I've installed the decoder and speakers and am replacing the bulbs with SMD 0603 LEDs. Thanks to those who suggested these as they fit into the existing bulb spots.
1. I hooked up the pair on the long hood end and found the lights and motor direction are backwards the way I hooked the lights to the decoder. Can I simply correct this with Decoder Pro after I install the lights at the other end or do I have to re-solder the ones I put in to the other end of the decoder?
2. It dawned on me there is a Mars light function (on Aux3??), which functions on F5 on my E6. First, did GP-9s have Mars lights, upper or lower of the twin headlights. If so, would I connect one LED to Aux3 and one to Aux4 (and have to re-map that??). I know nothing about remapping. And would the F5 trigger just the appropriate one (Aux3 or Aux4) depending on direction?
3. The SMD 0603 LEDs have very thin coated magnet wire. How do you uninsulate the tip of the wire for soldering...scrape with a knife, etc? I succeeded that way with the first connections but would like to know the best approach.
Thanks for any help.
Paul
Modeling HO with a transition era UP bent
1. Yes, this is CV29. But I would simply swap the motor wires and make it right to avoid confusion in the future when you forget about this conversation.
2. Depends on your prototype. Some did, some didn't. Have to check your road name and era on some prototype sites and find out, if you want to be accurate. if you don't care - go ahead and make on a Mars light, or Gyralight. Typically the upper of a twin headlight, but also - not always.
3. Knife - or sandpaper. The plastic backed kind, fold it around the end of the wire, pinch, and pull (gently). Couple of passes should make it clean. Soldering iron usually melts the enamel coating as well, but tin the wire when doing this, don;t try to hold the heat on and make a joint while buring off the coating. Make a small puddle of melted solder and dip the end in. If the enamel has melted off, the solder will coat the end of the wire. You have to keep melting the blob of solder, but do NOT keep the iron in it constantly, unless it is a temperature controlled unit and set properly. A regular iron heats to way hotter than the melting point of the solder and if you hold the heat on a blob of it too long, it will boil, splashing hot solder everywhere. Don't ask. Also I think I've seen people mention laquer thinner, but the idea of an open bottle of laquer thinner and a hot soldering iron does not strike me as particularly safe. Plus if the LEDs are already mounted in your shell, and you spill laquer thinner, it will ruin the shell. I've always used the sandpaper method in the past.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Thanks, Randy,
- I never, at least in a million years, would have thought about swapping the motor wire connections...easy given the circuit board tab connections, so I'll do that.
- If anyone had a Mars / headlight combo in a twin (without two twin, one Mars and one one twin headlight) I'll do that for fun. My grandkids won't know or care. But I don't know how to hook up two (one at each end) Mars lights and handle the AUX (connections) and Function button part. I'll keep looking but if you can clarify that also, thanks). Example, I presume each Mars light (each end) needs to be connected to different Aux connections. Can the decoder then use F5 (as usual) to turn on the appropriate Mars light only depending on direction? Or does one need to work off F5 and the other be mapped to another F button and I need to remember to hit the right one depending on direction? Since the E6 I converted only has the front, I didn't run into this.
- Thanks for the insight on dealing with magnet wires. I called the seller today to ask if I was looking at bare wires and he explained the coating. I told him I was surprised how small they are (compared to the strip lighting I've used for structures and he told me had smaller ones!! These were perfect for what I needed but I expected them to be larger and needing an adaption to the lamp holes. I saw there were bare ones on EBay and cannot imaging soldering to one. And I'm glad I bought the ones at $1 each from a guy in Missouri where they are well assembled. Some of the other wired ones on EBay looked weird. BTW, since the LokSOund Direct board has the prewired 2200k resistors installed I did try those and they are not too dim so I'm glad I didn't do the solder bridge (on the board) option with extermal 1k LEDs as a first try.
Again, thanks.
peahrens If anyone had a Mars / headlight combo in a twin (without two twin, one Mars and one one twin headlight) I'll do that for fun.
Generally, the GP series Mars lights were in a separate housing that stuck out from the usual twin sealed beam which was flush mounted but about a foot below the Mars (or Gyra) light. My NKP GP-7 came equipped with a Mars light.
There may have been some that were flush mounted but I don't recall any. Of course the S-P was known for having a whole array of headlights on their locomotives and the Western Pacific stuck with those big garbage can sized headlights on their Geeps...
Have fun... Ed
Wait, your model has TWO twin lights at each end? Is it an SP unit? With that comdo there's be a Mars light (maybe Gyralight, similar but not the same - I'm not up on all the SP Christmas tree lighting), a red warning light, and I think the other two would be regular headlights.
If you don't care about specific prototype, the effects you get witht he different options do look neat - I've run through them even on my simple single headlight locos just to see what they look like. I don't know that they used twin Mars lights, if there are two lights in the housing then one would be the mars and one would be something else, usually. Again, if accuracy is less important than cool lights, hook each one up to a different function. That way you can make each light do somethign different, or if you get tired of it, with the function remapping you can make the headligh also turn on any of the others - in other words, it will be software controlled, so you don;t have to rewire it if you decide that both LEDs in one housing should come on as the headlight - you can just change the decoder settings.
Sorry, we were typing at the same time. I googled GP9 Mars lights and saw examples of 2 twin light assemblies on one end of the loco; i.e., a Mars twin above and a regular light twin below that. But my UP Genesis just has one twin at each end, with no Mars as purchased. So I will change one (upper, as you suggest) of the LEDs to the Mars function at each end.
