Colombo, I agree and that has been the approach we've been using. Wish me luck. Arctic Train aka Brian, duly noted and thanks for the input. No time to respond directly as the phone is ringing off the hook. Grand central station. You have a problem we will trouble shoot it for you. Where's my rifle, TNT and a dump truck. Grin! Personally, on my layout all my DCC engines and locomotives have been changed back to Analog DC until WE ALL can get a handle on what's happening here. Summation: Apparently the Decoders do not have a built in circuit breaker to protect it. Apparently they are more sensitive to shorts then first thought. Apparently a short in a switch mechanism can indeed damage the decoder. Apparently when decoders have been returned to the factory they are unable to diagnose the problem and tell you why your decoder died. Apparently ....gosh this could go on forever. Apparently....none of us built our layout correctly and they are anything but DCC User Friendly. Apparently the DCC decoder manufacturers don't want to take responsibility and call a spade a spade. I'm done.
Apparently the edit time allowed ran out and I didn't get to finish my edit. What genius came up...with...never mind. Apparently all the problems with the decoders is OUR FAULT. Harrumph! I'm not buying into that at all. Bottom line I won't be buying anymore decoders until I hear something official from the manufacturers of these irritating, confounded, frustrating and complicated gizmo's. My trains run just fine on Analog DC with a variable momentum. I'm asking for a full fledged congressional hearing into the matter. I said gritting my teeth. That will be a waste of valuable time at the taxpayers expense.
Here is what works for me: Set your active address on your throttle to an address of "00." Enter Ops or programming on the main, and assign the correct numeral(s) to the decoder you want to restore to factory defaults and Address "03". Next, this is important, even if the loco buzzes and chirps and tweets and lurches twice....you're still not done. You must exit programming mode and then remove power to the rails. Restore the power, and acquire Address "03" on your loco. If it doesn't do a startup, and say 'reset' if it's a QSI, then you may have a fried decoder. AFAIK, all DCC system have short detectors that remove power to the rails within milliseconds of the amperage ramping up during a hard short. That is intended to protect decoders and has worked flawlessly for me for nine years (Digitrax...and I have had the odd tail-light glowing short). As for DCC friendly turnouts, they only work if the loco's metal tire surfaces don't manage somehow to bridge the two hot rails past the insulators on the frog rails. With curved W/S #7.5 and #8, I had to either paint a bit beyond the insulators with clear nail varnish or use a dremel or jeweler's saw and cut another gap about 1/4" further out.
What, if anything, do you and these other layouts have in common. Also, I don't get "Accumulative Short". That sounds like "kinda pregnant". It is either a short or not. That being said, I can see a small amount of unwanted current leakage causing a thermal overload and failure. Interesting problem. So many possibilities. Divide and conquer. Good luck. Trey
I talked to a good friend about this (had him read this thread) who does ONLY dcc. Electronic Logical Troubleshooting (USN) tells me from what I have read....all locos, all decoders, shut down after one hour run time. That leaves one thing and one thing only in the electronic end..the base station. Yes, you could have piXX poor connections between it and track, cold solder joint, crimp connectors (shudder) unsoldered...but that's where the issue is. You cannot have every locomotive and every decoder shutting down after one hour and logically think it's anything else. Got a what do they call it ramp meter? Put it on the rails, watch it while running as you approach the time of shutdown. What does it do? If you had a good old Tektronics o-scope with memory, you could call that up, but I ain't seen one of those in 40 years. 4 pages..did I read that right or miss something? Dave
Good explanation. I like the RRamp meter with a 1 amp bulb to simulate a load for testing as the manufacturer suggests. Not cheap but worth it. Hopefully everything is not soldered and can be easily disconnected to isolate sections of the layout as someone suggested earlier.
