The LED Baron has landed

I didn't get a chance this week to do something different as the LEDs I've been waiting for arrived Tuesday in the mail. 300 wee SMD LEDs (0603 package size) in various colours, but mostly Signal Red and Pure White, so plenty of spares in case I stuff up the 73's lightboards! On that subject I persisted with the rejigging of these. One end tested perfectly. The other end I had trouble with one of the white marker lights not coming on with its twin. I tried turning it 180 degrees with no effect. I put it back the way I found it. I tested the LEDs individually with a 9v battery test power source directly to the LED pads. Worked fine. I persisted with this for two nights trying to think what was wrong. I tried following the traces from one side to the other to make sure everything appeared correctly. Still nothing. Then last night just before calling it quits again without an answer I was tracing the circuits with the 9v source when all of a sudden along part of the trace one of the marker lights lit. Moving a bee's d!ck in distance lit the other marker light but turned off the one just lit. Hmmm, onto something! So I flipped down the 3rd magnifier lens on the headband to an even closer resolution for a looksy. Even at this resolution it was difficult but I could just make out that there was a cut in the trace. Then I realised what the culprit was that caused this. The 'helping hands' alligator clips 'teeth' had been able to just break the surface at a particular point and cut the trace. I tried to bridge the gap with some solder but all this did was to melt some of the PCB material over the cut. The only thing I can think of is to join the two relevant ends of the marker light LEDs together with some fine decoder wire. I'll try this week to sort this out.

When I mentioned the arrival of the LEDs to Mr Mackie he was quick to ask how much as he needed some spares for similar reasons. About 10c each! So he took two Pure White and two Red. Thursday night I tested one of the Pure Whites not knowing if these equated to Warm or Cool White, and wow, note to self - remove magnifier lens before firing these little beauties up as I had spots before my eyes! Very bright Cool White. So I will have to reduce the brightness with a suitable resistor and match the original lightboard Warm White LEDs with a smear of Tamiya Clear Orange. I tested this on the working lightboard mentioned in the first paragraph and it seems to work OK. 

As for the Zimo decoder, I emailed Orient Express Model Train in South Oz explaining what happened and the use of another decoder to prove not loco related. They were happy to exchange it and I mailed off the dodgy decoder to them. So hopefully the replacement will arrive this week. Three cheers for the guys.

So this week will see me sorting out the lightboard mentioned above, and if the new decoder arrives, at least doing an initial test of motor control!