Sean

Does anybody know what voltage the aux pins on a 21 pin decoder are outputting at or if 5v is present anywhere on the decoder or loco pcb?

can only link you to some random german forum theres no website or anything for the project as such, but videos of it working on youtube... i think its safe but as always with random.exe files take care. my german is poor to nonexistent so you may find better insight there than I have ha. https://www.stummiforum.de/t200523f7-NextGen-the-Windows-loksound-simulator-free-download.html not inside or part of rocrail as such its more of like a "plugin" for z21 systems and it just so happens rocrail can emulate z21, the only downside im seeing so far is that it only supports esu 5 files, so the 071 and 201 downloads on esu's site are not working as they are esu 4 files. im hoping i can make a small alteration with the lokprogrammer and resave these so that they become esu 5 files. worst coming to worst i can live with american prime mover sounds and ill find an irish horn somewhere, i was always just gonna put a class 66 hornby chip into 201 anyway so i dont need exact accuracy to be satisfied suddenly a wheeltappers Baby GM file becomes an attractive proposition to purchase.

ah yes so the plot thickens even further. found out that rocrail supports both dcc++ and it can be configured to as a z21 base station in a sort of passthrough manner; im in luck! figured out that rocrail is not that bad and just needed another guide to get me started as the menus are a bit nuanced. (its definitely not as stable as jmri as it crashed a few times) once i had that working i added the z21 server and fired up my third party solution. this is where things get interesting because now my throttle app doesnt work anymore, but the official z21 one does, and it feels a good bit easier/more comfy to use, and the functions seem more straight forward. There is another application now also listening on the z21 server and this is where the sounds are being generated. So why have i gone to all this extra trouble you may ask? well mostly because i wanted the 8-567 and 12-645e and the jmri option had been only offering me 16 cylinder versions that left a lot to be desired in terms of detail. video-1645428542.mp4 we are now decoding .esu files! video-1645428617.mp4 to take things a step further even, the person developing this has begun mounting bluetooth speakers within locos. possibly a sign of where the tech might be going soon. whats interesting is i see scope for having the bluetooth speaker complimented by some sort of small sub woofer hidden somewhere near the baseboard. so something else in terms of sound also which could be possible using jmri, the audio backend really reminds me of the audio engine within a video game, i see there may be some scope to add 2 or 4 speakers into the corners of the layout which carry a panned soundscape of the surroundings on the baseboard, an example of this would be the sound of welding buzz coming from the car garage on my layout in the right location, there may be also some scope to trigger effects based on block occupancy, for example the layout has 3 points in a row at one stage. it would be cool to set these up as a block that triggers the sound of flange squeal in the location of the block in question and stops it once the train is off.. it could be done over multiple different blocks depending on where it would be desired. other effects could be triggered in such a manner too. one thing i will definitely be doing once the layout is all set back up is i will be setting up 130 with the push pull carriages as a shuttle that comes and goes in between manual freight workings.

thans for posting these, have decided to go down a bit of a different path for sound but these will sure come in handy as reference pieces

not only did he create the market, he created the "you cannot have it" factor for people getting into the hobby late, thats a huge marketing trick within itself, the best of 121 did not hang around for a long time either.

had been thinking this myself lately, not sure its gonna happen though given the Bachmann tooling situation and i feel like IRM might not want to make one for as long as murphy is still in business. might be more likely that we see an 071 reissue first. then again if a new 141 comes out this year with updated bogies and all the mod cons I will definitely eat my hat, got a mint 141 on here lately for what I would of considered to be a fair price but would not want to be paying much more for one.

yeah it was a runner as far as im aware.

backscene is up, underestimated how much id need but im half way there. good chance to try out another one from the range so i can match them up. definitely need some kinda building to disguise the corner. theres a decent amount of pva leftover so im going to paint it all over the polystyrene to seal it against solvent damage at any point.

and someone sold one for 35 squids on facebook yesterday!

video-1645342245.mp4 well holy moly! went deep down a rabbit hole with jmri tonight and this is the result, theres an EMD 645 sound also hard to show it off on such a short bit of track but its a start! sound is coming from a stage monitor with the bass cranked sitting just behind me. still feel like im only just barely scratching the surface with jmri, it has massive potential. ya theres weird conditionals tied up so that they were only working with the headlight and even then the front marker was tied up to the headlight with no apparent solution unless you reprogram. actually murph I did install rocrail tonight but i had no clue what was going on so i left it, I was looking for a way to hook up to multimaus etc using the Roco proprietary lan protocol so that the rocrail system would appear to other devices as if it was a z21 box. found a super interesting implementation of what i have in the video above but unfortunately it only works connected to a z21 station. it actually seems way better than the jmri implementation so if i could get the rocrail to be a z21 it would definitely prompt me to switch over to that platform in a heartbeat.

