Time Log With Some Locomotive Decoders

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
1

Someone on a FB page mentioned that some decoders have the ability to say how much time is on a loco. Can someone shed some light on this? What brands and can it be read through a DCC system and/or does it need supplemental equipment?

Thanks.

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2

I’ve not seen any mention of that in the loksound manual I have read, but I haven’t read the V5.0. Seems like an odd feature of limited usefulness to add to the decoder.

3

I haven’t heard that anywhere. Not to say maybe it’s in there in some newer decoder.

–Randy

4

Did they post any links or just, they say or I heard?

Rich

5

He seemed quite sure of what he was talking about, however, he never returned to answer all the questions people had. I often have a hard time finding things on FB that I have previously seen and I am not the only one. I think they need to change the format.

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6

I always thought a Hobbs Meter type readout would have been a neat feature to the DCC decoders. That is if your controller can read it.

7

There may be others but I am familiar with Loksound decoders which have an “hour meter” (or is it hour metre?) embedded in its programming. It shows elapsed time for the decoder and the smoke unit, if so equipped.

I had a screen capture of it and if I find that I’ll post it. I stumbled across the feature whilst playing with all the “bells and whistles” of the Lokprogrammer software when I first installed it. I’ve mentioned it in a thread here some time ago but no one paid any attention to it.

ESU_hour by Edmund, on Flickr

Regards, Ed

8

I don’t have my lokprogrammer set up, but it’s under Decoder Information.

I suppose it might be useful if you had a commercial operation, like the Colorado Model Railroad Museum, where you might want to routinely inspect locos that would be subject to extreme wear.

9

Also useful for ESU when dealing with warranty returns. “My brand new decoder failed, please replace.” when they read embedded data such as build date, serial number, firmware and operating hours they immediately know the decoder isn’t exactly “brand new”.

Ed

10

Thanks, Ed.

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11

This is actually an interesting concept. Now we can measure locomotive mileage and gauge cost based on motor and decoder wear![(-D]

Actually, that could get kinda ridiculous on ebay and at train shows…

12

Yep! There would always be some scumbag that would try and roll back the odometer.[(-D]

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13

I was thinking more of the seller trying to downplay the amount of mileage and the potential buyer complaining about how high the price is for the amount of mileage. [(-D]

14

I wish some of the early straight-DCC decoders had had this feature, since I’m getting to the point where I’m seeing decoders start to fail after twelve to fifteen years of moderately-heavy use.

I’d appreciate being able to see just how much they actually have run before the motor control goes out.

15

I wonder if the time resets with a decoder reset?

16

No.

The decoder I show in the screen capture above is an Atlas RS-3 factory instsalled, OEM decoder. I recently wrote a whole new soundfile to it to make it compatible with other “Full Throttle” Select decoders I have and it still shows the seven hours operating time, of course the serial number and build date.

Regards, Ed

17

Does the time log show the time that the locomotive was actually running or does it show the time that power was supplied to the decoder?

Mark Vinski

18

I posed this question to Matt Herman at ESU but never got a reply. It has to be actual time the motor is running as my Atlas RS-3s are at least five years old and have seen hundreds of hours of “power-on” time but the actual time shown on the decoder is presently seven hours plus.

Regards, Ed

19

Thanks Ed,

That’s much more useful than just power-on time.

Mark