10-11 September · section 8

The EtherBridge, and everything it learned

The bridge that lets iTrain, JMRI, RocRail and the Z21 app drive your boards arrived as a part of MegaConsole on 5 September and has moved twenty-five times since. Phone throttles, MERG CBUS and NMRA LCC; a concentrator that stands in front of a club's Roco Z21 so it answers one PC instead of twenty; the page regrouped by task; throttles that stay connected when track power is off; and now a switch for the bridge, each of its servers and each station connection. 0.10.1 onwards, with EtherBridge 0.10.25 · section 9

MegaConsole comes in parts, and updates are much smaller

Five of them: the console, the Programming Tools, the Layout Editor, the EtherBridge and MegaThrottle. A change to one downloads only that one - a third of a megabyte rather than fifty - and a part that fails to start after its update is rolled back on its own while the rest carries on running. A part you have bought, or been invited to try, now arrives by itself on the next update check. 0.10.0 to 0.10.6, 3-6 September · section 11

A menu entry you do not hold says so plainly

Every locked entry now reads Not available under its name, rather than each one inventing its own wording. Some are hidden altogether instead. There is a table in section 3 saying which state means what. 0.10.13 and 0.10.14, 9 September · section 3

Downloads and update checks can be paused

At the top of Settings, or from Modules & services. It stops checking and any download in progress immediately, and it is never saved - so a pause cannot quietly become a permanent setting you have forgotten about. 0.10.18, 10 September · section 11

The Bus monitor

The page that writes down everything your boards say, on the wire and through the broker at once, so you can sort it, hide what you are not after and look back at it. It only ever listens. It has been on the menu since late August and has never been in this guide until now. 0.9.85 to 0.9.87, 27 August · task 6.10

The Traffic Simulator - which this guide used to call the Bus tester

Same page, and the menu has said Traffic Simulator since 28 August, so a reader following the old name was looking for a button that is not there. It also gained a live chart of what was asked for against what actually went out, and it now asks your boards during a run rather than reporting the silence it created. 0.9.88 to 0.9.97, 27-28 August · task 6.14

A new Home page

A drawing of this PC, your boards and the roads between them, with the ones that are ready right now lit up and the rest dimmed. Wi-Fi is drawn as an aerial at each end and a signal crossing the air, not as a third cable; Ethernet and Wi-Fi both count as being on the network; and a path only moves when it is really connected. The menu guide folds to one line each and opens on a click. 0.9.117 to 0.9.119, 0.10.16 and 0.10.17 · section 5

Boards keep their identity, and their names

A board is now remembered by its own serial number rather than by its layout number, so one that is renumbered stays one board instead of becoming several. A board with no Wi-Fi shows its name, asked for over the CAN cable. Boards announce themselves over Wi-Fi with no adaptor, broker or setting-up at all. And there is a Refresh button for after you have reflashed something. 0.9.83, 0.9.84, 0.9.99 and 0.9.113 · task 6.1

The programming lead pages name the board on the end of it

Swap a board on the pins and its name follows by itself within seconds, read from the board's own start-up message and remembered after every install. A lead that stays silent gets one reset pulse so it can introduce itself. 0.9.114 to 0.9.116, 31 August · task 6.7

Scan for networks explains itself on Windows 11

An empty list is almost never the wireless adaptor: Windows 11 will not let a program see the names of nearby networks unless Location services is on. The page now says so, and says that only an administrator can change it. 0.9.123, 2 September · task 6.8

Smaller downloads, and an icon you can see

The package lost two debugging files nobody needed, which took a third off it, and updates of the console itself now fetch only the files that changed. The Start menu icon is a white M on the app's own tile, so it no longer disappears into a dark desktop. 0.9.122, 0.9.124 and 0.10.6

What changed in this guide

Four chapters are new - Modules and services, MegaThrottle, the Bus monitor and this one - and the chapters on the Layout editor and the EtherBridge have been rewritten. Everything after section 6 has therefore moved down, so an old link to "section 9" now wants section 11.

Two things about how it looks. The page now uses the full width of your screen rather than a column down the middle, which is what the long tables in sections 3, 5 and 12 wanted. And the bars down the left margin that marked what was new in revision 2 have gone: they had been standing for two editions, which is long enough that they stopped meaning "new". This section replaces them, and says when rather than just that.

Every release, in order

The complete record, newest first, taken from the same tables the Release history window reads. The console's list runs from the last edition of this guide to the release it now describes; the parts' lists run from the day each part came into existence, because none of them had one when revision 2 was written.

MegaPoints Controllers · MegaConsole user guide · revision 3, written for version 0.10.23, 16 September 2026
Screenshots are of the real program; the Windows warning screens are photographs of a genuine installation on a clean machine.
Section 17 lists what changed since revision 2. This guide is revised whenever MegaConsole is, and the copy at docs.megapointscontrollers.com/megaconsole/user-guide.html is always the current one.