Oh boy, oh boy!!! I am getting really tired of these seniors' moments!
I was trying to program one of the pusher engines tonight but nothing was working. I could get the locomotive to run if I applied power direct to the motor with the decoder removed, but when I put it on the programming track with the decoder installed it was totally dead in the water.
Here is where the seniors' part comes in. After about an hour of futtzing around, I looked down at the programming track and realized that the track wasn't plugged in!!!
Guess what happened after I plugged the track in?!? The locomotive ran just fine!!
Your condolences are greatly appreciated!
I need another drink.
Cheers!!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
hon30critterHere is where the seniors' part comes in. After about an hour of futtzing around, I looked down at the programming track and realized that the track wasn't plugged in!!! Dave
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
hon30critterHere is where the seniors' part comes in...
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
hon30critter Here is where the seniors' part comes in... Good Grief Dave!!!!! Though to be fair, I was considering tattooing my name, discretely on the inside of my left forearm, as a reminder. However, I’ve scrapped the idea, cos I was worried that one day, I’d look at it and wonder who on earth is that!!! Cheers, the Bear.
hon30critter Here is where the seniors' part comes in...
Attuvian1when I turned 50 my sweetie arranged a birthday party with friends. One of the gag gifts was a cane. It had one of those bulb-actuated ooga horns, a rear-view mirror and a label instructing that, if found, the operator was to be returned to my home address.
Sixteen years ago I turned 50 and had 86 people show up for my surprise Birthday party including two friends that flew in from Europe, stayed two nights with us, and then went home. I got a few of those canes that day and kept one just in case. I did 10.55km yesterday and won't need the cane for a long while I hope.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
I wish my cane was a gag but unfortunately I have to use it everywhere, even just to get to the car from the front door which is less than 10 ft. I have no feeling left in my lower legs and my balance is shot. Not a great situation, but I don't let it bother me. It is what it is.
Which is a good reminder, Dave. I need to temper my humor on the subject - and ask the pardon for you and our other forum friends who continue to endue the assaults of all sorts of issues. I wish that perspective had knocked on the door before I hit the submit button.
John
hon30critter I wish my cane was a gag but unfortunately I have to use it everywhere, even just to get to the car from the front door which is less than 10 ft. I have no feeling left in my lower legs and my balance is shot. Not a great situation, but I don't let it bother me. It is what it is. Cheers!! Dave
Thank goodness for model railroading Dave. I was completely out of commission for eight years while my spine fused with arthritis. I was on Oxycocet that whole time. Doctors said it would take five years for my spine to fuse and it would be very painful at times, it took eight. That is when I returned to model railroading. The pain started to ease one day and within a very few weeks was gone and I was off all pain meds. I went right to work getting back in shape. It was not a pleasant experience not being able to do simple tasks without suffering a lot of pain.
My guitar playing also went from an hour a week to twenty hours a week, I learned enough Gord tunes that I can play for four hours without a repeat.
Keep chugging along.
Attuvian1I need to temper my humor on the subject - and ask the pardon for you and our other forum friends who continue to endue the assaults of all sorts of issues. I wish that perspective had knocked on the door before I hit the submit button.
Hi John,
I wasn't offended or bothered by your post at all! It was all in good fun and that's how I took it. Besides, I should look at getting a rear view mirror for my wheelchair just so I can see exactly how many people I am holding up!
Back to the plow project! Both decoders are working, but I still have to reprogram the sound decoder and figure out how to get the headlight to work on the non-sound locomotive. That's just a wiring issue but it doesn't help when the manufacturer uses oddball wire colours and then paints everything black.
Remember about the 3D printed snow plow?
Well... I got one and it looks better than the photos. It has metal wheels!
I can't wait to build it! I thought y'all might find this interesting.
-bmtrainmaster
Hi bmtrainmaster,
I hope you will post some photos as you progress.
I decided to program the Loksound V5 decoder tonight. It was easier said than done. I couldn't find a step by step manual so it took me a long time to figure out how to get the new sound files into the decoder. I'm still playing with the volume settings for the various sounds.
I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed by the lack of detailed instructions. ESU's other manuals offer a lot of details. In fact some people have complained that their manuals were too complex. Apparently, unless I'm missing something, they seem to have taken a totally opposite approach to the Lokprogrammer. The manual is all of one page!