So the remaining question is just hookup and re-mapping. I think Aux3 (wire connection) is default set to Mars light, on F5 button. That's how my E-6 works. And I see 3 other aux wire connection points, Aux1, Aux2, Aux4 on the board. So I take it I can hook the other Mars LED to that and then have to "map" that to being a light. Surely the decoder can handle a Mars in each direction. But if I, say, make the 2nd Mars connection to Aux 1, do I just remap that to Mars lights, and will F5 take care of turning on the right one given direction? Or does the other Mars have to work from a different Function (F) button. Sorry I'm totally uninformed at this level.
You can have both mars lights controlled by F5, and have them function automatically as directional. For connecting them to AUX3 (forward) and AUX1 (reverse) you will have to manually change a lot of CVs unless to use JMRI or a Lokprogrammer. If you have neither, you will have to change the following CVs ....
CV31 = 16, CV32 = 0
----------------------
CV275 = 13
CV31 = 16, CV32 = 2
CV353 = 4
CV369 = 8
CV370 = 64
CV371 = 0
CV378 = 4
CV387 = 1
CV394 = 8
CV396 = 0
CV403 = 4
CV412 = 3
CV414 = 0
CV419 = 16
CV429 = 0
CV430 = 1
CV435 = 64
CV436 = 0
CV445 = 2
CV452 = 1
CV461 = 4
CV462 = 0
CV468 = 4
CV476 = 0
CV478 = 128
CV484 = 16
CV492 = 64
CV495 = 0
CV500 = 64
CV501 = 0
CV511 = 128
CV31 = 16, CV32 = 3
CV261 = 1
CV271 = 1
CV277 = 4
CV287 = 2
CV288 = 0
CV293 = 16
CV303 = 0
CV304 = 1
CV309 = 128
CV310 = 0
CV319 = 8
CV326 = 1
CV335 = 16
CV342 = 4
CV350 = 0
CV351 = 32
CV358 = 16
CV366 = 64
CV367 = 0
CV374 = 64
CV383 = 64
CVs 31 and 32 are upper register CVs and need to be changed first before changing each following CV.
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
Might as well hook them up to be the same as the E6, that way you won;t have to keep checking which loco you are using - "oh this one used F5 for the Mars light, this one uses F7" However, with Loksound you cna map any button to any wire so you cna always make other changes later without rewiring. It's a bit complicated, but the latest version of JMRI finally has it pretty much working - it's just that every possible combination (29 functions, 6 function wires, and however many sound slots there are) is possible. Multiply all those numbers together - LOTS of possible combinations. With other decoders, it's common to see a given function wire can only be controlled by a range of buttons, not every possible combination. For example, the green and purple wires might work only on F2-F9, plus allow F0 to be a 'master' switch. No such limitation in Loksound.
Thanks, guys. Just need to know now to hook it in to the loco (Aux 3 and another Aux). Mapping later (may be a question later). Definitely a Decoder Pro item, hopefully it is up to date in these respects to make it easy.
This project has been fun. Decoder improvement (vs factory), sugar cube speaker learnings, now lighting options (upgrade to LEDs of course, but glad I thought of the Mars light options before closing up). And since this guy was the only loco to hiccup across my triple 90-degree crossings, I tried the capacitor add-on, experimenting with different capacitor sizes and finding that, of course, the 2200+470 microfarad would not fit, the 470 helped some (fit pretty well) but the 1000 helped 98% better). And half the problem was some residual paint on the track.
Getting the shell back on may require a shoehorn as the speaker enclosure as done and the 1000 capacitor are a bit of a force fit.
Today I worked my way through the lighting best I could. Reading the online user guide sections on function mapping and lighting configurations was needed. I learned that there are 6 "physical outputs", headlight forward, reverse and Aux 1-4. I then discovered how the indexed CVs work and are needed both for function remapping of the 6 outputs (when needed or as desired) as well as how the light "mode" (headlight, Mars, etc), brightness, etc can be adjusted.
With that, programming on the main, I left the front 2nd (non-headlight) lamp (hooked to Aux3) on F5 button and re-mapped the rear 2nd (non-headlight) lamp (hooked to Aux4) to F6 button. I could not see a way from the user guide on how to make two outputs work with one button and basis direction, but no big deal. I then played with the "mode" select CVs for the 2nd lamps, comparing to the Mars effect that the Aux3/F5 front 2nd lamp had as default. I chose the "Strato" light effect as I liked it best used in combination with the headlamp. Then I used the brightness CVs to adjust all four lamps. All was not to hard once I studied the instructions.
Decoder Pro was not at all helpful for these things, though I had used it to adjust max and start speed. I'm not sure it is nearly up to date in how it is laid out. I plan to call ESU U.S. folks next week when the tech guys is available.
You need to be using the latest JMRI, or you risk messing up the decoder. Loksound and WOW are works in progress, though the last I saw on the JMRI list is that in the current test release most everything now works as expected.
If you are going to use Loksound decoders frequently, it's probably worth getting the Lokprogrammer. For one thing, it reads and writes the entire decoder in seconds, and all the function remapping is right there and it actually works, and has worked since the beginning. Plus you can just find the cheapest source of decoders and load whatever sound file you want when you go to use it.
I downloaded the latest (test version) JMRI and the required Java update and tried it. It still seems unsatisfactory for anything but roster setup and basics, motor control...takes forever to read the function mapping page or outpur functions page. And I can't adjust the speed curve with 3-point dragging as the far right slider won't move. But I can adjust the functions, lights and sound in Ops program with my NCE easy enough if I understand the manual.
I'd probably spring for the LokProgrammer but will await this year more insight on the WowSounds.