SD-9 Sound Install

[carlso]

Thanks all three of you for input. John, yes a narrower decoder would be great. I had to shave quite a bit out of the inside of the shell to get the decoder and actually the speaker to fit inside somewhat easy. I elected to go with two 220uF 16v caps but may change to 20v as I am a tad goosey about these 16v units that will will be at 85% capacity on our club layout and my home. Just not much cushion. I found it interesting that one of the tech's at Digi-Key said caps are made now days to not explode. I just thought to  myself, yeah I'll just bet.

I put the loco on my program track and using my Powercab along with JMRI I was set tp program the decoder. The sound came on but the motor control did nothing. I had checked the frame and all with my meter and did not find any shorts, however I think one of the motor tabs touched the frame for a short time. I had put what I thought was enough Kapton tape in the right places. I hope the decoder is OK,as I did not see any white smoke or hear any hissing, my fingers are crossed. John, you can see quite a difference between my Atlas/KATO frame, made before DCC was much of an issue, compared to your Atlas/China frame. There goes the good weight but they will be OK as I learned with some old KATO F-7's. I had to mill quite a bit. I removed the decoder, caps, and speaker and will mill a tad bit more around the motor tab areas and the areas for speaker and decoder. I shall post my experince again tomorrow, hopefully.

Always, have fun ! !

Carl

[jdcolombo]

The Atlas/Kato SD-9's are still superb engines; I have a half-dozen of them; I haven't put sound in any (yet) because I use them in multiple-unit sets with my Atlas-China sound units (I have LokPilot non-sound decoders in the Atlas/Kato units).  They are noticeably heavier and pull better than the Atlas/China ones, but boy do they run fast at the top end.  I had to set CV5 at 50 (!) to tame the top end of these units.  But they are very, very smooth, with excellent creep (once you tame that high end!).

In fact all my old Atlas/Kato diesels are still great runners.  I also have three of the original Atlas/Kato RS3's that are also superb, along with several GP30s and a couple of GP35's.   All excellent.

I still wonder what it would cost manufacturers to mill frames from a tungsten alloy that might get us back the weight we lost when lead alloys were banned.  Sure wish my Atlas/China units carried the same weight as those Atlas/Kato ones!

John

[Wolf N Works]

2nd the wish for heavier alloy frames. I have  a couple of these to do, and after what I have seen I believe I can do it now LOL. Thanks guys for the great posts.

[carlso]

Hello, my name is Carl and I am an idiot. I come to gain some knowledge.

As mentioned above, I had problems with the install, so Friday I tried to program again and all I could get out of JMRI was "locomotive not found" I was about to decide that I had screwed up the JMRI connection. However, I placed another diesel on the program track and it worked perfectly. I removed the Select Micro and installed an old Zimo and it was fried immediately. Something wrong with JMRI and foreign made decoders, nope don't see that happening.

I installed a TCS M1 decoder and it programmed and works perfectly, so I do not think there are any shorts in the chassis and my meter/tester confirms that.

Next I thought that maybe I hooked up the caps incorrectly, so here is a photo of how I wired them up with the blue going to the common blue on decoder and the white/black wire going to the bottom side of the decoder, to the pad directly opposite of the blue wire on top side.

So here is the image, is it wired correctly or did I create a short here ? ? ?



I am so frustrated with sound installs that I am ready to abandon that and go with non sound only. The sound decoders seem to be less forgiving and I can't afford to screw up anymore (2 is enough).

Always have fun ? ? ?
Carl

[jdcolombo]

Hi Carl.

The caps look to be wired correctly, but do you know the manufacturer?  In general, the "stripe" end of a tantalum chip cap is positive (blue wire); but occasionally, it turns out to be negative.  There is no industry standard for this.   If you know the manufacturer, I can look up the data sheet to make sure the stripe end is positive.

You indicated before that you were getting sound fine, but no motor movement.  Here's what I would do to check everything.  Put the decoder back into your engine, but leave the orange and gray wires unconnected  and leave the caps off.  If you have an old motor lying around somewhere (most of us do - from an engine that we've since scrapped, or an old 1980's model that just doesn't cut it anymore), get some 1' lengths of wire and connect your orange/gray wires to this motor, sitting alone somewhere far away from the engine frame, track, etc..

Now try to program the decoder.  Does it work?  If so, you've isolated your problem to the connection between the decoder and the motor in the SD9.  If not, it is possible that a short "scrambled" the programming of the LokSound.  I've had this happen once - after a layout short, one of my engines quit running, even though the sound was fine.  I couldn't seem to reprogram the address in the normal way.  The solution was to reprogram it from scratch with a LokProgrammer.  However, your problem sounds like the programmer isn't sensing an acknowledgement from the decoder, which requires an active load (e.g., a motor). 

Don't give up!  I've had my share of failures/wiring mistakes/etc.  It's a learning process . . .

John C.

