Tsunami Lighting Woes

[SkiTrain]

I am relatively new to dcc and I attempted my first sound install and I can’t get the LED’s to work.  The Locomotive is a Walthers P2K SD45 in HO scale, with a Tsunami TSU-GN1000 board and Tsunami speaker.  The sound works and the loco functions correctly but no lights.  I tested the lights on DC prior to starting the installation to verify that everything worked.  I’m also using a NCE Power Cab controller.

I did make the mistake of connecting the blue LED wire and 1.1K ohm ¼ watt resister to the oval terminal pad on the decoder and the white LED wire to the rectangular terminal pad.  I have read that connecting these backwards won’t ruin them, the LED’s just won’t work.  I have reversed the connections now and I have tried to adjust some CV’s, and when that didn’t work, I reset the decoder.  The fault light comes on when power to the headlight is switched on, as it is supposed to per the manual.   

 

I have two separate forward lights connected to terminals 2 & 3 and 13 & 14, the reverse light connected to terminals 10 & 11, and front & rear number board lights connected to 15 & 16.  Any suggestions as to why this doesn’t work would be greatly appreciated.

CW

[Motley]

I can't help ya with the lighting problem, but how about this.

[Mark R.]

The GN-1000 decoder is an Athearn replacement board - you should have gone with the AT-1000 generic board.

Regardless, the outputs on the GN-1000 are rectified to 1.5 volts to use the original 1.5 volt bulbs that come in Athearn engines. White LEDs require about 3.4 volts, so that is why they are not working as you've tried.

If you look carefully in the middle area of the board, there is a single pad that is marked as +14. Connect your common blue wire to this pad. The positive lead from your LEDs will ALL connect here. The negative leads from your LEDs will still go to the appropriate function pad .... through the resistor of course. A resistor value between 680 ohms and 1000 ohms would be typical.

Mark.

[SkiTrain]

Mark,

Thank you for the fix!  I reworked the connections per your recommendatiions, and replaced the resistors with new ones rated at 680 ohm and the lights are working great. 

CW

[SkiTrain]

Thank you Michael!

[ba&prr]

Go here for the answer.  Joe     http://www.ulrichmodels.com/prostores/Soundtraxx/Soundtraxx_GN_Board.pdf