DCS Remote

Barry,

Help Please, I accidentally dropped my remote on the carpet, and am having similar issues. What is the best way to take it apart to re-seat the board? I took the batteries out and did not see a screw to remove. I also looked at the 2nd addition of your book and could not find any info for taking apart the DCS Remote.

Joeg

There is one screw under the battery cover after removing batteries.  Then plastic clips hold it together.  Barry does have info in his book how to do it.  G

How's the track signal ?    If it's bad this type of thing happens.   Turn off clickity clack. Under  the engine 's soft - key.  

Track signal was fine until I dropped the remote, then everything started acting flaky.

I did find the screw under the cover, and still looking in the book to find it. Was hoping there might be something on youtube on this and there was nothing.

When the remote is not operating correcting how would you use a soft key or reset the factory settings?

JoeG

Ok I found it in Barry's book and I have a dilemma right now. I live in northern California. There are no authorized service centers with 100's of miles.

The book suggests one should consider sending to a service center before opening the remote. We have a house full of people coming tomorrow to see our holiday display.

Therefore, I am wondering how difficult it really is to reseat this board. Also, on the other hand, weighing the cost of sending out as opposed to a new one. Sending out for repair is $35.00 - $40.00 for shipping both ways plus repair cost. New remote is 143.95 plus shipping. Not sure what to do here?

Joe,

    Here is what I did, when my DCS Hand Held RC needed the thumb wheel replaced, I had the entire remote control fixed & upgraded to fully rechargeable by WillyGee, and purchased a 2nd Rev L that later I had him do the same upgrade too, GGG was nice enough supply the parts, everything works like clock work now.  IMO I would rather pay for something done professionally correctly, than mess it up myself, when I do not know what really needs done.  Experimental learning only goes so far with me on this expensive stuff.

PCRR/Dave

Joe,

Reseating the board isn't difficult at all.

The suggestion to consider having it done by an MTH ASC is because when the remote is open, one must be extremely careful not to allow the transceiver board to come completely out of tits socket.

If it comes completely unseated, it can take some of the small "fingers" with it. If that happens, the only solution is to solder the board back in place. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt!

The only "silver lining" is that if you do have to solder the transceiver board back in place, it won't in the future be able to float out of its socket.  

Opening the remote simply requires some persistence.

Barry,

   Yea and some luck also!

PCRR/Dave

Joe,

If your son is coming over today, have him bring the remote.  I will check the board and disable quickset for you.

Dave

ok Barry and Dave,

With what I have heard  from you both, I have decided not open the remote. For today's open house I will just be forced to bypass the TIU and just run my 400E and other loco's with the Z1000 controllers.

However, I do have a few questions:

I have been wanting a 2nd remote anyway. If I were to purchase another, can I expect it to work with my existing TIU, since I had bought as a set?

When sending the existing one out for repair, can I request the  board be soldered into place, and where is a good place to have this done? I am sorry as not all ASC's are created equal.

Dave- How does the rechargeable version operate? Does it keep the charge for all off your running needs?

Thanks for al of your wisdom,

JoeG

Seems we have 2 different problems   One for trainlover & the other for Dobermann.

Are both fixed? 

Trainlover160 posted:

Ok I found it in Barry's book and I have a dilemma right now. I live in northern California. There are no authorized service centers with 100's of miles.

The book suggests one should consider sending to a service center before opening the remote. We have a house full of people coming tomorrow to see our holiday display.

Therefore, I am wondering how difficult it really is to reseat this board. Also, on the other hand, weighing the cost of sending out as opposed to a new one. Sending out for repair is $35.00 - $40.00 for shipping both ways plus repair cost. New remote is 143.95 plus shipping. Not sure what to do here?

Joe: I just needed to do the reseating and securing (with a bit of foam) of these boards in my DCS remote and TIU both, a few days ago.  It was tedious but otherwise not difficult.  For the remote, once the hidden screw is removed, you need to gently pry at various points around the edge where the slight gap is visible between halves.  A thin bladed screwdriver, or a wood chisel, either one will work. Obviously this is delicate and patience is a must!  As you work, you will find one, then another, then another of the locking tab points around the edge will come loose until you can separate the halves.  Barry's book has nice illustrations of the boards to help you know what you're looking for (see pp 156-7 in the 2nd ed book, that's where it is in my pdf copy).  Best to keep the half with the transceiver board "down" so gravity can't let it fall (if it's very loose already).  Open like a book carefully.  Use soft foam that you can tailor to press down just the right way in the right areas to uniformly and gently keep the board in place, not too much pressure as that's not needed.  Hope that helps.

