While we await the next inexplicable short mystery, I ran into my own problem trying to progam a loksound select for a Stewart F3.
I wanted the headlight constantly on forward and backward. I mistook the headlight as CV 259. Long story - short, I got all sorts of flashing effects and no headlight at all with the various combos I tried.
To continue our Sherlock theme: “‘Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.” As I composed my question about this, I discovered the error in trying to program CV 259 as the sole controller of the headlight.
Here is the relevant table
The Mode Select is CV 259, Brightness is CV 262
CV 263 is additive. I wanted the dimmer, but not off in reverse. I tried
16 + 128 = 144
1 + 16 + 128 = 145
4+ 16 + 128 = 148
1 + 4+ 16 + 128 = 149
I have dimming when the loco stops but every combo turns the headlight off in reverse. Maybe what I want is not prototypical, but that is not my question.
Did any F3’s with a single headlight, use a Mars or flashing light?
Nver say never, but quite unlikely. F units that had a regular headlight plus a Mars or other oscillating warning light generally had 2 housing on the front, the one in the nose and one on the door.
Somewhere I’ll bet you might find one where the single large headlight was repalced by a paired sealed beam unit where one was an oscillating light and the other a plain headlight. As we know, as soon as someone says “no railroad ever” someone else will find a picture proving that someone did.
I will go out on a limb though and say if anyone actually DID do it, it was by no means common,
I looked at a bunch of pics of F3’s and F7’s and there are examples of both with single and dual headlights. I can’t identify a Mars light by looking at it, though I notice some headlight housings had vertically oriented pair of bulbs and the other would have a horizontal pair. But back to my headlight out in reverse issue.
Mark R came to my rescue in another thread where I couldn’t get any dimming without using the Power Cab.
It looks like I forgot to thank him. One of the things he suggested was CV 31 = to 16. I tried that this time without success. CV31 is not mentioned in the select manual, but is an Index CV like CV 32.
I’ve asked on the ESU Yahoo groups. Yahoo changed groups function a handful of years ago and caused all kinds of problems for group owners and it is less useable than it once was.
The fine folks at the Losound Yahoo group explained to me that messing with CV’s higher than 256 was not the straightforward thing I had thought it was. And I relay that information to here.
I ended up doing a reset to recover from my adventure.
Apparently, to work on the higher CV’s, you need either a Lokprogrammer, or JMRI.
At one time, I did not know that, but I have a lokprogramer and am enjoying that. I’m not sure that factory installed sound would give me the desired headlight action.
Yahoo groups has had nothing to say on my question.
No but maybe the manual was translated with Google Translate
“Mode Select: Defines which effect you want to have for these customers”
Customers must mean something else in German, where is Sir Mad Dog when we need him?
Headlights - the earliest E-units and F-units had just the one headlight. A few railroads added a second light in the door on the front of the unit, and added a Mars light there - primarily on passenger units. It soon became apparent in operation that it worked better to have the ‘regular’ headlight be the lower one, and the Mars light on the upper one. But anyway, no, I don’t think there were any locomotives that just had the one Mars light by itself. Railroads that used just the one headlight used it as a regular headlight
Loksound decoders - ESU does make them with sound files pre-loaded at the factory. Hhowever you can use their Lokprogrammer to change or update them later…or you can buy “blank” ones if you wish, and use a Lokprogrammer to load a project on them.
Loksound headlights - as best I can tell, there is no way to set it up so the headlights stay on in both directions. I’ve been trying to set one up for a year or two now (Rapido GMD-1) to have the headlight bright in direction travel with the other one dim, but no luck. When I reverse direction, one headlight turns off and the other turns on. I’ve tried with DecoderPro but couldn’t work it out, don’t fell like shelling out $150 for LokProgrammer just for that.
Are you certain about this? I know that there is some generic sound file on them. But so far as I know they don’t come with anything specific. That’s what makes it easy for the dealer…he only needs to stock the bare decoders and can make it anything you want, rather than having to stock every conceivable engine sound.