not looking too bad after a sanding, plenty of low points though so ill be filling those in tonight. took the chance to fill any imperfections in the das and then just did a full skim over the entire yard area. used a different type of filler tonight which was a powder type as it was cheap and advertised as being ready to sand in an hour, and it was! ill probabaly using this stuff where possible from now on. Irish Locos, working lights, hard standing, irish bufferstops, lights reflecting off rails, ive died and gone to model train heaven. Happy to see a few different sub projects coming together in completion on the baseboard. video-1645255724.mp4 Finally i should add, i used a slightly different methodology for making the grooves alongside the rails, instead of a knife and ruler i took a plastic card ( expired leap card or license etc) and i cut it in half to give me a sharp edge, i was able to dig the card into the inner rib part of the rail and use this as my guide to slide the card along and run down the lenght of the rail fairly quickly, I did this whilst the clay was still rather soft and could hold the card at a decent angle to get the required width in the grooves on the first attempt. will mess with the backscene tomorrow, as i feel its the next logical step in construction as it will be harder to fit later with scenery in the way!

Thanks Adrian, ive been watching your thread with keen interest too, little has happened this week as i have been sidetracked by all things DCC, constructing my own controller and chipping the fleet ,no sound. just cant justify the costs, the lighting has me delighted anyway. I do have some good ideas for sound however they are still in the incubation phase in my head and require more evaluation before i can say anything meaningful on that front. the filler is finally at a spot where im not afraid to sand it, gonna be a little tricky since its essentially laid onto a bed of sponge but we will persevere anyway. gonna need another coat in spots so the odd crack wont be game over as long as it all stays adhered. two backscenes have arrived, shockingly they are 10cm short of covering the whole backscene despite my measuring them in advance. since my backscene is quite short though i should be able to get by by covering up the transition with a building of some sort. the excess sky will be trimmed off and can be used as the sky above the building in question. I am considering using a large low relief station building which overall would become a sort of centrepiece of passenger operations on the layout. ive also got a signal box ive been messing about with it but i just think the space isnt there for that. will get back to a turntable soon also, i didnt like the old one so much after a little while so i have left it off the layout for now. ive since discovered some cooler designs also so will get back to one of these in due course. i have even considered buying an off the shelf one and just sucking up the costs however I dont actually have the space for any of these commercial designs anymore so thats a non goer. to be fair i think ive made use of every inch of the available board without making it overly cramped looking thanks to the open yard at the front.

Diving into EncoderPro this software seems to be very simple and will allow me to modify all CV's and functions on a given decoder. apparently its also possible to blow sounds but im not gonna get into that. with this in mind it has been possible to find a simple solution to the lighting issue. what ill do is very simple, i will analyse the function map of the A class chip and then place it into the 121 and go through the functions until i see the lights i am after, I will then note down which functions and their associated aux control the marker lights, then ill do another function analysis of 130's chip and replace the 2 marker functions with the ones from the irm decoder. with this software the manual states that the ui is modelled after lokprogrammer and by the looks of things it has more programming features than i would ever need. any parameters i mentioned so far seem to be moddable. I will add Forward and reverse rows for F1 and F2 with the correct Aux's labelled and that should sort things out on the lighting front. so as we see F0 has some weird conditions and F1 and 2 are blank,

And didnt i just remember that the 141 decoder is already coming in the post tomorrow, i guess that puts dodgy reblows at the top of ones priority list!