There's an "unofficial" LokProgrammer manual available:
https://dccwiki.com/LokProgrammer
You might have to log in or register with groups.io to download it, or maybe not.
https://groups.io/g/Loksound/files/ESU%20LokSound%20v4.0%20Programmer%20Software%20User%20Manual,%20v1/LokProgrammer_ESU_EN_manual_edition_I_v1_eBook.pdf
Hope that helps, Ed
gmpullmanThere's an "unofficial" LokProgrammer manual available:
Hi Ed,
Thank you very much for those links! The first one proved to me that I had actually been able to figure out how to add a new sound file to a blank decoder, and it offered some additional information that I wasn't aware of.
The second link explained how to create my own sound files, but it didn't explain how to do what I want to do. All I want is to be able to play back a recording of the Cumbres and Toltec rotary plow train in action. I don't need to be able to select individual sound effects like wheel slippage or whatever. I just want to be able to hit F8 on my Power Cab and have the sound of the whole train operating play through one of the locomotives' sound decoders.
I am going to ask some questions on the ESU forums. In the meantime, I have decided to add a sound decoder to the second locomotive so that I can at least have the sound of two 4-6-0s running slightly out of sync while I figure out how to do what I want to do.
I have decided to install sound in the second pusher locomotive. If I ever figure out how to load the Cumbres and Toltec sound recording onto a LokSound V5 then I will change one of the pusher locomotives back to a silent decoder. For now, I'm hoping that I can get the two locomotives to run slightly out of sync. I'll have to study the manual to see how (if) that can be done.
In the first locomotive I used a round speaker and it sounds okay but it does not have a very robust bass sound. The speaker does not have an enclosure other that the tender shell itself so I think I will try to install an enclosure even though there isn't much room for one.
In the second locomotive I am using twin sugar cube speakers with separate enclosures. I haven't been able to test the sound yet but hopefully there will be more bass.
I managed to install a small baffle around the round speaker. I used the bottom of a prescription pill bottle and it fit perfectly into the opening.
In order to free up a bit more space I ground the pins off of the 8 pin socket where they protruded through the original circuit board:
Next I cut the bottom of the pill bottle off. I originally cut the bottom too high so it would not fit under the circuit board, so I had to trim the baffle a bit. Whatever the pill bottle is made of is very resistant to sanding or filing. It took forever:
Here's the pill bottle sans bottom:
Here is a view from the side. It is a very tight fit:
Here is the decoder in place:
It looks like the decoder won't fit inside the shell but it does.
I haven't tested the installation yet because the canopy glue that I used as a sealant around the baffle will take a few hours to dry. I tried using gel CA at first but I realized that it wasn't positioned properly to make a good seal.
You are probably asking why I left the original circuit board in place. The answer is very simple. I couldn't figure out how to connect the decoder wires to the 8 pin harness. I got the track feed and motor wires sorted out, but the other four wires I couldn't make sense of. I'm sure somebody will post a link to a 'how to' video which, by the way, would be greatly appreciated because I'm still trying to sort out the other locomotive.
I finally got around to testing the sound with the new speaker enclosure in place and I was literally blown away by the difference! Before I put the enclosure in place I could barely get any sound volume even with all of the individual volumes and the overall volume set at maximum. The locomotive could barely be heard. With the enclosure in place, the volumes were so loud that they were almost painful! I had to turn the master volume down to less than half the maximum and it was still pretty loud.
I wasn't expecting this sort of difference but it obviously proves that speakers need enclosures in order to get the best sound out of them.
On a sad note, I managed to break one of the wires off of the first decoder that I used. I had a devil of a time soldering the wire back on. In fact, thanks to my shaking hands, I had to reattach four wires. Apparently that didn't go too well because when I tried to use the decoder I got a 'short circuit' message on the Power Cab. Fortunately I have a bunch of LokSound V5 decoders on hand so I just replaced the first one and everything worked fine. I'll try to resurect the shorted decoder. If that doesn't work I might send it back to ESU to see if they can save it.
In the future I think I'm going to add a little gel CA to where the wires are soldered to the decoder to try to prevent them from breaking off because of my ham fisted handling.
P.S.
Happy Valentines Day!!
It just dawned on me that the reason the speaker was so quiet during the initial test was that I didn't have the tender body in place when I did the test.
I did look at using the tender shell as the speaker enclosure but I decided that the wires going to the locomotive would not benefit from being sealed into place. Doing so would reduce the ability of the harness to flex and that could lead to derailment issues. I also want to be able to take the tender apart. Sealing the shell to the frame would make that rather difficult.