Well Rick, you didn't answer all my questions, but I agree with ScaleCraft. This is almost assuredly a base station problem. I would be utterly shocked if this has anything at all to do with shorts. Terms like accumulative shorts are things that Model railroaders who are better at telling stories than reading a manual on electrical theory come up with. All they are doing is producing a lot of methane if you get my meaning. There is no such thing. And all a DC friendly switch really is is a well made switch where each leg is isolated well and there's no inherent shorts in the design. Anyway, I asked how many throttles are on the layout, because it is possible that the owner has not set the cab numbers on the throttles to be unique. this can create odd effects as the base station tries to sort out signals from two throttles that both say they're throttle 1. HERE IS MY MAIN QUESTION WHERE IS THE BASE STATION LOCATED? Does this location receive good airflow or is it wedged under the layout? What is the ambient temperature in the layout space? Having everything stop working after an hour, that sounds 100% like an overheating prodigy base station to me. Those base stations have heat sinks, but not fans. If you put it somewhere without airflow...like under the layout on a ledge possibly behind Fascia, then you are asking to burn up the base station. Pull the base station out, put it out in the open, put a fan on it, See if the problem persists. If it does, bring over another DCC system and see if the problem persists with that. These are fundamental debug things here. And most apply to DC as well. You put your MRC Tech II/III/IV in an unventilated space with no airflow and it will burn itself up too. The codes to set decoders to factory reset are all available online Rick, so let your fingers do the typing. As for not having districts, that's like saying your layout is too small to justify having separate blocks in a DC system. Hogwash. You may not need separate boosters, but most assuredly, the layout should be wired with districts protected by breakers (MRC makes some, there are others.) Wiring for DCC is no different than Wiring for DC. All the principles you learned mostly still apply.
DCC and Electronic's Over My Head Gosh, Yo Ho. You are the second electronic's engineer to debunk Accumulative Short's. Two other's said yes we use such terminology but it doesn't apply to DCC applications. It has to do with resistance and an explanation I didn't follow at all. Now, I'm wondering where I heard it. The idea as it was originally presented was the decoder experiences heat inside it as is runs through various low level types of shorts. After having run through them enough times it will damage the internal components in the decoder. As in heat them up and destroy a once working component. As far as the base station and it's location and source of air. The layout is in a garage and the air circulation is about as good as it's going to get. There are two wireless hand held controllers. One works very well and is brand new and the other a used unit. It will run trains but won't work the bells, whistles and lights. We suspect a problem with it and seldom does it get used. Power districts. The layout is broken up into blocks controlled by DPDT's. Just like mine. We can isolate problems with a short and find most of them occur in the track switches. The idea of individual circuit breakers has been suggested...at the table yesterday...while visiting at CJ's. The expense is prohibitive. YoHo you and David E. are both electrical engineers as well as is my son-in-law. You can all be talking over my head in less then a half sentence. I'd like to get you to the same table to discuss this but I'm afraid that we'd end up burning up all the decoders involved. I'm a retired mortician and I can talk about medical issues all day long. DCC? Is like the Greek class I once attempted to take. It's all Greek to me. We've played with transformers that heated up, locomotives that heated up and I saw a few smoke it up without the aide of a smoke unit. Nothing new going on here. What is new is the problems we are having with decoders and the unknown problem resolution. It's not the power supplies that are failing and heating up it's the decoders. I can check a layout for equal power distribution all day long but I have no idea what's happening with the packets of information going out to the decoders and where the interruption is occurring. All signs aka indicators point to "Short's" anyway you want to dress them. I will review what you said and look at it seriously. One of the authors said of DCC Friendly switches "It's a myth". I've said most switches can be made to be DCC safe with the right isolation gaps cut in. No argument here with what you said as I don't have any idea how to even start an argument. Thanks again for your input. So what the ...... hell...... is the going on?
How do you know that every various decoder in every various loco is overheating and shutting down in one hour? Not in the least logical to assume that it's the decoder. If it is overheating of decoders, it's what's driving them that's the issue, most likely and logically. Find another control unit, disconnect the ones installed, install the newer unit and try it. Dave
THIS is where I directed my long distance troubleshooting. One of the many failings of AlGore Forums is folks lose track of what's been said, and answer the last post. ALL locomotives, various manufacturer. ALL decoders, various manufacturers. NEW locomotives that A) haven't accumulated any shorts (?!?) nor B) have any need for a "factory reset". Dave
I agree, the only common denominator is the command station... I read the first few posts by the OP. Greg
I wrote a response to the above comments and somehow the decoder I was using to respond with died on line and I lost it. No the website wanted to me log in, despite the fact I had already done so and when I did the website quit responding dumping my response. I'm not going to take the time to rewrite it. Other then to say the problem appears to be resolved and I will get into this more when I have time to sit here and tickle the keys on my lap top. No it wasn't the command station or power supply or other issues we've been skirting around and denying exist. I'll keep you in suspense for a little while. Right now I want to watch a good movie and grab a cat nap. Back at you later. Enjoy the holiday, whatever it might mean to you.hboy:
