Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot

[cfm146g]

RE: Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot

(17/01/2020 21:22)LT10 Wrote:  T42 is correct, machines can be programmed to any vehicle, but sometimes are just swapped over quickly if a bus is needed, and will either run with the wrong fleet number or no fleet number at all on the machine.

On the Wayfarer system machines are mounted on a base plate which contains a circuit board powered by the bus. Attached to the board is a Real Time Chip also known as a Dallas chip which is encoded with the fleet number. The ticket machine is then plugged onto the plate and learns which bus it is on from the Dallas chip. So machines can be swapped around without concerns regarding bus numbers.
On Ticketer machines the base plate has no circuit board and the machine needs to be told what bus it is on before being sent out. Obviously thiere is scope for this step to be forgotten so that buses may report the fleet number of the previous bus on which the machine was mounted. The correct procedure when removing a machine is to remove the bus number from the memory. If this was carried out then the machine will report no number if put on another bus without being reprogrammed.
It is possible for a bus to report the wrong number on the Wayfarer system however. In the event of Dallas chip failure or the chip becoming dislodged from its mount the bus will report the default number 9999. If the base plate is taken off the bus and mounted on another it will carry the fleet number with it unless the Dallas chip is replaced or reprogrammed.
Hope this helps to explain unexpected reports of bus locations.