FREMO Interlocking: FStw General Items Design Goals

FREMO Interlocking

FStw -> General Items

31.07.2005

Design-Goals

Obviously the main design goal will be to support the special needs of a modular design. As there are:

Every time an arrangement is build up, the modules and the stations (groups of modules/segments) may positioned at a different place. Therefore every station needs its own interlocking (flexibility).
All these stations have very different sizes, starting with one or two turnouts and ending in lot of turnouts, signals and so on.
The "outdoor equipment" (point machines, signals, ...) will be very different from station to station, just depending on the aspirations of the owner.

Flexible

Especially for the use of blocks and train describers it will be very important to have something like an auto configuration, which gets the topology of the whole arrangement.
This implies standard interfaces between the interlocking systems.

Scaleable

Small stations should be operated by only some EC and one CU, containing the complete logic. Very big stations may need one or more PC, a couple of UI and so on.

De central Design

One of our main goals has been, to get a system, which can be mounted under the modules and will be connected by only one connector per end of module. Don't laugh at this, if you had to build up a bigger arrangement, you will know about the problems.

Restrictions

The only restriction known in the moment is, we will stick to LotusNet as the bus system.

Miscellaneous

Nothing for now.