The day after the last post the Loksound decoder arrived from dccsound. I had to wait until the weekend before I could go anywhere near the shed. Saturday arrived as did some constant rain. Perfect weather for shed time if only the missus hadn't gone out for the morning for a hairdresser appointment (I think it is a devilish plan to have some child free time!). Anyway the boys kept me busy keeping them entertained. By midmorning it was time to take them somewhere. So off we went to the local games arcade down at the shops. We spent about an hour and a half of quality Dad time on the computer games, pin ball machines, and other distractions. And it only cost me $20!
The afternoon arrived and so did the missus. So having spent quality time with the boys in the morning, it was now my turn to have 'me' time. As it was still showery, the grass was too wet to cut, so the shed and my recent purchases beckoned. I put the railmotor on Lachlan's DC layout for a couple of hours of running in between some other things like lunch and a nanna nap! It did look good. Now it was time to put the decoder in. This model certainly was designed better than the 73, as plenty of pre-positioning for DCC. The 21 pin drop in decoder had no problems. The speaker install was the most time consuming. Now for a test of the sound. Sounded great. As all this was done on the central motor carriage it was time to attach the end carriages. This done, I turned the power back on then the decoder. The speaker started sounding a bleeping sound. Then I detected the faint wiff of doom....I mean fried electronics. That wasn't good. I looked a bit further and couldn't find the problem. The 'alarm' might have been a short circuit alarm, but I couldn't see anything obvious. I turned the power back on watching the decoder at the same time. FLASH and POP a microsecond later and the decoder looked stuffed. Oh no, not again!
Well I made contact with dccsound and Mike was very accomodating. I have sent a photo of the decoder and he will check it out. A warranty replacement could be coming my way. Time will tell.
I also soldered up the replacement sugar cube speaker to the 73 and cranked it up. No crackling. Hooray! Now I just have to finish the conversion!
This afternoon I went around to one of Lachlan's friend's house as he was over for a birthday party. The dad of the friend is also into modelling but I hadn't seen his layout for about 12 months. He warned me not much had happened landscape wise as he had decided to convert to DCC and re-position some track. He has purchased an ESU ECos system which is very nice. Everything in the one little unit, including wireless to smartphone! Pretty much like JMRI and others all in the one unit. Perfect for a lone modeller. He also showed me his replacement DCC turntable (Walthers Cornerstone 90') operating. Very nice and smooth operation compared to the old analogue models.
Well that is about it for this week.
It has been a tad crazy of late and time of modelling has been a low priority unfortunately! Re the Zimo decoder, I haven't got anywhere near wiring up the LEDs. About a week after the last post I was pottering around with the speaker and found a crack in the case. Maybe that was the cause of the crackling noise. So I removed the area around the crack and glued back on a piece of 0.5mm styrene to firm up the sound box. Nope - the crackling was still there. So possibly my other suspicion is the cause, namely initially when I went to solder the speaker leads on I hadn't restrained the speaker onto something that wouldn't move and as such the speaker's magnetic was firmly attracted to the soldering iron. So it stayed for longer than it should of soaking up heat while I busily searched for a pair of pliers or tweezers to remove it.
I decided to purchase another speaker to see. While on the phone to Orient Express on Friday I noticed on their webpage they were stocking Auscision VR Walker railmotors, so I had one of those put on the order as well as an early Chrissie present to myself. I then promptly went over to www.dccsound.com (an Aussie company) to order a Loksound decoder with the VR walker sound file on it.
So I was very surprised yesterday (Monday) to have received the order from Orient Express. The railmotor looks very nice.
So sometime this week I will have to go out to the shed and at least wire up the new speaker and maybe run in the railmotor on Lachlan's DC layout while waiting on the decoder to come in.
On the subject of Lachlan, I found some time on the weekend to help him finish his diorama for the Club modelling competition in December. He also wanted to do something on his layout so I showed him how to make graves and headstones for his churchyard.
Until next post. Happy modelling.
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.
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