[carlso]

John,

a thank you for your suggestion. First let me say the caps are AVX and I think they are the same ones that you referenced in an e-mail to me. I really feel as if I wired them properly.

Your suggestion about testing, I shall try this evening.

Thanks
Carl

[jdcolombo]

OK.  You've got the caps wired correctly.  For AVX caps, the stripe is positive.  Let us know if the troubleshooting helps. 

John

[carlso]

John,

the testing proved to me that the decoder is history. I removed all components from the chassis, so no chance of any shorts, wired a different motor to the decoder orange/grey leads and the for the red/black power wires I clipped them directly to my program tracks. No change, only the "locomotive not detected" warning. The real dumb thing on my part was I removed the factory clear plastic covering on the decoder and applied Kapton tape on the long bias in order to reduce the width a tad. STUPID, no warranty now.

Carl

[tehachapifan]

Dang! Sorry to hear that, Carl.

In looking at the ESU website, it appears they offer repair services but I'm not sure how much cheaper it would be over buying new when all is said and done.

[jdcolombo]

John,

the testing proved to me that the decoder is history. I removed all components from the chassis, so no chance of any shorts, wired a different motor to the decoder orange/grey leads and the for the red/black power wires I clipped them directly to my program tracks. No change, only the "locomotive not detected" warning. The real dumb thing on my part was I removed the factory clear plastic covering on the decoder and applied Kapton tape on the long bias in order to reduce the width a tad. STUPID, no warranty now.

Carl

I would pack it up, send it back to ESU here in the U.S., and see what happens.  They might simply replace it, even though you have taken the plastic wrapping off.  Or they might offer to exchange for a flat fee that is less than the cost of a new one.  Decoder manufacturers are pretty lenient on repair/return policies.  The worst that happens is nothing, which is where you would be anyway.  But I have a feeling that if you send it back to Matt Hermann with a note explaining the problem, you might get some positive result.

John C.

[carlso]

I received my Select Micro back today. Actually the vendor just sent me a new one. I sent it to him and asked him to check the old one out and possible a re-load of sound file would wake it up. He may or may not get warranty from ESU USA, who knows. I do business with a very customer oriented individual who knows how and does take care of his customers. I also purchased two Lok Pilot V.4 micro's from him. Boy I did not realize how small they are, they will fit inside the non sound SD-9's extremely well. I expect far superior performance compared to TCS or Digitrax.

Bryan never commented about what he found or what may have caused the problem, so I am a bit hesitant to install the new one. I have a ZIMO running in the chassis now with no frame shorting and it runs exquisitely. I suppose I am just a little gun shy.

Oh well, always have fun,
Carl

[jdcolombo]

Hi Carl.

I destroyed three LokSound Select Micros in my first 10 sound installs.  Since then, I'm batting 100% - no lost decoders in about 30 tries.  The only way to do this stuff is to do it.  You learn.

One trick I learned is that before putting a sound-equipped loco on your regular track, put it on a programming track and see if it responds to programming.  Programming tracks are very-low current; if there is something wrong, you will get a programming error, but you're not likely to destroy the decoder because there just isn't enough current running through the programming track to do that.  If it accepts programming commands, then it is very likely all is fine, and you can then put it on the full-power track.

So . . . my advice is try again.  That decoder isn't going to do much good sitting on your bench . . . 

John

[carlso]

Hooray success, I don't like to quit on a project, so I am quite pleased.

I finally got around to installing my new decoder in the SD-9. It sounds great with good prime mover, horn, bell sounds. It runs great as well and as expected. I am still tinkering with "random sounds" but have not heard any yet. Big deal the main sounds are there and it by far out performs many of the other brands on the market. I have some LED's coming from Jim Hinds and will wire up the lights soon.

I will start a new thread with pics of chassis without shell because I still have to paint the shells black/silver and apply black widow decals before they go on to stay.

Love it, always have fun,

Carl

[jdcolombo]

Wonderful!  Now you're an expert

The only random sound I know of on the ESU diesel files is the air pop-off (maybe the air compressor is random . . . have to look that one up).  Everything else I know of is controlled with function buttons (e.g., dynamics, radiator fans, etc.)

If you want to enable the random air pop valve sound, set CV32=2 and then CV415=64.  I enabled this on one of my decoders, then ended up turning it off because it annoyed me (it didn't seem as "random" as I would have liked).   If your throttle has function buttons that go up to 24, you can also turn the pop valve sound on by pressing F21.

John C.

[tehachapifan]

Glad to hear you got it installed successfully, Carl! I am still mesmerized by the sound quality of this decoder. Enjoy!

I was also only able to figure out how to get the short pop-off sounds to occur randomly on the micro-select I installed in my SD9. That said, I just got my undecorated S2 yesterday and noticed that it also had the air compressor running randomly in addition to the short pop-off. So, I'm guessing there must be a way to get the air compressor to run randomly in my SD9 too, but I haven't figured that one out yet.