Greg's Railway Modelling Musings: Interesting times in deed!

Well this week I pretty much mucked around with the wiring and installation into the various decoders and mini-panel. I have wired up Points 1 and 2 to the DS64 and tested these with success via the Powercab's ACCY button. One Tick. As for the MRC functions, at this point in time I can only test if they power the control panel indicator LEDs for their relevant Light and Signal functions as I have yet to wire up the Lights and make the Signals! The MRC board looked as though it accepted its address and is accepting CV commands (the red LED on board blinks when this occurs) but the control panel LEDs are not getting power. Hmmmm more investigation.

As for the mini-panel, what a major pain in the butt as a result of insufficient information in the manual provided with the device. I was have been getting lockups when testing the functions which enter fine. Also the actual control panel input switches aren't responding and firing off the point motors. Further research on line indicated that if the MP is used with a Powercab only, that the CAB address must be '03'. I had changed this to a higher number to protect from incorrect CAB numbering. I also had the Powercab addressed as '03'. So possibly a conflict was occurring. So changed the Powercab to '04' and reset the MP to '03'. Also it would appear as though I can only have one additional CAB address on the layout as the Powercab only allows two CAB addresses, the Powercab inself and one other. In this case the mini panel. So I can only have one MP for the whole layout, unless I use a SB3a (?) to boost the CAB and power capacities. Unsure if I want to go down that path at the moment (due to moola reasons) so I might have to rethink my usage of the MP.

HOWEVER I still have a problem with testing the MP during setup. Only just this morning I was re-reading the draft Tech Manual available online and discovered a possible 'gotcha'. So I will see if the proposed fix will let the MP do what it is supposed to do at the 'test function' stage. At the moment I am getting a system lockup. Very infuriating!

I am also having a problem with the control panel LEDs for the switch motors microswitches. There appears to be power getting to the one microswitch I have installed so far for testing purposes, but no power coming from the microswitch to light up the relevant LED. I might have to test the circuit with one of the other uninstalled microswitches to see if it is a possible dodgy microswitch. The other thing that is a concern is that potentially the microswitch may be power incorrectly, namely the polarity direction might be wrong. I was referring to a wiring diagram for a microswitch and I think it might be opposite to the switch and LED wiring design that I had come up with. I had the wiring plan checked by someone but possible they were confused. I will have to check this and see whether a simple reversal of the input wiring will solve the problem or whether I will have to completely rewire the LEDs (hope not!).

The polarity reversal may also be the reason why the MRC decoder isn't powering the Light and Signal control panel indicator LEDs as I was led to believe that the MRC Common was positively oriented, but maybe not. A lot of this documentation is either loose on information or worded in a way that could be interpreted incorrectly.

So my time this week will be spent troubleshooting. Hopefully it isn't too onerous!

Anyway here are some pics of the electronics so far installed.