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.
Hi all, I have incorporated the suggested changes from the JMRI yahoo forum reviewers who took the time to go through the instructions, and I have now published the PDF under my 'Articles that I have written' section in the right side-panel.
Please feel free to drop me a line if you have questions.
Well the LEDs from Germany didn't arrive this week unfortunately. It would have been god if they had as I had started converting the lightboards as per the AMRM instructions, however as mentioned previously I stuffed up a couple along the way. I may have also stuffed up another but I will need to investigate further. Planning ahead I looked at the placement of the speaker and the decoder. Using the existing plastic shelf that the original circuit board was one, I placed the 'sugar cube' speaker at the very end. Then cutting down a piece of 0.5mm thick styrene I made another shelf going the other way over the motor. This was held in place by the same screw/bolts that the original was bolted in. The spacing looks good and I might even have enough space between the speaker and the bolt posts to place the stay alive capacitor but I'll look at this later on.
So this week I will test the decoder firstly by wiring up the bogie pickups and the motor wiring. Just making sure the basics work first! Then when the LEDs arrive from Germany I'll finish the lightboard conversions and wire these up to test as I will have to also program the Function Outputs with the Function Key inputs. Small steps with this conversion!
Re the Pi Howto, I've replied to one of my earlier respondents asking for some information he said he was going to supply. If I don't get a reply by the end of the week, I'll just go with what I have and if I get a reply later I'll update the document there and then!
It has been one of those crazy weeks at work so I have been rather tired each evening. However I made a start on the 73's electrics and documenting what I am doing. I swapped the bogie pickups around so that they are correct as per standard. I have also labelled each of the lightboards' wires at each end so that I can document them when attaching to the decoder. I then attempted to rotate one of the red marker lights and inadvertently dropped the LED so when I picked it up to resolder I have no idea which way it was and thus which way to reposition! So I have just resoldered it and will see once decoder in place. I also had another accident with one of the red marker LEDs this time I obviously had the soldering iron on it a moment too long and the lens popped off. Aarghhhh. Well lucky I ordered a swag of different coloured 0603 SMD LEDs from LedBaron in Germany at the start of the week and hopefully these should be here this week if I am lucky. Amongst the pack are white and red LEDs. I think I will be needing them!
We had a public holiday in Brisbane one Wednesday and my initial plan was to head on down to the club for a couple of hours, however the missus had other plans. With no kids at home for most of the day (the kids' dau off was Monday), I had to do the morning school/kindy run, sort out a couple of errands, and then go out for lunch, then do the afternoon school/kindy run, then take my eldest to footy training, and then finally get home for dinner. So no chance of getting to the club! I did however take about 30 minutes just before heading out to lunch to prepare and prime the two whitemetal 'driver' figures I had chosen just in case I can use these in the 73.
I have also purchased one of the 30W temperature controllable soldering irons from Jaycar that Mr Mackie had suggested for the SMD LEDs. I'm yet to get it out of the packaging!
I also checked the JMRI forum for any further feedback for the Pi howto, but nothing new.
So this week I think I will proceed with the 73's wiring and documenting. If time permits I will look at the suggested amendments to the Pi Howto, but time and work's current follies will tell.
