[Nick B]

This is another exciting development and shows what happens when the main manufacturers get behind something, leveraging their total product portfolio. Perhaps Lenz and other European producers will have to move production to China to enable their prices to be slashed; and in terms of maker to maker, it will interesting to see how Hornby respond to Bachmann. What we also need to understand regarding the price positioning of the Baachmann is whether the indicated £95 price includes 3 to 4 amp transformer.
ZTC is not available in Australia, but I detect a certain cynicism of their products on this site - what are the reasons behind that? Talking of high prices, I cannot see how they can remain in business given their small distribution network.
Given the technical and pricing leaps being announced by Bachmann and Hornby around the mid range systems, perhaps we will all be blown away by Lenz and others at the Toy Fair - at the end of the day, if Lenz and Ecos develop systems for other competitors, it is hard to believe they wil give them a competitie advantage.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE ZTC is not available in Australia, but I detect a certain cynicism of their products on this site - what are the reasons behind that? Talking of high prices, I cannot see how they can remain in business given their small distribution network Just to put it into perspective the ZTC system is about the same cost as an ESU Ecos. Look at the difference in design and specs. You'd be mad buying the ZTC system.

QUOTE Given the technical and pricing leaps being announced by Bachmann and Hornby around the mid range systems, perhaps we will all be blown away by Lenz and others at the Toy Fair - at the end of the day, if Lenz and Ecos develop systems for other competitors, it is hard to believe they wil give them a competitie advantage. It could be that Lenz and ESU don't have the production facilities for mass marketing a budget system and thats why they sell their budget offerings to Bachmann and Roco. With their full spec'ed systems there isn't such a big market and they can handle distribution themselves.

There does seem to be a similarity between the design of the Maerklin /Trix budget system and the Dynamis. The Maerklin /Trix system would have been designed by ESU too. I wonder how much they have in common.

The Trix one here is also a handheld one like the Dynamis. The Dynamis has some better specs like more functions. I reckon the Dynamis could well be an improved version of the Trix systems one.

There we go managed to get a bit more speculation in.

 

[Oakydoke]

B)-->QUOTE(Nick B @ 28 Jan 2007, 00:25) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
What we also need to understand regarding the price positioning of the Bachmann is whether the indicated £95 price includes 3 to 4 amp transformer.[/quote]
Yes, both the Dynamis and Dynamis Pro come with a transformer.
The Pro also has a built in computer interface.

QUOTE ZTC is not available in Australia, but I detect a certain cynicism of their products on this site - what are the reasons behind that?
The ZTC systems are quite limited in their ability and they are widely known to be bug ridden as well.
In the past, product support has been reported as poor.
The well built console has its attractions for many, but all you are getting is a fancy case.
Some would say the ZTC511 is a £50 system in a £300 tin box?

In my humble opinion, best forgotten.

 

[neil_s_wood]

Do we know the power output for the Dynamis yet? I see a lot of similarities with this Trix system which came out early last year which also involved ESU. Same number of max loco addresses, name addresses and the games console format is identical too. The Dynamis seems to be an more expensive upgraded version of the same format. The Ecos is a very different item from these handheld systems. If the Dynamis is succesful maybe Bachmann will go for a central station item like the Ecos which has all the features that the Ecos has.

The Trix Central Station looks like the Ecos too and has many similar features. ESU must be creating systems for quite a few train manufacturers as well as making their decoders. I wonder if they will, or have, replaced Lenz as the DCC bench mark? The Dynamis might make a good wireless walk around controller for the Ecos.

 

[Doug]

Dynamis uses Infra-red, not radio.

-1 point there. I was hoping for radio as infra-red requires uninterrupted line of sight. I've tried IR (Uhlenbrock IR Intellibox) on some large layouts and it is a bit of a pain. You have to mount the IR receiver quit high up to get good reception from the controllers.

Some photos from Gary's Toy Fair report show the guts of the device:

Here we see the base station with IR diodes radiating out:

It looks like it is using the new ECoSBoost booster base shown by Neil here. The booster seems to have a module slot in the top - just for things like this Dynamis IR device.

The device with the IR on the back:

Click here for the rest of Gary's British Toy Fair report.

 

[mthornton]

QUOTE (Doug @ 29 Jan 2007, 11:40) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Dynamis uses Infra-red, not radio.

-1 point there. I was hoping for radio as infra-red requires uninterrupted line of sight. I've tried IR (Uhlenbrock IR Intellibox) on some large layouts and it is a bit of a pain. You have to mount the IR receiver quit high up to get good reception from the controllers.
On the other hand it avoids the radio interference issues and keeps the cost down. Not so good for outdoor layouts.

 

[Doug]

Yes, that was a point that we were worried about earlier.

It's perhaps not suitable for layouts that go around the outside of a room (like mine), unless IR repeaters can be added.

Hopefully we'll test it and see how suitable it is.

 

[dwb]

>layouts that go around the outside of a room (like mine),
Mine too and I have trusses to worry about. I wonder how easy it would be to move the IR emitters high into the room space?

David

 

[Doug]

Apparantly it does work well on layouts around the room. I'll be speaking to a technical developer from Bachmann in a few days to find out more.

Watch this space

 

[dwb]

>I'll be speaking to a technical developer from Bachmann in a few days to find out more.
Would it be possible for you to work modern lofts into the conversation? Mine has roof trusses on 600mm centres. I'm afraid that my body might block "direct line of sight" a lot of the time.

David