[Accrs-ho] LokSound Decoders and Programming

[ACCRS HO Scale]

Tony,

Guenther is the expert.  Has a programmer and everything for use with 
all their decoders.  Sells decoders too.  You tell him which loco and he 
will load the correct sound file.  I just put LokSound Select decoders 
and LokSound speakers in two ATSF C44-9W's and programmed them today.  
Great sound and they work well.  The only problems was with the club 
computer.

That computer we have driving the Decoder Pro program is really not all 
that good.   It gets stuck and you have to kill the program and start 
over.   It takes a long time to fire up and even longer to shut down.   
We need a new computer to run the program.   At least with the Select 
decoder, Decoder Pro seems to work ok.

Since we are rapidly moving more and more away from analog, we do need 
some session(s) on how to program a decoder.   I use NCE for all my 
non-sound decoders and they all program pretty much the same.  It is the 
sound ones that can be tricky.

One word of caution.   Athearn's first releases with sound decoders were 
those MRC ones.   They stink and are nothing but trouble.   I replaced 
those with LokSound deocers and still have one to go.  The revamped 
locos work really well and sound great.

Some members will say," but I have a bunch of Athearn blue box locos".   
If they run on the club layout, they are required to have NWSL wheel 
sets instead of the old Athearn wheels.   Maybe the latest blue box had 
better wheels, but I don't know.   These can be convered to "Plug and 
Play" DCC with a part available from Athearn.  For much less than the 
cost of a new loco, you can convert a number of the blue box locos to 
DCC.  Even a LokSound sound decoder if you desire.   The club has 2 or 3 
DCC Athearn blue box locos, in demo colors, that have been converted.  
No one has used them that I know of.  They are in the next drawer down 
from the drawer most people look in first.

This leads to another item we need to discuss.   We need rules and 
guidelines for use of the club DCC locos. _ From simple things like 
"when you finish using one of the locos, clear the consist"._   I have 
had several locos put in the "to fix" box and the only thing wrong with 
them were they still had a consist number.  Clear the consist and they 
worked fine.

See attached.

Dean


On 12/9/2016 8:11 PM, ACCRS HO Scale wrote:
> Message From: Tony Long  tony.long at outlook.com
>
>    
>
>
> Today we had a model that contained a LokSound decoder that needed to 
> be reprogrammed.  Using the NCE 'program on the main' or the JMRI 
> Decoder Pro programmer was not effective in making changes. 
> Early LokSound were somewhat proprietary in design - to program these 
> decoders you need to LokSound programmer device.   I've heard that the 
> LokSound Select decoders are more "friendly" with DecoderPro.
>
>
> A couple of recommendations for the club -
>
>
> 1.) We need more education and skills working with LokSound decoder
>
> 2.) Might need to have the LokSound programmer device incorporated 
> into the "programming station"
>
>
> Also, be aware that more manufacturers are using LokSound than ever 
> before - the latest Athearn announcements mentioned LokSound to be 
> used in their UP 4-8-4,  Intermountain has adopted them in all their 
> models,  Atlas is adopting them, Rapido is using them, Walthers.   
> Looks like it's time to include support for this at the club.
>
>
> Question - Who are the LokSound experts in the club that can help 
> provide education and skill training for this, and provide suggestions 
> on what we need to purchase, if anything, to support re-programming 
> decoders?
>
>
> Tony
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Accrs-ho mailing list
> Accrs-ho at mail.accrs.org
> https://mail.accrs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/accrs-ho
>    

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