New to model railroading. Purchased a MRC Prodigy Wireless. It worked fine out of the box.Then my engine stopped responding to commands. The pilot light on the command module is blinking. Does this mean it is not receiving power ? The set-up is HO/DCC.
No experience with MRC. With NCE and perhaps others, the blinking LED is on the throttles and indicates the wireless link is functioning. On a command station it may indicate a fault though.
First of all, and you may have tried this already, is reboot everything by powering down, then back up.
Second, check that you have the loco address selected properly on the cab.
Third, if the command station has a manual, read that and see what it says the light indicates.
Is the loco equipped with DCC from the factory or is it your install? In other words, have you done any recent work "under the hood" that might have left a wire to get loose?
If that all checks out, sometimes it's best to just do a factory reset on the loco's decoder. Check your decoder docs to see how to do that. You'll need to determine whether you want to reset from the loco address up to the rest of your settings, so you may want to make note of any changes from the default before restting so you can reenter the values later.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I was going to say, did you check the manual. But I just read the Prodigy Wireless manual and in typical MRC fashion they don't even MENTION the pilot light, let alone say what it might mean if it blinks. Seriously?
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
The Pilot light should be on constantly. The "Link" light should light briefly when you send a command.I had a similar problem.Try working the on/off switch back and forth several times. If it is a power switch problem,and the unit is new,I would return it.If it's not under warranty,the following worked for me(although I've had to repeat it occasionally): With the unit disconnected from the wall power,try spraying the exposed metal surface of the on/off switch with an electrical parts cleaner,working the switch back and forth as you spray.Allow plenty of time to dry before plugging back in.
Good luck,
Mike