You have to know before I even get into this that I reported what all of you shared here to our illustrious group of BVMR's including the owner of the layout in question. I can hear you asking what's going on...right? Operator Error, 99.9% of problems with any product, manufactured tool or man made item (when it doesn't work) is operator error. Someone doesn't know what he or she is doing. The owner of the layout hasn't been able to wrap his head around how his MRC Prodigy unit works. In the hands of one of our BVMR's, Steve. (We call him our local DCC Guru but don't tell him I said that, he doesn't like being called that...it will be our secret...right? Good!) Hot Shot or Adviser would be better. And, in the hands of our new hot shot Wiebe, aka Ricardo, he finally got the new locomotive going. The owner admittedly has problems understanding DCC. Now Steve and Wiebe can program on the main and are careful not to reset any other locomotives to a new number. The owner has several locomotives and diesels that haven't been programmed and are still on default #3. Many of these are sitting on a hot track with the sound running. He likes that and what the heck I've wanted something like that on my layout ever since I was old enough to put two pieces of track together. If the owner isn't paying attention and starts programming other locomotives on the main, he's liable to kill the one good operating unit out on the track. Pretty sure he is attempting to program his new locomotive to the number on the cab, and inadvertently horses something up killing the decoders ability to respond. Thus what appears to be a dead decoder. The owner has started a list of locomotives and the numbers they've been programmed to including those consisted. Making a big difference. Now so far this is elementary. Short's, yes there is intermittent shorts on the layout in the Atlas switches. We swarmed the layout meters in hand and found a few. Now corrected or will be within the week. One surprise to all of us. The moveable points on the Atlas switches (Turnout to make some of you happy-sheez) the open ones are not hot. You can't (cannot) short out with the metal wheels should they come in contact with the open points. Can't happen. Yes, you can still short out going across the switch but for other reasons. YoHo, I need to get back to you and others with regard to the power supply. I stuck a meter on it and watched it's response during a two hour operation. At no time did it heat up, shut down and the circuit breaker performed perfectly. We performed the "Quarter Test", and it shut down without fail, as designed. Let's see what else did we discuss here on TrainBoard.com? Accumulative Shorts is a hot topic issue. After what YoHo, shared here and other responses from fellow electronic engineers I came to the conclusion it has nothing to do with DCC or the Decoders. It's a different animal and yes it happens but not on our layouts. Dead decoders. Still a mystery. I believe as David E., shared with me it's heat in the decoder destroying a component and killing said decoders. In the group I got a tally and we have experienced six dead decoders. Two were sent back to the manufacturer for diagnostics and they couldn't tell us what happened or went wrong. One we suspect...died because the electric motor in the older diesel pulled down more amperage then the decoder was capable of handling. Getting back to operator error. We suspect two were consisted together and we forgot the consist number. Sigh. We were never able to retrieve the locomotives and considered the decoders dead. One of the reasons I was asking for a back door way into the decoders. We all saw it work once. You can go in program and enter 6,8 &/or 9, you then go to a specific CV Zero it out and you can retrieve your decoder. Darn I had to go and loose that handy sticky note. This concludes the BVMR drama...for now. All the guys said to tell you guys thank-you and to consider yourselves an extended part of our group. Hey, no membership dues, no meetings to go to, some minor politics (You can't avoid that), just bring your happy smile and get together with us at CJ's most afternoons. It is a family store and we need to keep our conversations reflecting such...it's not a bar. Grin! You should of seen Stubby's smile, ear to ear after yesterdays operations and trouble shooting session. Thanks again to all for your input. Now what in the heck did I do with that sticky note?
I asked how many engines were hot for exactly that reason. Is no bueno. Bad Model Railroader! Only engines in use should be on powered track ESPECIALLY with sound! Also, assuming your talking new consisting. Remove the consist value by setting cv19 to 0.
No real point in asking questions if the answers are incomplete or wrong. Keep messing with it, eventually it may work. Personally, I want to have fun with trains, not mess around with programming, consisting, F-whatever, accumulated shorts, ramp meters and o-scopes....so, while I have used dcc, there is no way in hades I will ever own any. I know guys who buy dead MTH PS-1 engines, just to gut them...same principle. Plus, running 50-year-old locomotives....have yet to find the dreaded split-gear syndrome, or shorted case halves or dcc pins.....just sayin'.
Eh, I've found dcc to be not too bad. Also, why in Hades is a novice model railroader even programming on the main in the first place? First thing I woulda done is slapped the controller outta his hand and then enforce the "program on the program track ONLY!" Rule. Programming on the mains is for people who know what they're doing. Heck we simply don't allow it at the club unless your one of the 3 acknowledged experts and you've triple confirmed no other locos are powered, but the ones being programmed.
Very interesting posts! Thanks for the motivation to keep working on Direct-Bluetooth-Train-Control. I needed it! Bob
