Preliminary TCS Report From Amherst Train Show With Video Link

On the Model railroad Hobbyist Forum user AlexW gave a preliminary report on what was presented at the Train Control Systems clinic given by Technical Support Agent Dan. He resent the following:

Dan's presentations today at the clinic were excellent, there is a LOT to be excited about with WOW Diesel v5, WOW Steam v4.5, the WOWPOW, the UWT-50, CS-105, and LT-50.

The WOW Diesel v5 has a TON of new features and upgraded capabilities from the v4, comes with a full set of sounds already loaded, and is updatable and loadable via the WOWPOW in less than 10 minutes. The live demo load to re-engine an FT with an Alco prime mover took something like 8 minutes 33 seconds, although they're still working on making the FTs belch black smoke all over the place. Each sound file has over 30 minutes of recordings in it, including a full set of combinations of notch transitions. This is a truly modern decoder, and is yet another leap forward in the incredibly competitive sound decoder market. I think the WOW Diesel v5 will do very well for TCS, and be great for modelers. Official JMRI support is huge, as decoder profiles will be available a LOT sooner than waiting for volunteers to create them, and then wait for them to be incorporated into JMRI.
The capabilities of the CS-105 and LT-50 were already fairly well known, but there is a lot of thought put into this system. They haven't yet figured out how the internal roster of the CS-105 is going to interface with JMRI, but their consisting method is going to be the best in the industry, bar none. It will be like NCE-style consisting, but much easier to use, and have many more features, as it emulates CV21/22 functionality in the command station. The RS-485 port is planned to have simultaneous support for NCE and Lenz, I think that means you'll actually be able to use both at the same time, which I didn't realize is possible, but is super cool. This is only scratching the surface, as Dan packed a TON into two one-hour clinics, he said he had to cut the slide decks down just to barely fit within the hour.

Also, according to AlexW, NCE has cancelled on the Springfield show. Digitrax doesn't seem to be attending either. Roco Fleishmann was supposed to be coming, but I don't see them either. They're international though, so that's a whole different thing now with all the border restrictions and testing requirements.
The author has heard there are many new and different changes to the WOW Diesel v5 decoder coming. This should be an interesting year for TCS.

<Addition 2022-02-03>

Questions and Answers With Dan of TCS:

Was it clear if the v5 decoder is physically smaller - are the circuit board and components all new?

Version 5 decoder hardware will be launching with the same form factors as the current product lines - namely the WOW101, WOW121, and WOW501. As we move into the future, more form factors will become available with dedicated attempts to reduce the physical footprint. Note that Steam version 4.5 IS NOT VERSION 5. This is an important distinction. Version 5 is a completely new architecture, and a complete overhaul of the platform.

When I read CV 248 (Version Number) it read a value of 5.  I realize there is no room for half numbers, so possibly they're using a '5' for the version 4.5.

Correct. CV248 is defined by TCS as the "Sound Set Version Number" not to be confused with the "[Decoder] Version Number" CV7. If you read CV7, you will see the value reads 4. CV7 + CV248 reads as 4.5; In previous generations of decoder, CV 7 and CV 248 were equal. (4, 3, 2, etc.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: YOU CANNOT PROGRAM A DECODER PROPERLY USING JMRI WITHOUT USING THE CORRECT DECODER DEFINITION. I cannot stress this enough, and it is a concept not understood by most JMRI users. Without a decoder definition, programming [sound functions] or [changing button mappings] will break the decoder. Each version of a sound decoder will inject new sounds, alphabetically, and into their own respective sound types, which by consequence shifts all of the existing "numbers" JMRI uses to program stuff. TL;DR, if you program a sound to a button in JMRI using the wrong decoder definition, JMRI will program the decoder incorrectly compared to what is displayed.

VERSION 4.5 STEAM DOES NOT HAVE A JMRI DECODER DEFINTION as of me making this post. JMRI decoder definitions are created by VOLUNTEERISM; as such, a JMRI definition for Version 4.5 steam will not be available until a member of the JMRI community creates it. We are actively looking for a volunteer willing to make a definition for this project.
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Dan

Engineering and Product Development

<Video>
A YouTube interview with Dan Mycio at Amherst which includes a first look at the new TCS DCC system  is located here. 

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New ESU Sound File for Athearn's New SD70ACu Updated 2022-01-28

ESU has announced that they will provide a new sound file for the above mentioned new Athearn locomotive. The ESU file S0822 (EMD 16-710G3C LATE EXH T Ed2), which several people have tried,  will load and allow the engine to run and have good sound but lighting will not work properly. Apparently this engines wiring is a little different.