On to the second pusher locomotive. I have the twin sugar cube speakers installed in the floor with the enclosures facing down. They will be wired in series:
This is the tender that was shortened so the bottom is a bit of a mess. I'll clean things up and add a couple more frame parts and some basic brakes:
The decoder is wired up, at least as much as I'm going to do for now. I can't figure out the headlight (there is a possibility that it is burned out) but I'm not going to worry about it.
I have used a six pin plug so I can separate the locomotive from the tender. That was the cleanest way to hard wire the decoder to the locomotive.
I am one step closer to my goal of transfering the recording of the Cumbres and Toltec rotary plow train to a LokSound 5. I asked how it could be done on the Lokprogrammer forum and a gentleman by the name of Peter talked me through the first step. He suggested that I use a freeware program called Audacity to capture the sound from the YouTube video, and much to my surprise, it was easy to do!
I got about five minutes of good sound. I haven't edited it yet. First, I have to find out how long a recording the LokSound can hold. Once I have that figured out it should be fairly simple to transfer the recording to the Lokprogrammer and then into a decoder.
I'm not trying to do anything fancy with the recording. All I want is for the sound to play as the plow train moves slowly around the layout. It won't be tied into the speed of the train. It would be nice to control the sound of wheels slipping on demand, but it's not a big deal. There is plenty of wheel slippage in the recording.
BATMAN Attuvian1 when I turned 50 my sweetie arranged a birthday party with friends. One of the gag gifts was a cane. It had one of those bulb-actuated ooga horns, a rear-view mirror and a label instructing that, if found, the operator was to be returned to my home address. Sixteen years ago I turned 50 and had 86 people show up for my surprise Birthday party including two friends that flew in from Europe, stayed two nights with us, and then went home. I got a few of those canes that day and kept one just in case. I did 10.55km yesterday and won't need the cane for a long while I hope.
Attuvian1 when I turned 50 my sweetie arranged a birthday party with friends. One of the gag gifts was a cane. It had one of those bulb-actuated ooga horns, a rear-view mirror and a label instructing that, if found, the operator was to be returned to my home address.
I spent a couple of hours tonight watching and listening to various YouTube recordings of the Cumbres and Toltec rotary snow plow in operation. I was trying to find sound bites that I could formulate into a cohesive sound file for transfer to one of my pusher engine's decoder.
I identified somewhere around 20 minutes worth of potentially usable segments. My next task will be to record the segments on Audacity and then choose which ones work and which ones don't. The gentleman from the Loksound forums, Peter, who helped me make the sound recordings initially, posted a very detailed note about how to edit and adjust the sound bites and how to get them into a cohesive loop which can be transfered to the decoder. I will probably say this again, but he is an excellent tutor!
My initial goal was just to have a simple recording of the plow and the locomotives in action, but the more I study the Lokprogrammer process, the more possibilities present themselves. For example, I think it will be possible to have the whistle sounds play on demand. In fact, if I am able to figure how to create a separate sound file just for the whistle sounds, then I will actually make at least two whistle sound files, one with a single successive 'toot' from each of the plow and the two locomotives, and the second with two 'toots' from each of the three. I haven't figured out the difference in meaning between the single toots and the double toots, but it may be something as simple as identifying forward movements vs reverse.
Rapidly approaching 50,000 hits! Yeah!
Attuvian1 Rapidly approaching 50,000 hits! Yeah!
He'd better hurry the heck up and finish this project before the snow melts on its own.
Thank you sincerely for all the interest!!
I'm going to spend the next couple of days playing with sound files.
I am already looking forward to next year's celebration with 100,000 views and still nowhere near done with the project.
Rich
Alton Junction
richhotrainI am already looking forward to next year's celebration with 100,000 views and still nowhere near done with the project.
We shall see! You are all fully aware that I tend to work very slowly, so I'm sure there will be at least another couple of months involved. I also have to come up with a place to run the train so I'll have to do some work on the layout. I've been procrastinating on that for far too long!
That is a great point, Dave, that I hadn't even considered. As you say, you are going to need a place to run the train. One possibility is a simple shelf layout to demonstrate the operational capabilities of the snow plow.
richhotrainyou are going to need a place to run the train. One possibility is a simple shelf layout to demonstrate the operational capabilities of the snow plow.
Hi Rich,
I have no place for a shelf layout. The walls are already full of shelves with train stuff on them! I can set up 6' of track on the dining room table but I would prefer to install one of the loops on my layout. I have a bunch of locomotives that need to be tested and some re-programmed so the loop would be ideal. I just have to get my butt in gear!