Hello All,
First time poster here. My father and I recently bought a Dallee sound system to put into and AristoCraft C 16 locomotive. Our loco is powered by a trailing battery car with the train engineer built that we bough from Aristocraft as well. My problem is that I can find no resource of how to install this sound board. I have Googled and Googled and Googled but no help. Problem with this hobby is that everyone seems to do their own thing their own way. Is there anyone that has a similar set up to mine that can tell me, link me what they did. I would really appreciate it
Regards,
Scott
Scott,
The Dallee is pretty simple to install. You need power input of course, so you get that from your battery. You need the motor input so the speed ramps up/down and you get that from the output from your TE receiver. That's the 2 pin termination terminal next to the power on/off switch. That output is what provides the power to your loco from the TE output. Of course you need a speaker and you can mount that inside of the trailing battery car or you can run a set of wires up to the engine. That's basically it unless you want to install some reed switches for bell and whistle. You can see from the below picture how I did one of mine. I have 4, all in slightly different configurations. All of my speakers are in the engine.
Here is the end showing the power and speaker plugs. The bottom is for the power to the motor and the bottom is the speaker. One plug is the female and the other the male so you can never cross them.
M. Gilger - President and Chief Engineer MM&G web
Web Site: http://mmg-garden-rr.webs.com/
Thanks Gilger for the suggestions,
Your set up seems a little different then mine, is it custom?
http://www.wholesaletrains.com/SMImages/LG200512340.jpg
I use this premade one provided by Aristocraft, I want to put the Dallee Card in the tender where the speaker is at but I seem to be missing a step, I seem to be lacking the 7 pin auxillary port and plug. I imagine it's been wraped into some other system but the instruction I recieved or found on installing the sound card seems to require it and sence it didn't work after I did everything else but that step, i guess it really does need it
Here the link to the instructions http://www.aristocraft.com/techinfo/revolution/Revolution_TE_Manual_Sound_Supplement_3-18-09.pdf
I am completely new to this, My first soldering was done on this project and the solders look good so for my sake, lets assume i did that right.
Regards
Same receiver as mine, different battery is all. Also mine is home made, where yours is made by AristoCraft.
The instructions your using is for the Revolution, not the TE that your using. So you won't be able to use it, except for the Dallee part. on page 2, although the instructions on the Dallee web site are much better.
You want to hook your battery to J1. The polarity is not important, as long as you hook it to J1. If you hook it to J2, you will need to make sure the positive (Red wire) is hooked to Positive (Red wire) on the battery and the Gray wire is hooked to the negative (Black) wire on the battery. So find a place to tie into the battery wires and wire it to one of the 2 pin J1 plugs. If you don't want to use the battery that is already there, you can wire in a dedicated battery just for your sound card. Aristo makes a "Y" connector that would also work, a CRE-55611 if you want to tie into the existing battery.
The output of the receiver, the 2 terminal lugs, you hook to the black and white wire on J3 plug. If you follow the wires coming off of that terminal, you will see they go out to the front of the car into a plug that hooks up to the engine. Hook a small speaker to the SPKR plug, polarity is not important. If you want the speaker in the engine, you will need to route the wire out the front to another plug of different polarity. If you go to my web site, then the Forum and then Modifications & Parts section, you will see a bunch of different plugs, with part numbers, etc. The ones I use, which matches the one on your battery car is the "MU Connector Plugs".
Your done, except if you want to hook up the bell and whistle and that's a bit more complicated, although not difficult. Let me know if you want those and I'll try and explain.
The instructions are located on Dallee's web site at:
http://www.dallee.com/PDFs/DCV3-STEAM-r14.pdf
You can see how to wire up the J4 and J5, although my suggestion would be to first wire up the sound as explained above and once you get it working, you can then go back and wire in the reed switches to J4/J5 and get the bell & whistle working. You need to position those someplace close to the track so you can place magnets on, or near the track that will activate those reeds when passing over the magnets.
Success, got the Chuff working and everything and was able to plug it into my Lithim battery that plugs in to the TE board. Now how about that bell and whistle? I want to be able to control it with my remote control. Is that even possible with what i have?
Also does anyone have a link to a wiring diagram of the circuit board in my trailing battery card, might give me clues of where to plug the bell and whistle in, assuming I am able to do that.
Good job. I have never done the bell/whistle from the remote, so won't be of much help. I think what you will need is CRE-55474 Remote Accessory Receiver. The problem doing that is it will suck up more power from your battery making your run time maybe 1/2 as much as it currently is. So if your car does not already have the second battery, you might want to consider it. Maybe someone will chime in here that has done this before and can make recomendations.
Mark
Well accidentally I found out that just by having the bell or whistle wire touch some sort of power, the bell or whistle noise will go off. There must be some way to do this remotley. I imagine they built this trailing Battery Car with train engineer inside to do just that but I have to know where to solder the wires to. I think if I just contact Aristocraft they will provide the answer or at least a wireing guide to their train engineer board so i could rig something up.