The new file (no name yet) should be available this weekend 2022-01-29. This author believes the new sound file will specifically name the  engine it goes with which will allow easy identification. That is what ESU has done in the past.

<Update>
The file is now available!! Go here.

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Problems With BEMF? Don't Know What BEMF Is Or Does?

BEMF, huh? Back ElectroMotive Force, what? 

Let's ask those questions in a slightly different way. Do any of your locomotives slow down or stall when climbing a slight grade (with no load)? Do any of them stall at low speed under load? How about lunging back and forth when moving in a consist? Having these issues is a pointer to problems with BEMF settings and if you don't understand them you'll have a lot of fun (read as #$%^@&) trying to fix the issues.

A great explanation of BEMF, its settings and making them work in consists is contained in a series of papers by Mark Granville, a frequent contributor to the forums of groups.io, particularly ESU LokSound. This author recommends that you download and read these papers. They will allow you to understand that mysterious thing called BEMF and how to adjust it if necessary. Along with these BEMF topics there are many more that cover a wide variety of topics. You will learn a lot there. 

To access these papers you will have to join the groups.io forums. This is really easy! Do the following: click here. Enter a user name and password or better yet if you have a Facebook or Google account register with it. Once registered and logged in click on Find or Create a Group, type DCC4EVERYONE in the search box on the right side. Click on the name of the found group and when the DCC4EVERYONE page appears click on the Join This Group button near the bottom of the page. You're in!! See Fig 1.

Fig 1 The Join This Group Button

The papers are located in the files section here. You can immediately see the variety of topics presented but if you are interested only in the BEMF topics each individual one is located below:

• Understanding Back-EMF
• BEMF Adjustment - ESU
• Understanding BEMF Consisting

The adjustments are specific to LokSound decoders but the differences between them and other decoder types are CV numbers. For example, Soundtraxx technical manuals, available on their website, have the same adjustments with the CVs they use.

Hopefully these explanations will make you feel more confident with BEMF (no more - what? or huh?). Thanks to Mark Granville for putting in the time to make these papers for model railroaders.

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Program Track Problems With Broadway Limited Paragon Locomotives

Quite a few people have reported problems programming BLI locomotives with both CV reads and writes on program tracks. So here is a procedure you can use to try programming your P3 engines if you experience this issue.

This CV is not in the BLI Paragon3 technical manuals either. The following is from BLI Tech Support. 

BLI tech:

When we designed our latest decoder, we wanted to have a lot of capacitance to prevent pickup issues over frogs and such.

However, that design posed a problem with reading CV's sometimes and in some programming modes because when the energy was used to A) Charge the capacitors, and B) "chirp the motor" - the packet of data could not make it round trip back to the throttle.

Our engineer created CV217 to lessen the amount of power that was given to "chirp the motor" to overcome that obstacle. That's why it's not an NMRA standard - it's a BLI thing.

The higher you set CV217, the less power is given to the motor while programming.

Different throttle manufacturers pulse the program track differently - so we cannot have a "one size fits all" setting by default."  

The following is a recommendation from Ron Bokleman of the JMRI Users Group:

I would start by setting CV217=110 on the mainline using ops mode programming (should not fail), then move the loco to the program track and attempt to read/write CVs in Direct Mode and/or Paged Mode (if one doesn't work, try the other).

If the results are not good, set CV217=90 on the mainline, then move the loco to the program track and attempt to read/write CVs in Direct Mode and/or Paged Mode (if one doesn't work, try the other).

Then, if necessary try CV217=50, then CV217=20, then CV217=10 until you find the settings that are best for your particular set up.

<Author's note>
You can also try increasing the value above 110, if necessary, until you find something that works. Lowering the value will cause more motion in the engines as you are increasing power to the motor.

In the newer versions of JMRI this value is settable on the settings sheet, rightmost column, 4^th from the bottom. See fig 1.

Fig 2 PWM Duty Cycle

This procedure can also be applied to Paragon 4 locomotives but there appears to be less problems with them.

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DT602 Firmware Update "Sub V0.8 Sept-14-21"

Around the middle of last month (December 2021) a member of the Digitrax Forum on groups.io reported that he had a friend who purchased a new DT602D throttle and when he powered it up the firmware date displayed on the throttle was the one specified in this post's title. This is actually later than the supposed latest firmware update available on the Digitrax Downloads website. 

