Good evening all, Newish member here. Love all the contributions from everyone! I've installed an ESU Loksound decoder and have it pretty sorted. Except for one thing... Ditch lights. No, this isn't a "How do I get them to work" question. I have that part figured. What I can't figure out is how to turn the darned things OFF! When I apply track power, the lights come on on their own, independent of the headlight, which has a start state of OFF. I can control that just fine and it behaves as expected. The ditch light grade crossing function behaves as expected when either manually selected or when tied into the horn/bell combo. What I WANT is to have the ditch lights start state to be OFF until I power on the headlight, or, if I want them on their own function, to be independently toggled on/off. No matter what combo of programming I try, they refuse to do start in any state other than ON, unless I set them to type 2 ditch light, which just leaves them off unless I activate them. They are tied to Aux(1) Aux(2) on the decoder. Is this expected behavior or am I missing some little trick in CV programming? Thanks, John
Have you mapped them to a function? Can you take a screen shot of the function mapping tab in DecoderPro and post it here
Rick, Thanks for the quick response. Yes, I've tied them to a function. On their own as well as tied to the headlight F0. Nothing seems to effect their state. In the screen cap above, you can see they are set on F5 for grade crossing as well as F0 for use with the headlight (I've also set them without the grade crossing logic). I get independent function with F5 as expected. However, if I turn off F0, the headlight turns off, but the Aux outputs stay powered (or grounded as it were).
You don’t want the logical function grade crossing on the same function as the lights. Grade Crossing logic on is what causes them to flash, but they should be on before the logic is activated. If you want F5 to activate the flashing, remove the Aux1 / Aux2 from that row. The row for F0 turns the ditch lights on whenever you have the headlight on. I normally set F5 to turn the lights on and off, but not have grade crossing in the logic column, and remove the Aux1/2 from F0. Then I just use the horn for flashing
Rick, Ah, the grade crossing setting now makes sense. I'm still very new to programming and have a lot to learn. Thanks! F2 (horn) has grade crossing assigned to it and the lights do flash when the function is engaged (when properly set on the function output page). I've tied the Aux 1(1) and Aux 2(1) outputs to F0 but they still aren't respecting the programming - only the headlight turns off when F0 is off. The only way I have been able to get them to turn off is if I just assign dimmable headlight to the function output and remove the grade crossing checkbox - that's great but then I don't have ditch lights. I've tried combos with Aux1(1) and Aux1(2) set to disabled or ditch light type 1 and 2 but can't get it to do both logical functions. Below is a cap of my function outputs. I did notice that the majority of the Aux functions were set to Power Pack Control, and I've removed those settings across the remaining Aux outputs as it was superfluous for the current install of the decoder. Appreciate the help.
Your Aux1[1] and Aux2[1] are set correctly. Try taking the ditch lights off of F0 and put them on F5. Take the grade crossing logic off of F5. You will then have to have F5 on for the ditch lights to be on. If F5 of off, they should be off.
Thanks, Rick Still no go. I've also tried with both Aux1(1) and Aux1(2) (same for aux2 sets) on F5 and no change. So weird. I wonder if it has something to do with this sound file. I'm wondering at this point if there is a CV that is overriding the function logic. Nothing else seems to make sense, but I'm not sure what the hierarchy of logic flow is on these devices.
How about putting the ditch lights (physically) on Aux3 and Aux4? I’m wondering if there is something wrong with the connection (or decoder).
Not a bad idea. But, this is all buttoned up at this point and I'd rather not disassemble it if I don't have to. Lots of tape and putty to get it all to fit right. It's an old Railpower chassis/shell, so none of the fancy pre-installed PCBs and lights that the new stuff has. I had thought of bad connections as well, but it does all the logical functions I throw at it. I've gone through all the different light types for fun and everything behaves as expected. I've got another one with the same sound file coming in later this week. I'll wire it the same and see if it does the same thing. If so, I'll switch to Aux3/4 and see how it goes.
See page 78 of the Locsound 5 manual, the second ' i ' and the table to the left of it. For some reason the lights functions are duplicated. And page 84 has a description of each light function.
I got this sorted. 2nd Decoder has been received (same sound file loaded) and a basic hook up and run through showed that it was functioning as expected. After the initial testing of 2nd decoder, we'll call that decoder 2, I was able to compare functions and outputs. When I received the first decoder, decoder 1, I took a backup of all the sheets in case I really messed things up. IT background makes me paranoid this way. I used this backup as a baseline to compare against the new decoder. After some comparison, I noticed that the decoder 2 had number of function programming parameters set that the decoder 1 did not. Notably, I had originally had to program horn, bell, headlight and a few other items on decoder 1. Having never used any advanced decoder, I was unaware as to how it should look after the sound file was loaded, and just figured this was part of getting things up and running. Using the function output and function mapping sheets for decoder 2, I set the values the same on the baseline sheet for decoder 1. After writing the changes, the ditch lights now function as expected. These changes were made against the original backup so as to have correct programming parameters. As a final step, the original sheet was closed out and I used the named unit sheet to then read back the changes written to the decoder and then saved the file. Seems to me that the initial programming must have been incomplete. The sound files made it on to the chipset without any issue, but the finer details of the function mappings were either interrupted or just failed to write. What I still haven't figured out is why my own programming didn't work as expected. It seems simple enough on the surface, but there must be some small setting that wasn't present that was powering the lights unintentionally. Thanks everyone for your assistance!
