Sean

Yea got my set secured as well, first time ever making a pre order of any kind

 

Shamelessly, im gonna pull them with one of these things! 

 

 

44 minutes ago, Adrian said:

@raymurph I was in the exact same boat a few months ago - looking to build up a fleet and nothing in production. Best bet is keep an eye open on this forum, get in touch with the contacts above and watch eBay  

I would definitely grab a couple of 121s from Marks before they are gone too - I’d even ring up and buy them as opposed to depending on a visit. At least then you’ll have something to play with  Also they had some 071 sound decoders last week so perhaps grab one of those even before you find a loco, as they sell out quickly too

Lastly Roads & Rails in the UK do quality sound decoders for 121s (two different engine types) as well as the 141/181 - I’ve bought a few and would recommend them

Best of luck, these locos do come available from time to time so patience is needed, bear in mind though you will likely need between €200-€400 per loco though, so start saving!

Are the sound decoders limited runs or are they in constant production? since after all the actual decoder itself is going to be in constant production.

these look great!

last few announcments have been a little "meh" for me but only because the models didnt fit into the greater scheme of what i have been trying to do on my layout....

 

that being said these more than make up for that! and reassures me a bit of more liverys coming down the pipeline.

 

hoping i can get a pre order in before they are all gone, on that note,  maybe the  unpaid pre order option could be resinstated on the condition that pre orders must pay a deposit? i would happily go for this and put down 25% if it meant the item was secured for a later date. (will email for a payment plan later)

 

also noticing how this is called "set 1" when are ye announcing set 2?

That boards looks absolutely PERFECT for the job and you know its gonna be tiny when you see that micro usb connector. took apart the lynx pack and its essentially one of those although the pcb is a bit too big for a loco, its a good starting point for mounting into a building etc.

that board is actually capable of 2x3 watt so i bet they could be tied together into a 6 watt package for mono setups like we have in our locos.

 

not sure about FT just yet,  I dont think its enabled by default  but at the same time i really dont know what i should be listening for, i was trying to use isolation switch and reverser centre functions and they were not responding as expected, however they are disabled by default in the files anyway.  nextgen does send throttle info and the default enabled functions just fine except now the loco responds to functions both on the decoder and in nextgen so its a little bit of a mess until i get in and map them out to different f numbers.

 

I assume it should work but i dont really know how it should be behaving with it turned on so cant really say until i investigate further.

wasnt too fond of that corner and ive already got a fairly busy scene for buildings so i just spontaneously put this mound together tonight, will model a little field edge on the top of it and it should look decent.

a rare appearance from an out of era spoil, totally acceptable whilst we are still under construction as how else would we build the model without modern day stock  

kinda mad to think this "corner" of the layout will be complete as soon as i get some ballast down and all the white surfaces covered. its my first "all irish" layout and definitely the most prototypical ive built so far. 

Im now most looking forward to 

still trying to decide between beet doubles and pallet cement as my last source of industry  

i have some ambitious plans going forward in terms of adding sound and lights, so maybe its good that im geting all the model work done now and I did always anticipate this to be a quick project.

 

 

 

ya your right, seems to be mention of an amp board too in the comments, 

 

another possibility would be a small  battery powered bluetooth box, have an old lynx one here that im gonna pull apart for a look tonight , only downside is you would need to get at the charging port easily, so im thinking 141 would be a good contender since the cab comes off so easily.

 

looks like bachmann have an implementation of it in their app too.

How old are the reach stackers used in this video? have been hesitant to buy some lately as they seem a bit too modern for my era.

Interesting.

 

In theory once theres enough current then somthing like this could be dropped in and wired to the existing speakers set up as a set of headphones within windows

 

https://gleanntronics.ie/en/products/bluetooth-audio-receiver-module-5v-for-diy-wireless-speaker-3099.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAjc2QBhDgARIsAMc3SqT0NNcSf37RttamCCVKjc7j_NFhYLLoBSNlkVpMJw41PaBzEhZpgMMaArf_EALw_wcB

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.

 we are now decoding .esu files!

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.

1 hour ago, murphaph said:

I'd say the baby GMs would already be financially viable now given the seemingly rapid expansion of the market, but there are other fish to fry first probably. 

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!

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.

 

On 18/2/2022 at 6:54 AM, murphaph said:

I had to play around a fair bit in Lokprogrammer to get the desired result on the 121s so I could lash a pair up nose to nose and have them behave as a single unit for the purposes of lighting (primarily having no nose lights on at all when lashed up but also ensuring I could hit a given F button to toggle "light power"/"hauling something" so that I could kill the red marker lights when hauling a train.

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.

 

 

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.

 

3 hours ago, David Holman said:

Great stuff Sean, I think. Just wish I understood it...

Well out of my league, but will do my best to follow, nevertheless.

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/

2 hours ago, murphaph said:

Hi Sean Nice thread. You could also have a play with RocRail in place of JMRI. It's the "European JMRI" if you will. I haven't used JMRI so can't compare them. Maybe the architecture is similar. RocRail is client/server based. The server connects via USB or whatever to the DCC hardware (in your case the Arduino+shield). My RocRail server runs on a Raspberry Pi Model B (my DCC hardware is a fairly old DIY openDCC controller), so very little computing power. You can then use your laptop or desktop running the client software in edit mode to edit the configuration. You could use the same application in "run" mode to control/monitor the layout BUT as it's client/server based you can just as easily install the android app or webapp to control it. You can have as many clients as you like. I'm not sure if RoCRail supports the Arduino protocol but Rob (the principal developer) is a fan of all things open source so I wouldn't be surprised.

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+

33 minutes ago, Mayner said:

The Sprog seems to be a reasonably low cost hardware interface between the layout and the JMRI programme https://www.jmri.org/help/en/html/hardware/sprog/SPROG.shtml

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.