The only thing I got around to over the weekend was finally doing something about the replacement Zimo decoder that arrived two weeks beforehand!
After Club Saturday, I had some spare time in the afternoon. So I decided to open up the shed and test out the decoder. So I wired it up just to two of the pickups and the motor wires. And then I applied power. At this point with the first Zimo decoder, things went up in smoke! However on this occasion, we had movement with smoke from the decoder. Hoorah! However the dodgy factory wiring on the 73 was such that it went the opposite way to what I had assumed should have been the correct wiring. No big problem, just reverse the gray and orange wires from the decoder. I was happy with things at that point and left it at that for the day.
Sunday morning a thought transpired of why not wire up the little speaker to see how the thing sounds. The only time I got to do that was Sunday night between storms. After selecting the diesel option CV I applied the Sound On button (F8). And she cranked up. The speaker had some static going through it so I will have to investigate that. Could be a dodgy solder joint, or volume adjustment, or something else. But we have sound. Next step those LEDs!
I must apologise for the lack of posts lately as I've been on holidays for two weeks. Not much happened in the week before going on leave, and as for the two weeks on leave, nothing modelling related has occurred. Once we started putting the hobby room/study stuff into storage I've kind of been busy with other reno type stuff. Quotes, tradies, etc over the hols. So the missus then tells me this evening she wants the hobby/study room painted before the carpet is laid, I said by whom? A painter she says. So I said that's OK. After having the pagola repaired this week I started the painting of the raw timber and reacquainted myself as to why I detest painting! So not sure when modelling will start up again.
While on hols, I received two deliveries, one from MERG for some pocket money projects for PK, Mr Mackie and myself, and the other was the replacement Zimo decoder. So I might have to clear some space in the shed to act as a hobby table so that I can progress with the NSWGR 73 conversion.
As for the shed, I finally decided to buy something I've been wanting to do for years. This year while up the coast for hols, we went to the Eumundi Markets. A wood carver who does signs was still there, so I placed an order. The result was the following:
The other thing I've been contemplating is the purchase of a VR Walker Railmotor from Auscision. I found out that dccsound.com does sound decoders for this model as well. So even though off my prototypes of interest, it is a fine looking model. Might look good cruising around the Club layout when it becomes operational. So I might just purchase this before Xmas.
So if I want to do modelling, it will have to be through the week at night as my weekends are starting to fill up with either house renos, early Christmas catchups, or usual domestic bliss ;-)
Not much modelling happened again last week however I was able to finalise the updates for the Pi HowTo and submit it to PK for publishing in the club newsletter "The Semaphore . It was released the other day and looks good. I might have to pass it by the editor of MERG's journal.
The reason for the delayed post was a nasty surprise on Monday evening when the missus pointed out an ant problem in the study/hobby room cupboard. As I hunted for a possible nest behind all the books in the cupboard I discovered a rather large break in the bottom of the wall in the cupboard (built ins). The timber looked like it had rotted away by dry rot. Initially I thought it might have been the base/floor plate of the wall framing. As I wasn't sure if this was structural or not, I had to organise a carpenter/builder to come and tell me the bad news or not. I didn't sleep much that night worried about the dosh needed for a repair. As the room is lined with old style fibro sheeting (ie asbestos!) I say "Cha-Ching!" signs before my eyes! The next problem was getting a tradie to actually come out. Eventually I had a guy come out and he gave me the best news for the day. Its not structural and can be fixed very easily. The timber that had rotted was the old boxing they had used when the concrete slab had been poured, but never removed as it was too difficult to do so. "Just clean out the rotted timber and bog it back up with Silaflex sealant". Fantastic news.
Unfortunately as we have now cleaned out the cupboard and had made a significant dent in cleaning out the room in anticipation of a major repair job, the missus then says "Well we may as well clean out the rest of the room and re-carpet it!" As the current carpet is threadbare I couldn't argue with logic like that!
