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Thursday, December 7, 2023

ESU's Statement on Unusual Amounts of Decoder Failures

From ESU

"We found that some LokSound 5 decoders we produced at the beginning of 2023 have been used a power supply IC that was not up to our standards, either a fake or "B grade" component. If the component fails, the MCU will not be powered, thus the decoder fails. While extensive testing was done in our lab, we were not able to make the decoders fail. Unfortunately a small portion of these decoders have failed in the field. The failure has nothing to do with the locomotive, the programming process, nor the decoder firmware used. The component may never even fail which we have found is the vast majority. 

"ESU continues to stand behind its products and our industry leading 2-year ‘no questions’ asked warranty applies of course. Every customer can send decoders to our ESU LLC office for replacement directly. Please note that OEM decoders must be exchanged under the warranty of the OEM manufacturer. 

"The chip crisis has been hard on the industry as a whole but is recovering. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this issue and want to thank you for your strong support."

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Ihr ESU Support Team

Thanks to Henry Sherwood for pointing this out and as Alan Pearce of the LoksoundUsers groups.io forum said, "That is good to see, and that they have identified a specific failure problem. It would be more concerning if they had a variety of components failing, then one can't be sure if the real problem has been found."

The author completely agrees with Alan.

If you have an idea for a blog post here, let me know. If I can comment on it, I will or I'll see if someone else can and post it 

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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 13, 2024 at 9:14 AM

    I just saw your post about BEMF Loop Gain (Ki) in the Soundtraxx talk group and have a topic to address that seems to be causing trouble with some; me included. Should there be a standardization of the mother boards that accept 21 pin decoders? This hits home for me who purchased a Bowser SD40-2 with sound and was gifted a Scaletrains SD40T-2 with sound. The acceleration/deceleration rates on these decoders,(Loksound4?) are different than NMRA specification decoders. Since these particular engines in real life are rarely seen working alone but almost always in consist. Thus, my engines are just shelf engines. If another brand decoder is switched to, one looses some of the lighting functions like class lights, etc. Talks with both manufactures seems to indicate they are largely unaware of the situation of the NMRA/Euro specifications differences. That is too bad as I have steered away from their products? I have heard the NMRA is working on specifications for these mother boards or PCB's if one would rather call them. And, yes I use Decoder Buddy, but suspect some of the lighting features in the aforementioned boards are designed so that other manufactures decoders will work but with only minimal features? What are members takes on this topic. Steve near Walla Walla

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  2. John GFebruary 13, 2024 at 2:22 PM

    Anonymous, I don't think this is the best place to post this honest assessment and question. It is not tied to the original post. It would be better to repost this exact message to the Loksound users forum at loksound@groups.io. That may not be the best place either but it will get many, many more views than your comment which is only seen by readers of my blog.

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