Yes, if you buy one ‘blank’ it has some generic sample sounds on it so you cna make sure it works, but to get a full sound project you have to install one with Lokprogrammer, or buy from a dealer who will load whatever one you want prior to shipping.
It could be some dealers find it easier to buy blank ones and load what the customer wants on them, rather than carrying a variety of pre-loaded ones? I suppose some of the less popular ones might sit on the shelf for years before being bought.
Ladies and gentlemen we have a solution thanks to the Yahoo ESU group.
There was some confusion over how many lights a Stewart F3 has and some of the suggestions were unnecessary. They strongly suggested that only JMRI or a Lokprogrammer was needed warning of screwing up the CV settings. Wouldn’t a decoder reset return a decoder to the factory state?
If you don’t have a Lokprogrammer, the following is probably of no interest to you, move on to the next thread.
To recap I wanted the single headlight to be on in forward and reverse and be dimmed while stopped or in reverse.
On the Function Output tab:
I selected F0 Front Light (1) and named it headlight, selected Rule 17 forward and dimmer. I left Rule 17 unchecked
On the Function Mapping Tab, the First column is Conditions, if you click in the that box you have a choice of changing the function, selecting a sensor (1-5) For F0 you have the choice of Driving (meaning is it moving) Ignore, Forward or Reverse and Direction Ignore, Yes or No. I chose F0Driving-ignore Direction-ignore
I was told to add a F0 Direction - Ignore, but this was unnecessary.
The Direction - ignore was the solution. I looked at the CV’s I previously tried to modify, CV 263 was 148. I do not know what Direction - Ignore actually changed and have asked on the Yahoo Group.
If you have a rear light that you also want to be on, you need to program another line, F0 Reverse Driving-ignore Direction-ignore I do not know how this works in JMRI.
JMRI has the drop downs for the function conditionals like that. It just takes a long time to read and write all those CVs, even just doing the page. The Lokprogrammer uses ESU’s proprietary data transfer method, same as used to load sound files, that is many many times faster than standard NMRA DCC programming. Any of the user-writable sound decoders do that - by that I mean have some proprietary method of loading at least the sound files, because if you think about how long it takes JMRI to read a full motor only decoder, with perhaps, let’s make it a nice computer number and say 128 CVs (we’ll assume it’s reading the full 28 step speed table), remember a CV is 8 bits, one byte - so 128 CVs is only 128 bytes. A sound file is several megabytes. If that transferred to the decoder via standard DCC programming, even direct mode, it would take hours at least.
The tricky thing is that the Loksound Select manual only shows a few of the conditionals - the Loksound V4.0 manual shows ALL of them - and there are a lot. Enough to do just about anything you could ever come up with, multiple conditions on each functions as well as multiple modifies - so you can set a function to on only if the loco is going reverse with the headlight turned on and the speed is increasing and it’s playing the horn sound. Trying to figure it out with CV values though - a lot of things to check off and sum the options to get a value for each CV then you have to make sure you don’t fat finger the CV number because you’ll apply the condition to a completely different function. Lokprogrammer or JMRI make it easy. Since I am only using Loksound decoders, I went ahead and picked up a Lokprogrammer. I have no intentions of recording my own sounds, but I have mixed and matched to get the horn I want with the prime mover I want, and that too is super easy to do.
I went back and reviewed ESU’s website and catalogues that I have and…well, I don’t know. Both are as confusing as trying to program one of their decoders. It kinda makes it sound like the decoders come with sounds…or not. I notice in the catalogue they have a list of all available sound types and decoder types you can buy. So like if you want an EMD switcher with a 21-pin connection you need no. XXXXX. It has some listed in black and some in red - but no explanation what the color coding means. However, it appears the ones in red are for specific models, i.e. ones that other manufacturers install at their factory in their engines. So it might be based on that that you can get say a Loksound from ESU pre-loaded for an Atlas FM Trainmaster, or Fox Valley Hiawatha 4-4-2, but the other ones have to be loaded after it leaves ESU?
