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Disconnect / remove the capacitor prior to programming with the ESU LokProgrammer!
One of the local HO guys loaned me his LokProgrammer this week and I have been trying it out. I have a few comments (C) and questions (Q) to blurt out:C1. It is dramatically faster to read and write decoder data with this device than it is with JMRI. It's also super easy to update firmware with it. To that end, I updated a few of my LokSound 5 boards to pick up the new treble and bass control and the difference far outstrips any of my experiments with different speaker and enclosure configurations. Boosting the bass and trimming the treble make a huge difference (for me) in the tolerability of N scale sound. A very positive development.
Q1. I don't really understand the function of sound CVs. The sound project I am working with (a GEVO project) has a separate sound CV for each of 8 throttle notches, but I have no idea what you can do with them, and the documentation I've seen so far doesn't really spell it out. Is there a good reference or tutorial out there I could refer to? I'm especially curious to understand if and how I could tailor the notches to specific speed ranges.
Q2. I would like to sync my LokProgrammer projects with my JMRI roster. I see that I can export a CV list in the programmer, and I can import a CV list in JMRI, but the result is a funny roster entry in JMRI. The entries in the JMRI panes are all highlighted in orange, a colour code I have not encountered before, and the Information tab is completely blank except for the firmware version. Also, JMRI is expecting a CSV file, whereas my Window laptop exports the ESU data as a .txt file. JMRI is able to read the txt file, but I feel like I'm missing something here. Am I?
Q3. The LokSound and LokPilot manuals have the following warning about keep alive capacitors:Quote Disconnect / remove the capacitor prior to programming with the ESU LokProgrammer!Why? What are the consequences of not doing that? Ruining the decoder? The programmer? Other? I have been able to program decoders with a keep alive connected using JMRI. Is there something different about the LokProgrammer?
A few weeks ago I did manage to use SoundCV9 to sample different horn samples, but the throttle notch CVs were eluding me. Quick question: what are the units of speed steps? To be concrete, I am using a 3-step speed curve with min, mid, and max values of 2,44,116 for my Kato units. When choosing notch speed steps, should they be relative to 116 or 255? I assume 255?
And RE SoundCV16 and consisting: what method of consisting are you using? I've been using Advanced (CV19) most recently.
RE the Lok programming: the only oddity I have seen so far is that I occasionally get a write error message while writing new firmware (to a LokPilot). But if I read the data back, it all seems fine and up to date, so I have been ignoring that.
I've only run into that issue when I have installed more than one keep alive. There are some settings in the LokProgrammer around baud rate and error correction that you can experiment with.
But, I have found that the ESU decoders work reliably over the past two years. I did have a couple of older models that failed on the motor drive (it was the output transistors). Frank at ESU-USA swapped them for me with no issues under warranty.
Tim I believe those settings (baud rate and parity) have nothing to do with communication between the decoder and LokProgrammer. Those settings are for the serial (COM port) communication between the PC and the LokProgrammer. Keep-alive circuit has no bearing on that part of the communication.Unless you have discovered some settings I'm not aware of. But baud rate would most likely relate to the COM port settings (not whatever protocol is used between the decoder and LokProgrammer). Gary: if there are issues programming with keep-alives then just heed the ESU warning and disconnect the keep-alive since it most likely does interfere with the data transfer.