Technology

[peteski]

Well; I was shooting for something a little better..... silly N scale guy.....

N scale Turbo...... now talk about a development project.......welcome to my world.   

Your quest for speed matchinng DC-mode is commendable, but I don't understand as to what you will match the speed to.  Atlas? Kato? Bachmann? Arnold? FVM? BLI? IM? One of the other many N scale Rapido locos? 

Even if Rapido set the speed-matching standard for N scale DC-mode decoder equipped locos (I'm already ignoring the different motors and gear ratios other all the manufacturers use), and other manufacturers would sign up for it, that would probably take decades to implement. Plus what about all the hundreds of different models already out there, manufactured pre-standard?  Call me jaded... 

[CBQ Fan]

Just keep offering DC and then all the other DCC and sound as upgrades.  I don't want sound on every loco and if I do get into DCC some day I will want to pick my decoders, not have them picked for me.  Con Cor dual Moshe on the Pioneer Zephyr is really good.  The Broadway Limited E8 unit sucks by comparison.

[victor miranda]

technology....

allow me to stake a claim.
I have tried to make a run of 10 locos,
from scratch or purchased parts and so I have some idea of the logistics involved.
frankly I thought just 10 would be easy.

and while I was finding out how difficult vendors of custom brass castings can be,
I also tried to figure out how to capitalize a run of a hundred locos.
(lets call that rampaging optimizing...)

so far no locos have been erected and we have discussed two
bits of modern technology at least, logistics and capital.

as sure as there are gears in a model loco
there are other schools of knowledge involved that are not
found in gear-cutting 101.

all that is to point out that the school you need is:
"how to reach your GOAL"

Build the best mechanisim you can.
make the best model you can to go around it.

Your best 20 years ago will be different from the best the could make
last year (when you finalized the design?)

when you say 'that was the best we could do' you have to be true to yourself
on that point because I will not know.

I am purchasing what is in front of me.

BTW I am not sure I think Coreless Motors are the best.
If I know I am slapping a microprocessor in there (decoder)
I would be very tempted to explore brushless motors.

victor

[djconway]

Let Atlas, Kato, Arnold, etc do what they do best, build the locomotive. Make it DCC compatible, with a standardized plug or mount, it could actually save manafacturing costs by reducing the complexity of the components needed.
Let Digitrax, Lenz, and the rest build their decoders.
Even the simplest decoder is going to add a cost over what a simple light board would.
Let me pick and choose what I want in the loco.

When I got started with DCC in 1996 there was only one RTE DCC loco available from Atlas. I couldn't justify the $30 difference in price then and still can't now.

[peteski]

Let Atlas, Kato, Arnold, etc do what they do best, build the locomotive. Make it DCC compatible, with a standardized plug or mount, it could actually save manafacturing costs by reducing the complexity of the components needed.
Let Digitrax, Lenz, and the rest build their decoders.

But that leaves the pink elephant in the room: sound DCC.  Like or not, it is here to stay.  6 pin NEM connector is just not going to work here. I don't see the subminiature multi-pin connectors, speaker's impedance and size/shape and whatever else needs to  be there to make noise being standardized anytime soon.  But sound is not going away - if anything it will get more and more popular.

[jdcolombo]

But that leaves the pink elephant in the room: sound DCC.  Like or not, it is here to stay.  6 pin NEM connector is just not going to work here. I don't see the subminiature multi-pin connectors, speaker's impedance and size/shape and whatever else needs to  be there to make noise being standardized anytime soon.  But sound is not going away - if anything it will get more and more popular.

There are things manufacturers could do to make sound easier.  For steam, run a wiring harness to the tender.  As much as I admire Kato's FEF, putting a sound decoder in it (without using a separate motor decoder, which is not ideal) requires running four wires from the boiler to the tender.   The new Bachmann locos, on the other hand, already have wires to the tender.  Use a sub-mini plug back in the tender to connect those wires to a decoder or DCC board, so that a decoder exchange becomes an "unplug, remove, plug" routine.  The plug in the tender could be standardized with 10 pins, connecting the backup light and having two free wires for a speaker.  Then decoder manufacturers use a similar 10-pin plug.   Some enterprising entrepreneur makes finished speaker packages that can fit in the tenders, with wires sticking out that can be connected to the existing wires (maybe you even use a two-pin submini plug for this to standardize it).

