Alternative to soldering decoder connections

[jjdamnit]

Hello All,

It seems that the consensus is to practice your soldering technique.

hon30critter

My final bit of advice is to stop telling yourself that you can't solder. Tell yourself that you can solder. In either case you will be right!

I agree whole heatedly!

John-NYBW

This is my first Loksound decoder and there is a noticeable delay between turning the throttle and the loco responding. It was about a 3 1/2 second delay at start up. The time it took to stop seems to vary depending on the speed. When I ran it at top speed, which I would normally never do, it seemed to take 6 seconds or more to come to a stop after I shut off the throttle. At normal speed it would take about 2-3 seconds to come to a stop. Is this the way these decoders are programmed to operate.

I have no experience with Loksound decoders so I don't know what the Configuration Variables (CVs) are set from the factory.

From what you've described it seems that the CVs for acceleration and deceleration (CVs 3 & 4) have been set to something other than zero "0". Setting zero to these CVs will produce an instantaneous response.

Other values will affect the "lag" time of acceleration and deceleration- -as you have described.

Another consideration in the lag-time might be a "keep-alive" device in the decoder.

These are capacitors that allow the locomotive to continue when the power from the track to the decoder is interrupted. This can happen over dirty track or unpowered frogs.

The decoder will not respond to the DCC packets until it gets an "updated" signal.

Moving over the above-mentioned track situations will block the signal and the decoder will not respond to commands from the system until it reaches a section of track that can produce a signal that the decoder can read.

To the uninitiated, this might seem like the locomotive has a mind of its own because there is a lag time from when commands are sent from the controller to when the unit responds.

I would suggest a decoder reset.

For most decoders programming CV 8 to a value of 8 will reset the decoder to the address of 3 and zero out any momentum settings. It will not affect the "keep-alive" function.

Download the decoder manual from ESU to confirm the reset CVs and if there is or is not a "keep-alive" function to your particular decoder.

Hope this helps.

[tstage]

From my experience, Loksound decoders normally come with a moderate amount of momentum already programmed in them for more realistic startups and slow downs.  Even if you perform a complete reset of the decoder, I believe the momentum will still be there.  If you want to alter it or remove it completely, you'll need to download the Lok5 manual from the ESU website provided above and change the required CVs. 

I don't care for sudden starts and stops in my locomotives so I like and prefer the momentum.  If fact, I'm a way bigger fan of motor-control than sound.  Sound is fun for 5-10 at a time but I usually grow tired of it after a while.  Great motor-control, OTOH, I enjoy anytime/anywhere.

Tom