Hey guys. I just got a new Rivarossi Allegheny with a loksound v4 decoder in it. I ran it for the first time last night, and everything works fine, except the bell isn’t working.
When I press the Bell button or F1 the bell sound doesn’t come on.
Any ideas? I haven’t tried a decoder reset yet, I can try that. But I’ve never had this problem before, weird?
Two possibilities:
The bell has been mapped to a different function key – have you tried other keys to see what happens?
The decoder’s bell volume CV has been set to zero.
I suggest that you download the V4.0 LokSound manual from ESU’s web site and try resetting the bell volume CV.
You should find what you’re looking for in Chapter 13, paragraph 13.1.2 of that manual. LokSound uses Indexed CVs, so note in particular the procedure for resetting individual sound volume. The manual indicates that the bell volume default setting is 128, which is max volume, but Rivarossi may have programmed it wrong.
V4.0 decoders come from the factory with no sound files loaded, so someone at the Rivarossi factory programmed it and their computer program may have gotten corrupted.
Here’s a link to the manual download page: http://www.esu.eu/en/downloads/instruction-manuals/digital-decoders/
This would be quite unusual and a first for me. Does the F1 function work the bell for other locos? IOW, could it be that your button has packed it in? Otherwise, it must somehow be a defective decoder, but it beats me how this one function could be amiss and no other.
Crandell
I got it working!!!
I just programmed it using JMRI. F1 was set to SND 17, so I disabled that, wrote decoder, then enabled it again and wrote the decoder. Then I went to the sound volume and adjusted that.
That seemed to do the trick. Working perfect now.
Not sure I like how they identify sounds in JMRI though. It doesn’t have the individual sounds named, all it says is Master volume, sound slot #1, sound slot #2, etc. So I have no idea what each of these are.
Anyways, I must say holy heck batman, the motor control on this thing is incredilble. The slow speed speed step 1 crawls very slowly, I love it.
OK how do put this thing in silence mode? I only want the sounds to start up, only after addressing the loco. Like all my other locos.
I read through the entire manual and can’t find anything?
F8 mutes the decoder and keeps it muted until you press F8 again.
Thats it? Thats the only way? I don’t want to have to select the loco every time, and mute it, every time when I power on my system.
All my other locos with QSI, Tsunami, all don’t start engine sounds until I select the loco and run it.
if I remember correctly, once you mute the sound with F8 it stays off until you hit F8 again. I don’t think that turning the power on or off will affect the F8 setting. Give it a try. Mute the sound and then turn the power off. Turn the power back on and see if the sound stays off.
It doesn’t stay muted. When I power it off, then on again the engine sounds start again.
Do you know how maddening it would be, if you had 20 loksound decoders all starting up, and having to separately select each loco and mute it?
Download the manual from the Loksound web site. CV122 is the status storage CV. Setting it to =1 would when powering up it would be the same as when shut off.
Pete
OK I set CV 122 = 1 and it didn’t change anything. Still starting up on power up.
I scowered the entire manual and didn’t find that.
Very strange, my Loksounds are quiet even on selection until I hit F8. On the diesel I then get the startup and all the sounds work. On the steamers, after hitting F8 I get the hiss and the air pump starts cycling, etc. The diesel one is still straight out of the box, I didn;t even give it an address yet, it’s a Bowser power chassis. It’s a full Loksound decoder, not a stripped down model. The steam locos are Loksound 3.5, but I’m pretty sure they haven’t removed this feature.
–Randy
Michael
Was it muted before you shut the power off?
Pete
Pete,
I tried every combination. Muted with power off, then not muted with power off. I set CV 122 programming on the main. I did not use JMRI for this setting.
I’m so frustrated right now. I emailed ESU tech support.
Wait a second. In the manual for CV 122 it says:
“CV 122 is responsible for this. Storing of the status of functions is turned on with bit 0, speed with bit 1.”
So I think I need to first use F8 to mute it, then set CV 122 = 0. That should save the function status, so when powered on it will turn F8 on to mute it.
I’ll try this tonight, and report back.
You’re confusing bits with their binary representation …
Bit 0 has a value of 1 and Bit 1 has a value of 2. If you want to just preserve the status of only the functions, CV122 should be 1. If you want to preserve only the speed during a power interruption, then set CV122 to 2. If you want to preserve both speed and functions during a power interruption, CV122 needs to be set to 3.
You will want to set this to 3. Otherwise, even a momentary loss of power like a dead frog will cause all your functions to turn off and the sound to back through it’s start-up sequence.
Mark.
Aha geeez. Ok I’ll set it to 3 then. And let ya know.
Ahhhhh come on now man. I set CV 122 =3 while I had it muted with F8. Power cycled my system and it does the same danm thing!
Unbelievable. I feel like ripping this POS out and get a Tsunami.
I’d like to verify …
You are saying “mute”. So when you hit F8 does the sound just turn off, or does it go through a shut-down sequence. If it hasn’t gone through a shut down sequence, it’s not truly off, just silenced by turning the function on. After a power cyle of sufficient time, the CV122 memory lapses, and upon restart, all functions are turned off … which turns the sound back on because it hasn’t been shut down, but merely silenced through a function that by default is now turned back off.
Something else that has crossed my mind - this engine is by a European manufacturer with a German decoder. Not sure if this is the case or not, but European function standards are different than ours.
In Europe, F1 is the sound on/off and F3 is the bell by default. By your reprogramming to get the bell on F1, possibly you disabled the shut-down sequence ? Do you have any documentation that can verify this or not ?
Mark.
CV122 has nothing to do with the shut off. It applies when power is lost like hitting a dead section of track.
The default on V4 is to use F1 as the master sound on/off - which is probaboly why the bell didn’t work since US standard is to use F1 for the bell. Euro locos often don’t have bells.
JMRI is of no help here, since the entry for selecting which F key controls what output is just basically a copy of the table from the manual, which is rather confusing because of all the indexed CVs. What you need to do is get the default option for F1 and assign it to F8.
–Randy