The author opened a ticket with an inquiry concerning this update and asking what was going on. Finally, this morning (4 DEC 2022 - you can't blame Digitrax for the long wait, they basically close in late December) he received a reply email containing this explanation: 

"This firmware will be released later this month. It does not affect current users."

Read "later this month" as late January 2022. That is all that was in the email. You can take that for what it's worth.

Sounds to the author that there is some new hardware coming out that needs this update (guessing).

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Creating a LokSound Sound Slot Sound File - Part 3

In part 1 of this limited “How To” series we discussed how to add startup and shutdown sounds to a version 5 LokSound decoder. In part 2 we demonstrated doing the same thing for sound files that did not have the sound we wanted to add (an alarm bell in this case). In part 3 we will wrap up these tutorials by creating a sound slot, saving it so it can be reused whenever we want, adding it to a sound file and assigning it to a function key.

The pre-requisite for this exercise is that you have completed part 2 of this series. This means you have the necessary alarm files downloaded and installed in the list of project sound files. Also, you have the ESU template files installed. If you have completed part 2, this will be a relatively easy exercise. 

Open any sound file that has an empty sound slot contained in it. For this exercise we’ll load our v4 sound file 74767. Once it’s loaded, go to the sound pane and in the upper left quadrant you’ll see Fig 1.

Fig 1 The Sound pane

Notice the two unused sound slots. We’ll use sound slot 9 for this exercise. Double click slot 9 and you’ll be taken to its sound schedule shown in Fig 2. In the Sound Slot properties give it a name like “Start Alarm”. With a few differences we will add and connect the three alarm sound files in a similar manner to the methods we used in part 2.

Fig 2 Slot 9 Sound Schedule

We going to create an alarm sound schedule similar to what was done in part 2. First, drag and drop the three alarm .wav files onto the schedule as in Fig 3.

Fig 3 Adding the alarm .wav files

Next let’s add the connectors and this is where the differences are applied. Click on transition in the upper left, click on the Mute state, drag the connector to the alarmStart8 box and click. This gives you the non-conditional [true] transition that we are used to but now click on the + sign in the condition box on the left and you’ll be presented with selection boxes shown in Fig 4.

Fig 4 Adding a condition to a transition

In Register, select Function. In Operation select = and in Value select true. Click OK and then click on a blank area of the schedule and you’ll see the change shown in Fig 5.

Fig 5 First transition added

This starts the alarm sounding when its function key is pressed (we haven’t assigned a function button yet).

Now add a non-conditional true transition from the start to the loop and then add an F = false conditional transition between the loop and the end. Next, add a non-conditional true transition from the end back to Mute. Lastly, click the loop state and check the loop box under Repeat playback in the state properties. This is shown in Fig 6. This keeps the alarm sounding for as long as the function is on. Once released it will return to Mute.

Fig 6 Completed Sound Slot

Using the simulator, test your sound schedule. Click the Overview tab and you’ll see that the sound slot is now called by the name you gave it.

Saving Your Work and Finishing Up

We are just about done now. Click on the Overview tab and you will notice that sound slot 9 is now labeled Start Alarm or whatever you named it. Make sure the sound slot is highlighted. In the Sound Library on the right side navigate to the directory where you will store your sound slot files and highlight that directory. Notice that the right-facing blue arrow will light up. Click that arrow and your sound slot sound file will be copied to the highlighted directory. You just saved your work!

As an exercise, if you click on sound slot ten on the left and then your saved sound slot sound file on the right the left-facing arrow will light up. This is how you add a sound slot you have created to any sound project. It can even overwrite a sound already there! Mapping this sound slot to a function key in the Function Mapping sheet of the Decoder Pane is a matter of choosing a function key in the Conditions column and then choosing this sound slot in the Sounds column. You then have a function key controlled sound. Remember, though, because we made changes to the sound pane it will be necessary to burn the sound file to the decoder to have these changes take effect.

Important!
Sound slot files created for version 4 sound files and version 5 sound files are different and are separated by the Lok Programmer software. If you have created a version 4 sound slot file and saved it to your templates location then you open a version 5 sound file and try to add it, you won't be able to. In fact, you won't even be able to see that v4 file in your templates. The software prevents this. So based on what you need you may have to create two different sound slot files. One for v4 and one for v5.  

Conclusion

This wraps up the three part tutorial on the various ways to add sounds to projects. However, there will be more sound projects to come in the not too distant future. As always have fun!

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