With help and support from a number of our forum experts, I decided to give a try at converting a Williams diesel to LionChief to get better sound and speed control. All has gone well so far but when the diesel gets about 8 feet away from the controller, it starts to emit random sounds such as horn, announcement, bell, etc. The strange part is that the speed control continues to work and so do the sound buttons on the controller. So, if the bell randomly begins to ring, I can cut it off using the controller below. Does anyone have any ideas on what is going in here? I wonder if I have a defective board. It is puzzling that the motor control RF continues to work but these random sounds are obviously related to distance from the controller. My layout is 11x14 so we are not talking about large distances. Here is a video of what is happening.
I started trying to use the universal controller, but the range was too short- it lost the locomotive totally in ten feet or so. No speed or sound control. I also tried the hot spot feature with the app and that did not help the range issue either. Currently I am using this controller, made for the board.
Here is the board I used in the conversion: