Description
What it is
A free program for your Windows PC. It is the one place you go to look after your System 2 boards: all of them, in one window, without getting out of your chair.
You download it once and it looks after itself from there — new versions arrive quietly in the background and go in the next time you start it. There is nothing else to buy to try it, and nothing you have to plug in before it will open.
Why it makes life easier
Think about what changing one setting costs you today. You get the torch. You get on your back. You find the right board under the baseboard, or behind the backscene, or up the far end. You look up its address, you type it in, and you hope you picked the right one. Then you do it again for the next board.
With MegaConsole open, none of that happens. Every board is already on the screen in front of you, with its name on it. Click one and its settings open. Change what you like and press Save. Move on to the next one with another click.
The same goes for the jobs nobody enjoys. Your WiFi password goes to every board in one press instead of fourteen. Every board’s settings are copied onto your PC in one press, with the date on them, so an afternoon of fiddling can never be lost again. New software goes out over your own network while you sit there and watch the progress bars. And MegaConsole copies a board before it changes anything, every single time, so you can always put it back the way it was.
It is the difference between an afternoon on your back with a torch and five minutes with a cup of tea.
What MegaConsole does
With nothing but your PC — download it and these work straight away:
- Get the newest software for every board we make, not just the ones you own
- Keep every older version too, with the notes that came with it
- Check every file really came from us before it goes near a board
- Keep working with the internet switched off
- Have a practice run on a pretend board first
- Keep itself up to date, quietly
Once it can see your layout — add a CAN Adaptor, or nothing at all if your boards already talk to each other over WiFi and MQTT:
- Find every board you own, all by itself — nothing to type in
- Show what each board is, what it is called and where it is
- Show which boards have newer software waiting
- Open a board’s own page with one click
- Watch your boards talking to each other, as it happens
- Tell you when something is wrong, in plain words
- Change any board’s settings without leaving your chair
- Move a servo and watch it move, before you save anything
- Save every board’s settings onto your PC in one press
- Put saved settings back on a board
- Copy one board’s settings onto a new board of the same kind
- Update your boards over your own WiFi
- Send one board first, to prove it worked, before the rest follow
Two of those need the wires rather than WiFi, because that is how the message reaches a board that is not on your network yet: giving every board your WiFi name and password in one go, and taking it back off again.
If an update ever gets interrupted — with a System2 Programmer lead:
- Put new software on one board through the lead
- Put an older version back on one board
- Finish an update that was stopped half way through
- Keep all your settings while it does it
- Read the board first and stop if it is the wrong one
- Show you what a board is saying while it runs, and save that to send to us
- Start a board up again from your PC
- Wipe a board’s settings and start fresh
- Work on one board on its own, with nothing else plugged in
What you need
- A Windows 10 or Windows 11 PC. That is the only thing you must have.
- To see and change your layout: a System2 CAN Adaptor, a small USB stick that puts your PC on the same two wires your boards already use. This is the one most people want.
- Or nothing at all, if your boards already talk to each other over WiFi and MQTT — tell MegaConsole your broker once and your layout fills itself in.
- Just in case: a System2 Programmer, a short lead that works on one board on its own. Only needed if an update is ever stopped half way through.
You do not need both parts, and you can add either one whenever you like. There is a full side-by-side list of what each one switches on on the MegaConsole page.
Getting it onto your PC
Download MegaConsole for Windows — free, about 52 MB, Windows 10 or Windows 11.
Everything it needs is inside that one file. No extra software to go and find, and you do not need an administrator password. It puts itself on your Start menu and takes itself off again from Settings > Apps.
One thing MegaConsole does not bring with it: if you have the System2 Programmer lead, Windows 11 does not come with the driver that lead needs. It is a free download from Silicon Labs and a once-only job, and the user guide walks you through it. Windows 10 usually sorts itself out.
Windows does not recognise us yet, so it will query the file twice — once as it comes down, and once as it opens. Nothing is wrong, and there is nothing you need to change on your PC. The MegaConsole page shows exactly what you will see and which button to press each time.
The first time you open it, it asks for your email address. That is the whole job — no code to type in, nothing to keep safe. Your licence then turns up on its own and switches on the parts that change a board. If you bought your boards from us it is issued the moment your order goes through. Looking round your layout, downloading software and finishing an interrupted update never need it.
Your layout is yours. Your board settings, your backups, your WiFi password and the names you have given things are kept on your own PC, and what your layout does — your track plan, your routes, your signalling — is never sent to us at all.
MegaConsole asks you four questions on its first run, and every one has a switch on the Settings page afterwards: whether it may keep a copy of your board settings on this PC (starts on), whether it may send us a health report about your boards (starts on), whether it may keep a second copy of those settings with us (starts on, and answered separately, because that one is your own settings leaving the house), and whether it may tell us how the program itself is being used (starts off). Turn any of them off and nothing further is sent. Our privacy policy sets out exactly what each one covers.
The user guide
Read the MegaConsole user guide — the whole program explained in plain English, with a picture of every page.
It is written for people who would rather run trains than fight computers, and it is arranged by the job you are trying to do rather than by what the buttons are called: find your boards, change one, back the lot up, put a newer version on them, get a new board onto your WiFi. Every step has a picture of the real screen beside it. There is a print button at the top if you would rather have it on paper — it comes out at about 52 sides of A4.
It sits with the guides for all our other System 2 boards, and it is kept up to date as MegaConsole changes, so the link always gives you the current one. The program has a User guide link at the bottom of its own menu that opens the same page.
Where this is up to
MegaConsole is free, finished enough to use every day, and still being added to — so we call it a preview rather than pretend otherwise. It has been looking after our own layout for months. If something is not right, tell us — at this stage that is worth a great deal to us.
