Every board on your layout, in one window

Every MegaPoints System 2 board you own, looked after from one window on your PC. See the lot at a glance, update the whole layout with a click, and know that a copy of every board’s settings is already safe. MegaConsole is free, and we have been far too quiet about it.

Your whole layout, in a list

Open MegaConsole and your boards are simply there. Nothing to type in, no addresses to go hunting for, no list to keep up to date by hand. Each one tells you what it is, what you have called it, whereabouts on the layout it lives, which version of its software it is running, whether anything newer is waiting for it, and when it last spoke.

That last one is the most useful thing on the screen. A board that has stopped saying hello is a board worth walking over to, and you will have spotted it from your chair rather than halfway through a running session with visitors watching.

One click, and the update happens

When we finish a new version of a board’s software, it turns up against that board as a little tag. Click the tag. That is the update. No second screen asking whether you are sure, no version to look up, nothing to download first. MegaConsole already has the file, and the board is brought up to date over your own home network while you sit where you are.

Or do the lot in one go. Press Select the whole layout and every board is queued up together. One always goes first and has to prove it worked before the rest follow, a few at a time, each with its own progress bar, so a bad version can never take your whole railway down with it.

And it tells you when it can’t

There is one catch, and MegaConsole says so plainly rather than leaving you to find out the hard way. A board can only be updated over your network if it is already running software new enough to know how. Boards that can, say so in green. Older ones say needs later firmware to enable in amber, and they mean it.

Those older boards are not stuck. They need bringing up to the line once, with the programming lead below, and after that they join everything else and are never a special case again. Far better you see that on the screen than sit wondering why one board did nothing.

It has been backing your boards up all along

Getting your settings right takes ages. Losing them takes a second.

MegaConsole keeps a copy of every board’s settings on your PC, with the date on it, and it does it without being asked. That includes just before it puts new software on a board, which is exactly the moment you would want one. Press Back up every board now and it does the whole layout there and then.

Putting one back is the same job in reverse. A board that has failed, or been swapped for a new one, goes back to precisely how you had it. You can also copy one board’s setup straight onto a brand new board of the same kind, which turns an afternoon of typing into a few seconds.

Everything lives on your PC

MegaConsole collects the newest version of every board we make onto your own machine, not just the ones you own, so that when you decide to update, the files are already sitting there. No waiting, and no scratching about for a download while the layout is in pieces.

Before any of it is allowed near a board it is checked, to make sure it really came from us and has not been meddled with on the way. Your settings, your backups, your WiFi password and the names you have given things stay on your PC. What your layout actually does — your track plan, your routes, your signalling — is never sent to us at all.

One more thing worth knowing. When we finish a new version, MegaConsole offers it to you the same day. Everybody else is offered it on the 1st of the following month. You get things sooner, and if a version turns out to have something wrong with it, we simply do not send it on to anybody else.

Change any board without leaving your chair

Every board has its own settings page inside MegaConsole, built for that particular board rather than a wall of numbers. Servo travel, what each output is for, which way a point throws, what a signal does: all of it in plain rows, with the board wired up and listening as you go.

On a point motor board you can nudge a servo to and fro and watch the real thing move at the far end of the room before you commit to anything. Then press Save to board. No crawling under the baseboard with a laptop balanced on your knee.

The two small parts that finish the job

MegaConsole does plenty on its own, and it is free. Two small USB parts switch on the rest. You do not need both, and you can add either one whenever you like.

The CAN Adaptor is the one that makes your layout appear by itself. Push it into a USB socket, connect three screw terminals to the wiring you already have, and every board on the railway says hello. It is what turns MegaConsole from a useful program into the picture at the top of this page.

The Programmer is a lead that plugs onto a board directly. It does two jobs: it finishes an update that got interrupted, a power cut halfway through writing one being the usual culprit, and it brings an older board up to the point where it can be updated over the network like the rest. It is also how you read a board’s start-up chatter if you ever ring us for help, which turns a puzzling fault into a five-minute conversation instead of a parcel in the post.

Why we have not been shouting about this

We ran out of programmers.

There seemed little point telling everybody about a program whose best trick needs a part we could not send them, so we let MegaConsole get on with it quietly while we sorted the supply out. They are back in stock as we write this, and so are the CAN Adaptors. If you have been waiting on one, now is the time.

Getting hold of it

MegaConsole is a free download for Windows 10 and 11. It is one installer with everything inside it, there are no drivers to find, and you do not need an administrator password. It puts itself on your Start menu, keeps itself up to date, and takes itself off again from Settings if you decide it is not for you.

The first time you open it, it asks for your email address and sends you a six‑digit code. Typing that code in is the whole job. No account, no password, nothing to keep safe, and it covers every board we make.

The MegaConsole page walks through it screen by screen and answers the questions we get asked most. There is a full user guide online too, free to read, arranged by the job you are trying to do rather than by what the buttons are called. It prints out at about 52 sides of A4 if you would rather have it beside the layout.

As ever, if something does not make sense, or you are not sure which of the two parts you want, drop us a line. We would rather you bought the right thing once.

Dave & Sheila