Ditchlight Setting in JMRI on an Atlas QSI -8-40CW

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
1

Hi,

I’m fairly new to DCC but have tried a few things on many decoders & have been pretty successfull.

However, I have a challenge with an Atlas QSI based Dash8-40CW & her Ditchlights.

I have set them to the following & here is what “I see” when I place the Loco on the Run track;
In Idle the Ditchlights are off.
In FWD they are on/Bright
Horn will only flash while the tone is coming from the speaker or horn held engaged (continous) on the hand throttle (not a 5 Second hold, from initial horn trigger)
Stop/Idle they are off
Reverse they are off

I have programmed them using JMRI & here is the system info readout;
Settings\Administrator\JMRI\systemfiles\messages.log [main]
15 apps.AppsBase INFO - Gui3IDE version 2.14-r19563 starts under Java 1.6.0_31 at Sat Jun 02 21:52:54 CDT 2012 [main]
1515 serialdriver.SerialDriverAdapter INFO - NCE COM8 port opened at 9600 baud [main]
1656 nce.NceConnectionStatus INFO - NCE EPROM revision = 6.2.1 [AWT-EventQueue-0]

Using an NCE PowerCab 5Amp, & a DCC Specialties PowerPax Programming track booster on it’s own dedicated 14" Kato track section, & the Run track is also another seperate Kato 14" track section.

What should I be seeing with those settings shown above?
The desired effect that the Ditchlights are performing are;
On Dim at all times except in: Forward, -on Bright, & -flash for 5 seconds from the initial horn

2

If you do a Read Full Sheet you will see if your settings took, if they stay the way you set them, then the CVs have the values set by the options you have selected.

I’m thinking a couple things here. Probably the top Strobe WIth Horn box should eb checked, and I’m not sure the holdover time is in second. I’m not in a position to open the full QSI manual to check. It seems to go from 0-31 so maybe it’s seconds, but then again, maybe not. Try a larger number there.

Then there’s always a chance there’s a discrepancy in the decoder definition, it happens. You’d have to compare the CV values being set with the ones listed in the manual.

–Randy

3

Thank you Randy!

That is good advise & I will try those out, Thanks again!