Some questions about Arduino for DCC (DCC++)

[bklynman01]

So I've been looking at building my own DCC controller using an Arduino. Using an Arduino interests me with it's low cost, but mostly my engineering DIY nature flares out of control thinking that I can do this myself. So far, here are my thoughts...

Most of the instruction I find online use a BLE sheild (bluetooth) to connect to the controller (in my case an old phone) for operations. However, I found an Arduino Uno +WiFi which is cheaper than buying an Uno and a BLE device seperately. Does anyone use WiFi to control their layout with an Arduino?

I'm yet to download the JMRI app and check it out, but I've seen it used at some of the local club layouts and it seems pretty straight forward. WIll the software work with any type of connection to the Arduino (BLE, WiFi, USB, etc)?

There's a few different instructionals out there for how to accomplish this setup. Has anyone here tried more than one of those methods and have a preferred method? If you haven't tried multiple, what did you like about the method you used? What didn't you like?

Thanks in advance for your input!

 

[bklynman01]

Okay, I've done some reading and found that JMRI can connect through WiFi (TCP/IP) using MQTT. Basically, this allows a device to simply broadcast messages on a WiFi network so that other devices on the network can hear them. The MQTT server hears all of the messages and distributes those messages to the devices that are subsribed to those types of messages.

I've had some trouble finding Arduino tutorials for using MQTT. The only instructions I found online were to connect Raspberry Pi via MQTT. I'll keep digging, but if anyone out there has experience with MQTT in JMRI, I'd love to hear from you.

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