Thanks for the Help
mgilger ...I think what you will need is CRE-55474 Remote Accessory Receiver. The problem doing that is it will suck up more power from your battery making your run time maybe 1/2 as much as it currently is.
...I think what you will need is CRE-55474 Remote Accessory Receiver. The problem doing that is it will suck up more power from your battery making your run time maybe 1/2 as much as it currently is.
You won't cut your run time anywhere near in half. The control electronics don't draw but a small fraction of the current that the motors do. It's likely you won't impact run time much at all by adding the accessory receiver.
Here's a link to Dallee's wiring instructions on how to wire the Dallee to Aristo's Train Engineer.
http://www.dallee.com/PDFs/Appl;ication%20Notes/APPNOTE-DCV3-ARISTORADIORCVR%27S.pdf
Later,
K
Thanks for posting in K,
So the CRE-55474 Remote Accessory Receiver is a must I assume, Seems like a lot of hardware for such a small task. I will read more about it but it Links to the TE controller just like the on board TE in the battery car does right? I also assume that some sort of wire splicing with the battery and the Remote Accessory will have to occur to power it. I will be planing to run 2 other trains using the same trailing TE battery car set up. Seems like it will be quite the undertaking.
Also, does anyone have a picture of all this set up, TE, Accessory, and Dallee sound system with attached battery. I would like to see it just as a reference.
Which version of the Train Engineer are you running? If it's the large "trackside" version, then the 55474 will be what you need. (You'll know it's that version if it's either in a large black box or a circuit board around 4" x 4". Many folks took the PC boards out of the black box to use inside a box car.
If it's the smaller "on-board" version with two rows of pins--one on either end of the board, then you can use the 55495 accessory receiver. Same thing, but much smaller package that plugs into the existing receiver.
The other thing to check is whether you've got the really old 27 mHz system or the 75 mHz system. The transmitter on the 27mHz system has only two "channels." The 75mHz system has 10.
(I'm also assuming you're not running the latest "Revolution" version of the Train Engineer. That has accessory outputs already on the receiver.
Above is the link to what I bought. I think it is the "trackside" version just stripped out of its case and put in side a box car because of the lack of pins. I also have the 10 channel system. I do not have the "Revolution". Would you recommend that instead of the already built in version? I do not mind having to mount and re engineer my cars to accommodate the system, especially if it saves on the money side.
Regards and Thanks
K,
The 27mhz transmitter also have 10 channels, it's only the real old units that only had 2.
There are certainly advantages to upgrading to the newer system, not the least of which is that it's currently being produced--which cannot be said of what you've got. If you're looking to expand down the road, relying on the used market or dealers with dusty old boxes of the old stuff still on the shelves may be a hit-or-miss way of going about things. That, and the cost of the old-style accessory receiver alone is more than what you can buy a new Revolution receiver for, which has 6 accessory triggers built in. If you're willing to spend the money on the new stuff, I think it'd be money well spent.
The good news is that you're not wasting money by replacing the old system. The Trackside TE is rated at 10 amps (if I recall correctly), and has the ability to switch between "Pulse-Width Modulation" and "Linear" voltage. (For those curious about the difference, "linear" is a flat voltage, like that straight out of a battery. "Pulse Width Modulation" is a series of pulses that go to the motor. The pulses are full voltage, sent at very high frequencies. The length of the pulse is what determines the speed of the motor.) Both have their advantages, but most high-end power supplies send out linear voltage. All you'd need is a good (and fairly inexpensive) regulated power supply, and you've got a good quality, wireless throttle for any track-powered applications you may encounter.
Is this new system compatible with my old system, I.E. can I sync the new controller with the old TE thats in my trailing car?
By "NEW", do you mean the Revolution? If that's what your asking, the answer is no. The 27mhz TE will not work with the new Revolution receiver or transmitter. Now some keep saying "OLD" TE and OLD is not really true because Aristocraft still sells it along side of the newer Revolution. When using the word "OLD" that refers to older technology, where the Revolution is newer technology. The older TE still work fine, and in my case I used them for 6+ years and just this year am transitioning over to the Revolution to give me more capabilities.
Thanks Mark,
Will overcome the "Revolution" hurdle when it comes. I guess will stick with the old syle were all set and ready to take the next step. We it does happen. The "Old" TE board will go to a good friend who loves having spare circuit boards. As a future reference, does the TE Revolution fit in the tender or does it still require being put in a trailing car?
The Revolution does fit in the tender (easily). It's a "plug-and-play" board that plugs into the sockets in Aristo's (and Bachmann's) locomotives. All you'd need to do is find a place for batteries and you're off and running. The bigger the tender, the easier that task, but small Li-Ion batteries make that pretty simple, too. Know also that the "old" TE--the 75mHz variety--also has a plug-and-play receiver that easily fits in the tenders as well, so if you find yourself liking the system, you can get small components for new locos and not have to worry about battery cars.
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