Release Notes for JMRI 4.15.3 release

Date: February 12, 2019

From: Bob Jacobsen

Subject: Test Release 4.15.3 of JMRI/DecoderPro is available for download.

Notes:

This is a test release. Please post a note if you encounter any new or old bugs! And please back up your JMRI files before installing this, in case you want to go back to an earlier version.

This is the next in a series of test releases. We expect this series to end in the next JMRI production release during early Summer 2019. (See the tentative release schedule)

Some of the changes involved are quite extensive. They may require a certain amount of experience before they are working well. Therefore, this test release should be considered experimental.

JMRI is now only available under the GNU General Public License. For more information, please see our copyright and licensing page.

Update From Older JMRI Versions

If you are currently using JMRI 4.11.9 or earlier, we strongly recommend that you update to JMRI 4.12 and make sure that's running OK before updating to this test release. Once you have JMRI 4.12 running OK, store your configuration and panel files and use those from then on. There have been a number of changes in serial port support, panel file format and configuration options since those earlier releases, and moving to the stable JMRI 4.12 release is a good way to work through any possible problems.

If you are currently using JMRI 4.7.3 or earlier on Linux or macOS (Windows doesn't need this), you must update to JMRI 4.12 and carrying out the migration process described in the JMRI 4.12 release note before updating to this release.

Known problems with this release

• If running on 64-bit Microsoft Windows with a 32-bit Java installation, JMRI will fail to launch. A workaround is to install a 64-bit Java (it's not required to uninstall the existing 32-bit Java). If you are unable to install a 64-bit Java, an alternate workaround is to modify the Start Menu shortcut Target by changing

  "C:\Program Files (x86)\JMRI\LaunchJMRI.exe" apps....

  to

  "C:\Program Files (x86)\JMRI\LaunchJMRI.exe" /32bit apps....

  This forces the launcher to only look for a 32-bit Java installation. This problem is being tracked via GitHub issue 6568.

New warnings for this release:

• The prefix that identifies a layout connection should be a single letter, like "N" or "L", or a letter and some digits, like "K2" or "D3". Some older systems used to have longer "legacy system prefixes" like "DX", "DCCPP", "DP", "MR", "MC", "PI", and "TM". Those legacy system prefixes will now cause JMRI to issues a warning at startup. In this release, JMRI will still work with those prefixes, but they will need to be migrated to the proper form soon; JMRI 4.17.1 and later will require that this have been fixed. Therefore, this warning can't be suppressed without migrating the prefix in the connection configuration (and any associated panel files and scripts). If you're getting this warning and therefore need to do that migration, migration page.

Older warnings

See the JMRI 4.14 release note for more warnings predating the 4.15 development series. These may be relevant to you if you're updating from an earlier version.

Since JMRI 4.11.4 There are issues with the Pi-SPROG One command station operation. A number of workarounds should be applied:

• Do not turn on the track power until the power supply to the Pi-SPROG ONE is turned on
• Do not enable extra debugging through default.lcf, nor open the system console window
• Do not open the SPROG console window
• Disable power conversion (CV 29) in all locos
• If connecting via VNC (or similar), setup the screen layout before turning on the track power

Pi-SPROG One with version 2.4 or earlier firmware will cause a timeout after a track short circuit. A dialog box will open to inform the user of this. The track power will be turned off and must be turned on again using the power control.

Download links:

Please note that the download links in this and future JMRI releases link to Github servers. People are welcome to distribute the download files further via other websites, etc. If you want to check that you've received original, unmodified versions, please check the files against the checksums shown below.

Changes since Test release 4.15.2:

The list of included commits is available from our GitHub code repository.

Hardware Support

MERG CBUS

• Turnouts now accept DIRECT and DELAYED feedback.
• Querying a turnout will also query any feedback sensors for that turnout.
• Event Request monitoring has moved from the Event Table to a stand-alone request monitoring table.
• The CBUS console will attempt to lookup event ( and node ) names from the Event Table.

Turnouts, Lights, Sensors and other elements

• Fixed an issue where Reporters with a system letter of M were erroneously tagged as requiring migration.
• RailCom Tags now appear in the ID Tag table and are available to operations and other tools just like other Identifiable tags.
• LocoNet reporters now report a Transponding Tag object instead of a string. This object allows extracting the address without further parsing. As with RailCom tags, these also apear in the IdTag table and are available totools such as operations.
• Internal Reporters can now collect information. An example showing how to use this feature is available here.

Scripting

• Geoff Bunza provided sample scripts supporting bulk sensor channels and turnout channels via USB between JMRI Sensor and Turnout Tables and Arduino interfaces to hardware.
. For more information, see the Readme files linked just above.

Signals

Signal Systems

• Dick Bronson corrected a bad link to an image in the PRR-1956 definition

Signal Heads

• Fix an XML validation problem when reading files with RGB heads

Timetable

• New menu item: Export CSV File — Create a CSV file that can be imported into a spreadsheet program. This can be used to create a traditional timetable.
• New menu item: Import CSV File — Import a CSV file that contains external timetable data to create a new layout defintion or extend an existing layout definition.

Virtual Sound Decoder

• Klaus Killinger added functionality to handle a throttle direction change at speed > 0: slow down to 0, change the direction, ramp-up to the old speed.
• The engine sound will continue after an Emergency Stop.

Miscellaneous

• We're building the release note a different way starting with this release.
• All the PackageList test files were updated to JUnit4 form, without a separate main()
• The Windows "installer" and "launcher" have been updated to support Oracle's Java JDK 11 installation mechanisms on Windows platforms.
• Starting with this release, legacy system prefixes will cause JMRI to issues a warning at startup. This warning can't be suppressed without migrating the prefix in the connection configuration (and any associated panel files and scripts). For help with that, see the migration page.

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