Having a little time to get to the local hobby shop (M.B. Klein) today, I was able to pick up a few items. The first of these items connected into my railroad was the Digitrax PR3Xtra. I bought this to allow me to simplify some of my decoder programming through JMRI, but the first feature I played with was the computer interface. So, with my laptop, iPad, and iPhone in hand, I headed to the railroad room ready to spend some significant time getting things setup and running. Boy was I wrong! After only about 15 minutes of connecting a few cables, verifying settings and downloading the mobile app (WiThrottle), I was up and running trains from my computer and both my mobile devices. This app and interface are very easy to use. Select the loco address and move the slider on the throttle. That is about it. All 28 loco functions are available to the user and if you pay for the premium version of the app, two throttles can be accessed simultaneously. The price of the PR3 is less than another wireless throttle, so with my iPhone or a couple of my kids old iPod touches around, this could be a good investment. I will get back for another post about the PR3 when I can stop playing with the throttle and wifi control of trains.