On diesels, my hope is that ESU's work with the S-2, GMD-1, and Intermountain's SD40 (? not sure I got that one right) will produce a board design that can drop-in to the center of a split-frame loco, leaving the rear shelf open.  This board would have a front headlight LED on it, but no rear light; instead, it would have pads for a rear LED.  It would also have just pads for the speaker wiring.  Then manufacturers could more or less standardize the height of the rear frame "shelf" to the top of the shell (at least, they could do this for virtually everything from a GP7/RS11 to a GEVO and SD70, because they all have essentially the same height overall; I used exactly the same speaker package in my FVM GEVO as in my Atlas GP7.  Switchers and cab units like an F7 would require a different design).   Let's say that 6mm is reasonable for this space.  Now sound decoder manufacturers can make a standard speaker package that is 6mm high, 14mm long and 9mm wide, using an 8x12mm speaker that will fit in any hood diesel.  Two brown wires come out for the speaker connection.  This package would have an SMT LED attached to the back of the speaker enclosure, with traces that wrap around to the other side and two additional wires (let's make them yellow and blue!).  The loco comes with a DC board (with a rear headlight) and a weight on the rear shelf.  Sound fans take out the DC board and weight, plug in the sound board, put the speaker package in place with some double-sided tape or a dab of CA cement on the rear shelf, and wire the wires to the speaker pads and rear LED to the LED pads.  Voila - sound and a rear headlight.  If designed correctly, it would be only slightly more complicated than a current "drop-in" design - it might take 10 more minutes to do the switch from DC to DCC/Sound, but not much more than 10.

I think what I have described above is imminently doable with current technology and split-frame loco design.   Again, switchers and cab units would be special cases, but I'll bet that whatever Rapido and Atlas have done for the GMD-1 and S-2, respectively, could be fairly easily "generalized" to other switchers and one could also probably develop a "standardized" package for cab units.

And now the modeler has three choices.  You buy a loco with just the DC board (or maybe the manufacturer offers a DCC option).   If you want DCC but no sound, you put in a DCC board (or buy the DCC option).  If you want sound, you buy ESU's or Soundtraxx's or QSI's sound package for the Atlas GP30 or C425 or FVM SD70 or Intermountain SD40 or whatever.  The only thing that has to be different for these packages under what I've described above is the length of the sound board (also true of DCC boards) - the overall component layout can remain exactly the same, and if manufacturers design their frames right, the width should never need to change.  And the speaker package is identical for everything, because it's small enough to fit on the rear frame shelf in everything from a GP7 to a GEVO.

Note also that other than my idea for a standardized speaker package with a rear LED attached, what I've suggested isn't much different from what Soundtraxx, ESU and QSI have already done in HO.  Soundtraxx has an Atlas sound board; a Kato sound board, etc. that fit that manufacturer's HO scale models.   ESU already supplies a more or less useless speaker with their Select Micro decoders; all I'm asking them to do is drop the useless speaker and make a useful one - since I envision that the speaker package would be the same size for everything, they could even sell it separately in case some modeler wanted to roll their own.   And each manufacturer could customize their own package - if QSI wants to use a 50-ohm speaker, fine.   That's not quite as nice as standardizing everything, but it would sure be a lot easier than what I've done for my hood diesels!

John C.

[peteski]

I know John that it would be possible to install standard multi-pin connectors in steam locos (tender), but in narrow hood diesels would be a bit difficult (even the 6-pin one used now is almost as wide as the hood.  But it is the standardizing part that will most likely not happen unless some official body (like NMRA) gets into the act. I don't know - I suppose one can dream....

[jdcolombo]

I know John that it would be possible to install standard multi-pin connectors in steam locos (tender), but in narrow hood diesels would be a bit difficult (even the 6-pin one used now is almost as wide as the hood.  But it is the standardizing part that will most likely not happen unless some official body (like NMRA) gets into the act. I don't know - I suppose one can dream....

Agree.  Won't work in diesels. 

John