Adding Mars Light

[New Haven I-5]

 Hi! I just put in a Digitrax DH123PS in my Northern Pacific #850 Athearn RS-3. What CV'S do I change to get the Mars Light on?

[jktrains]

 Hi! I just put in a Digitrax DH123PS in my Northern Pacific #850 Athearn RS-3. What CV'S do I change to get the Mars Light on?

Doesn't the manual that came with the decoder explain how to program it for a mars light?

[New Haven I-5]

no

[jim22]

Try looking here:

http://www.digitrax.com/ftp/Decoder%20Manual.pdf

You'll have to figure out what type of outputs your decoder has and wether it's covered in the manual.

Jim 

[New Haven I-5]

Try looking here:

http://www.digitrax.com/ftp/Decoder%20Manual.pdf

You'll have to figure out what type of outputs your decoder has and wether it's covered in the manual.

Jim 

Jim, that came with my DCC Controller. I just don't understand how to make the regular light into a mars.

[Don Z]

The Mars light instructions are on page 40 & 41 of your manual.

Don Z.

[simon1966]

Catching up with the forum this morning and got to thinking that this particular thread illustrates the incredible advantages of the Decoder Pro application.  When you use it you never have to think about CV's, you don't need to look at the documentation and setting up lighting effects is trivial.  When I install a new decoder I will often use decoder pro to play with all the options in a decoder before settling on my preferred settings.

One other huge advantage is what happened to me last week.  One of the boys came and found me because he was trying to run a BLI QSI equipped steamer that had not been run in a while.  There was no response at all.  I put it onto the program track of the Zephyr and could not get it to read the correct road number.  So fire up the PC and within seconds, all my settings for that particular loco were reloaded and off it went.  In this particular case I had played with the speed curves, the starting voltages, adjusted volumes, etc, so it would have taken a long time to reset had I not had the prior settings stored in Decoder Pro.

I still use the Zephyr program mode to make simple changes like road number for a new installation or loco, but all the complex stuff is handled far more easily with the software application.

So if you have not got one, I would suggest getting the Locobuffer USB from http://www.rr-cirkits.com/ and downloading the free Decoder Pro and you will never have such a question again.

[New Haven I-5]

 Thank you everyone! How do I activate the Rule 17 dimming?

[New Haven I-5]

 David, I do not get your tutorial.

[New Haven I-5]

David, I didn't understand your tutorial.

[sabaj]

Maybe you could help my Mars light question.   I have only forward  headlight lead out of decoder  and the lead to tender light which will be used for the tender light when in Reverse.  I have several locomotives with clear head light to which this lead runs head light. How do you get second red Mars light to flash off this lead to the clear head light?  I want my steam engines headlight clear and continous and red mars flashing like on my Proto PA1.

[sabaj]

Further info. I have Model Power #381 clear 12-16 volt 0.03 amp bulbs  The red ones are Model Power #382 . How do I get the red to flash and the clear steady off the same decoder headlight lead?

[Mark R.]

If I'm understanding what you want - the white light steady and the red light to flash using the same single wire output .... simply put - you can't.

To do what you want, each light has to have it's own function output.

Mark.

[CSX Robert]

Further info. I have Model Power #381 clear 12-16 volt 0.03 amp bulbs The red ones are Model Power #382 . How do I get the red to flash and the clear steady off the same decoder headlight lead?

To do that, you would have to have a seperate circuit to generate the mars light effect and wire it in parrallel with the headlight. I don't know of any ready made circuits to do this with a bulb, although there may be some out there; however, if you replace the red bulb with an LED, here is a ready made circuit to simulate the mars light:http://www.ngineering.com/Lighting%20Effects%20for%20the%20Railroad.htm

[sabaj]

Robert Thank You this is right down the line of what I was looking for.

Sorry about the delay in getting back but I'm breaking in a new hip over 2 broken down knees and checking blood thickness