When using the Blunami app to control multiple locos with multiple users in close proximity, its good to understand best practices to manage connections and avoid connecting to your neighbor’s loco.

Once a user has pressed the “Connect” button on a loco, the Blunami app assumes you are interested in automatically reconnecting to your loco (in the event of an unintentional disconnect). That way if your loco travels through a long underground tunnel or out-of-range, the app can automatically reconnect the moment you exit the tunnel. The app also provides toggle options in the settings to manage whether your loco will “stop on disconnect” (or continue rolling).

At this stage we have not added password protection to lock other users out of connecting to a loco. The protocol has a pathway to adding password protection, but implementing this opens up a whole can of worms related to lost passwords, and we are hesitant to travel down that track. Please follow the procedure below to help avoid any connection confusion.

Firstly, if you plan on operating your loco in a public environment with other users, please name your loco with a unique name you can identify (19 characters or less). The Blunami app can see all locos in range that are available for connection, and it will be easier to identify your loco if we all don’t name our loco “Blunami”.

When using a loco that you personally own and plan to connect to regularly (on the primary device you control it with) it is NOT necessary to hit the green “disconnect” button on the home screen when your session has ended. Simply close the app when you are done using. This way your loco will automatically connect to your primary device the next time you launch the app and it detects the loco in range.

If you connect to a friend’s loco using your device (or connect to a loco using a secondary device that you own) then please press the green “disconnect” button when the session has ended (prior to exiting the app). This will prevent your smart device from automatically connecting to that loco at any future time.

If you fail to press the disconnect button when a session has ended (on any device except your primary control device) the Blunami app assumes you want to automatically reconnect to it in the future. This could have potential undesirable effects. For example, if you leave you old iPad running the app on the counter, and have not purposefully disconnected from your loco in the last session (by pressing the “disconnect” button), if your loco powers up in range of that iPad, it might automatically connect to your iPad. When you go to look for the loco on your iPhone (primary device in this example) it may not be available for connection (as it is already connected to the iPad). Keep in mind that a loco will not appear available on the homescreen if it is connected to another device.

The best practice is to always disconnect from any loco (by pressing the “disconnect” button) when a session has ended unless you own the loco and are operating it on your primary device. If you ever power up your loco and find that it is not available on your homescreen, consider the possibility that it may be connected to another iOS device (that it has previously connected to). To make the loco available again, simply kill power to the loco momentarily to power-cycle the loco, at which point it should become available on your devices homescreen.

Also, always close the Blunami app completely when you are done using it (by “swiping upward”) to make sure the app is not running in the background (to avoid any unintentional disconnects).