Well what can i say first impressions here actually have me super impressed, not knowing what was what within the software a quick youtube on how to get started got me to the roster screen and once i had a train added everything else became super self explanitory and really just worked. I can literally just pick a loco from the spreadsheet and hit throttle and there you go full control onscreen. the withrottle worked a treat too and now i can control 2 locos from the comfort of my couch/phone really liking how the locos will move off and coast to a stop over a period instead of just instant power. theres also an emergency stop button just incase that stops the train dead. the shunt/brake mode is also a fantastic thing to have although it seems to be set a lot stronger on the A class decoder. perhaps we will have to look into changing this somewhere within the decoder pro software. if i wanted to just leave it here with the software and be happy i could but there seems to be a whole plethora of stuff under the hood so im definitely going to tinker a bit more. I am liking the idea of using automating to shuttle in and out the push pull set, leaving the operator free to shunt the yard below or refuel locos etc. 2 minor issues have cropped up for me, firstly both decoders have been set up with address 3, so as of yet i havent been able to drive both locos independantly, I think its set on the decoder itself since changing it in the software seems to have no effect. however i need to investiate that more. Secondly I am finding the marker lights to be a little wonky on the 121 decoder, at first i thought they could not be set to work independently of the headlight at all, however, i then got the tail set turning on and off, but for the life of me cannot get the front marker to work independently to the headlight, its either all or nothing, is it like that because this is how it was prototypically or is it just a small incorrection on my chip? out of curiosity i put the A class chip into the 121 and was able to get all the markers working independently. theres no front marker on the 141 class so im thinking of the possibility of fitting the 121 chip into that and hopefully i can control the front headlamp and back marker, then ill get a second A class chip into 121 and there will be fully working lights on the whole fleet. is there a possibility of bringing the function 3 shunting light over to 121. did the real 121 have this light? ideally though i would like full control over the parameters on the chip and theres talk of that being possible, along with .esu reblowing without the use of a lokprogrammer using decoder pro so this will definitely have to be explored soon. but the address issue comes first. I would wager that if you know what a driver is and how to install it, then you would have no problem getting up and running with this. I really was surprised how plug and play it all is once i got past all the technical jargon/ That sounds very much so along the same lines as jmri alright, dcc++ was the base station i used and its very much plug and play, jmri itself supports connecting to a staggering amount of different base stations but not really sure how any of it works outside of dcc+ Was looking at that as it was showing up as a lokprogrammer alternative, I dont think things could get any more low cost than this arduino solution. if you are prepared to wait for china postage time you could be up and running with a base station for in and around 10 euro or less. for larger layouts requiring a higher amperage the cost really does not become to much higher either but a different motor solution needs to be used.

Starting this thread to document my first jump down the DCC rabbit hole, as always im on a budget so going DIY where possible, will be able to give a nice overview of just how easy or difficult it is these days and will also touch on costs and if its really worth it. so heres the starting point. basic old scrap computer running java runtime environment, this tiny net book was perfect, to small to be practically usable and old enough to be worthless without being completley useless spec wise. plenty of power to run trains but little else and easy to carry around. any old computer running windows would suffice really(I dont use windows but that doesnt matter here), you can skip the computer part and add networking directly to your base station which i was going to do however i cannot locate my network card, the laptop opens up much more possibility also so ill stick with it till i find the arduino networking card Arduino Uno or Mega, Mega is needed for a standalone network base station. generic old laptop power supply. Engine driver Wifi throttle for android. Official arduino motor shield, to assume maximum compatibility with the project as it is now. Official IRM and MM decoders. considering the cost of an ESU unit on its own i did not mind paying the extra few euros to have pre programmed ones starting off with to make the process that little bit easier, in time im also going to try and reprogram these decoders without programmers, thats a whole other can of worms though and im aiming for the basics just now! cheaper decoders will be explored in time. DIY decoders on locos seems next to impossible if not very difficult. so i dont mind justifying the costs for now, DIY accessory decoders seem alot handier however and we can take a look at these. as for costs so far, pleasantly surprising, i already had everything on hand except the decoders and the shield, went for an official shield to ensure maximum compatibility and this was 17 euro however i seen some clones on an irish site around the ten euro mark and china would be cheaper again, the Mega im using cost me less than ten euros a few years ago from china or ebay and i know clone unos are about a fiver..... so what does this mean? well basically for those with a spare computer that can run an older version of windows half reasonably, it would be possible to assemble a DCC base station for around 10-15 euro. how easy it will be to set up and run remains to be seen, however given my initial tinkerings with the JMRI software and engine driver i am feeling quite positive that it will be. will update later when ive had a good go of the software. have the arduino flashed and talking to JMRI over serial just fine but thats just as far as i got before bed yesterday. got engine driver set up with a layout that i really like but did not connect it to JMRI yet, assumedly once i do that and chip some loco's i am good to go but that still remains to be seen!