So now that the hobby room is now a work in progress and most of the hobby stuff is packed up, I'll just have to see what I can manage hobby-wise. It might be more around the Pi, or if I can work out which box the missus packed things up in, I might be able to get back to the 73 conversion once the replacement decoder comes in from Europe. No word on that yet! Ot maybe even learn a bit more around the configuration of JMRI. I'm sure I can sort something out!
This week I've done naff all! I briefly had a look at one of the light board shields and discovered that I had to pare away some of the styrene ridge that pressed against the light board PCB as this was the board that I had to interconnect the white marker lights one and the wire was located where one of the shield ridges would be located. And that is where I left it this week. Either busy with other things or just plain knackered from my day job!
This week I might look into the colour wiring on the light boards.
This week the hoped for exchange decoder did not arrive as I misunderstood what Orient had said. Yes they would exchange it but were waiting for the return of the suspect decoder in order to test it. Anyway they emailed saying the decoder was faulty and they would exchange it, but unfortunately the same model decoder was out of stock. They offered a number of alternatives, but none had the same small foorptint as the MX645R. I would have to wait about three weeks for the next shipment from Europe to arrive and be dispatched to me.
In the meantime I had another look at the damaged lightboard mentioned in the last post. I was able to connect the two LEDs together via a very small length of decoder wire and the marker lights worked in unison.
So now I am contemplating whether to replace all the red and black wires on the two lightboards with appropriate colour decoder single core wires as the original wires are VERY flimsy and the multicore is prone to breaking. I have to weigh up the slightly thinker single core wires' spatial impact to a very tight area against improved durability in the long term.
I then have to look at reattaching the light board shield and rejigging the one light board which I had to saw out of it's chassis housing with a suitable piece of styrene.
On a sadder note, I was voted out of the Club's VP position at the AGM by another contender. The membership has spoken. I had enjoyed the last two years in the position, so maybe I will see what happens in the next twelve months as to whether I go for another Committee position at the next AGM, or just enjoy the Club and work on the HO layout. Time will tell.
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!
More on the post title shortly. However m'thinks I've cooked the Zimo decoder but no idea what caused it. I decided to connect up the decoder to the track pickups and the motor control for basic testing. I then placed it on the test track and connected the SB3a. Immediately the SB3a was constantly resetting itself after a short somewhere. Meanwhile the decoder began overheating so much that the heatshrink started burning off. Never seen this before! So not sure if there was a fault with the decoder, or something else. So I had a chat with Mr Mackie on Friday and he suggested a few things to test. Direct DC to the motor to check for bindings. No, the motor rotated fine as did the gearbox and wheels. Then wire in the DCC and check for DC operation. Zip. Therefore no point going back to do more DCC operations. I had a spare new NCE motor only decoder so decided to wire this in to do the same tests to see if it was the Zimo decoder or not. DCC detect of DC worked. Tick. DCC only started to work, apart from a bit of a whine from the gearbox in reverse direction (odd!). Tick. So it was looking like the Zimo decoder. However just as I was about to stop the tests, FLASH, FIRE and SMOKE came from the NCE decoder. WTF! Then I saw what had occurred. I had failed to insulate the soldered joints as this was only meant to be a temporary test. But a track pickup and one of the motor wires touched and obviously caused a bit of mayhem on the decoder. I effectively "crossed the streams" (reference to Ghostbusters movie). Damn I didn't want that to occur! So now I'm down two decoders.
So where to from here? I still want to see if I can get the 73 decodered correctly. I will check with the retailer and see if they know of any possible reason. If 'user error' do I go for another Zimo or try another brand with less functions? Not really sure but I have invested too much so far, and intend to invest more, to just throw it all away for the sake of experience!
So while I am sorting this out and waiting for the LEDs to arrive from Germany, I might do something else.
On a happier note, it was Fathers' Day today and the boys got me a few things for the layout which was very nice of them.
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