have been wanting the shapeways n stuff for ages but the high costs for what you actually get have always put me off.... what do i want from 3d printing? well, the ability to purchase files of models and print out as many copies as i would like, just like we do with scalescenes stuff now. otherwise its no different to buying brass or resin kits, to me at least quality aside.

some really good advice here folks and i think the best take away is to err on the side of caution with things. sound seems nice and all but at those prices, i just might have to pass, i love the idea of realdrive but need to be able to justify those high costs, the audio engineer inside of my brain has been trying to come up with other ideas for adding sound to the layout which in reality may just be a little more practical (and much better sounding to boot) that same audio engineer would probably quickly become tired of the sound of trains through iphone speakers as robert has hinted at above.... I wonder what work could be done in this area to improve bass and fidelity of onboard speakers, phones have improved MASSIVELY in recent years and there may be a scope to bring some of that technology over to a locomotive. thats a topic for another thread however which merits further investigation on my part! the layout in mind is very simple with no more than 2 locos running at a time, but its a very slow moving depot so my biggest draw again is unlocking the full potential of the lights as i want to be able to fully light the layout over time also. DCC accessories dont really interest me and im happy to do points by hand for now, ill eventually electrify them but thats practically going to be years away. so with all this in mind, and no particular limits on time as i have an exceptionally(for me) smooth DC controller im probabaly going to order the arduino shield and one single soundless decoder and play around on a lenght of track to wet my feet and that way i will soon see if its for me or not. Will probabaly go with an official IRM of MM decoder to start with as they dont cost a whole lot more than the generic ESU ones and i know all the functions will be as they need to be to get started with.

Interesting food for thought Dave as its not usually you hear from someone who is more for DC my biggest annoyance with DC is how the lighting on the loco is controlled and i dont really want to turn those lights off either... @Murrayec due to budget constraints i really am leaning towards the DCC++ option, mainly because i have virtually everything there already except a motor shield and decoder so i can be tinkering. I build midi controllers driven by arduino boards so am also kind of interested in seeing just what it can do with a train. that being said you are probabaly right about the decoders, and i dont want to risk blowing up my lovely trains!!, so can at least justify getting those. are you saying the sound and non sound ESU chips the same at a hardware level and can be programmed with sounds later? control from a phone or tablet really appeals to me.

RIP RAWIE NUMBER 5 slightly nervy but enjoyable work, not bad going for a couple of hours. had to use fillers in a couple of spots as i was low on clay, so may need to leave a good few days before sanding it down etc. will have to see how it goes. pulled the molds off early because i dont want a perfect concrete edge i want it to be broken and distressed. Also cut out and glued down the loading platform, and also with this brings another change of plan, beet hoppers have always been on my list of wanted rolling stock, but with no real justification to get them due to lack of facilities on the layout. and since im rather partial to hopper type wagons in general, and magnesite are coming. I have decided that instead of a disused loose coupled loading dock that it can be an in use loading dock to cater for all types of mineral hoppers complete with period clapped out 10 or so year old JCB! watch this space....

lifted everything off the board again to do the usual "slab the whole yoke with polystyrene" treatment and to lay the underlay, hopefully the trackwork is a little more forgiving now! just about ready to fill this lot in with das and hope for the best! madly the styrene exactly matches the rail height with the underlay underneath!

my biggest gripe is not being able to control the lighting and the lighting operating like a dimmer switch as the loco runs though slow operations Anybody using DCC++? looks right up my street.

hey guys, looking for some info on this topic and in general I have absolutely have no idea where to start as i have only ever had DC systems where can i find out about wiring? whats the best entry level controller to pick up and are there any available second hand? could an arduino be used to put together a controller in a DIY fashion? In regard to the decoders on the loco i have much the same questions. not sure what to look for, i think all my locos are 21 pin. what are the best entry level decoders that wont break the bank and is there any chance of finding them second hand? again can i DIY them? I would consider myself to be quite proficient at the DIY side of electronics so should be able to tackle somthing if such a project already exists. I understand sound to be quite pricey so can live without this for the moment but id like the option to be there so i can easily add sound in future. Locos to be chipped are MM203 MM130 MM143 and IRM007 ahhh so many questions Cheers.

with this talk of backscenes i cant help but think about a layout with no backscene, or one that is simply solid green! going to experiment with just that on my N layout. a green screen backscene would be very interesting indeed for photography purposes!

off to shapeways i go........