Don

PS, Joe, forgot reseating part: see where all the pins are that tie the board to the large board, and make sure each is uniformly seated compared to the others.  Seems like about 1/32 or 1/16 in of shiny pin is visible for each when fully seated. They don't disappear into their sockets entirely.

JoeG,

    1st when you purchase your new DCS unit make sure it's a Rev L then have both the old and new Hand Held Remotes and TIU updated with the latest changes.  I made the mistake of not matching everything one time and had a run away train on the 2nd level in the Conventional mode, not a pretty sight.  Barry advised me that I needed all my DCS components upgraded to the latest level, before using both my Hand Held remote controls to control my full layout.  

Now for the upgrading of the Hand Held Remote Controls to fully rechargeable, Willygee (Billy Ingram) here on the OGR forum is the man to see for this fantastic engineering upgrade. He does the full upgrade and instructs on how to use it.  You will need different rechargeable Batteries for both remote control units and the new 6VDC Battery Tender, Bill has engineered a quick coupling/battery set up, for the hand held DCS Remote Control, with wire combo to keep one remote control on the charger while using the other, then simply switch, when the one gets low from usage, works like a dream.  I never have to worry about the hand held remote having bad or low batteries now.  If needed you an even use the remote control while it's on the charger, if you only own one, hand held remote control.  I love this upgrade, MTH needs to incorporate this rechargeable engineering, into their DCS package as an option.  Bills's fully rechargeable upgrade for the DCS, actually works better than the Legacy 990 recharge station.   I use the DCS Hand Held Remote Control (HHRC) about 80% of the time and the Legacy Cab2 about 20 %, of the time, the Cab 2 controls all my FasTrack wireless Command Control Switches, which the DCS HHRC can not due.  IMO DCS & Legacy operate best when run together.

PCRR/Dave 

Don't forget about the curly phone cable  tether.   Might help with the diagnosis. 

Not only have ALL TIU's and Remotes upgraded to the same software, be sure your remotes, two or more, have the same locomotive data files.  Use one remote as the 'master' and copy that remote's data on to your laptop .

Next - copy that file to your other remotes.  If you neglect to do this, you will have different ID numbers for your locomotives on different remotes.  That is something you do not want.  I have 3 remotes, one is labeled "Master".

Once a month I copy the "Master" data file to the laptop and upload it to the other two remotes.

Bruce,

  Very good advise sir, I only have 2 HHRC's and Barry had to print out to me that they both must be identically programmed, I actually read right thru this part of his book, probably because for a long time I only had 1 DCS HHRC, and kept a battery charger with a 2nd set of batteries close at hand to switch them out, no more of that for me, thanks to Willy Gee's, fantastic rechargeable upgrade.

PCRR/Dave

Really appreciate everyone's input. I decided rather than just buying the remote, I bought the set with the TIU. With that being said, I would like to send my  current remote and TIU to someone to have the following completed:

•  Remote repaired      
• Have the pins soldered in both the remote and TIU
• Have the foam put into both the Remote and TIU keeping boards in place
• My set is somewhere between 8-10 years old so I would want to have them both upgraded to the latest software.

I am wondering if this is something Marty F. would want to tackle. I see in his posts that he is a qualified repairman, and am wondering what the estimated cost would be for performing this effort, but not sure what facility he repairs trains

We ended up having the open house, and everyone enjoyed the trains, although it was more difficult for me to run everything, and not being able to activate all of the sounds consistently. It really made me appreciate the DCS System even more.

JoeG

You can send me an e-mail (in profile) and I can do this, but I won't solder pins unless they are damaged.  Properly seated radios with foam will be fine.

G

When you guys are talking about the foam do you just open the remote and put the foam on top of the board between the two halves ? and then do the same thing for the TIU ? .   If so, what foam do you use and what thickness.   This wont cause the remote or TIU to overheat ?

Just use a 1-1/2" X 2-1/2" piece of 1" thick non-conductive (just about all of this stuff is non-conductive)foam, such as is commonly found in packing materials that are used to "cradle" items in shipping.

Place it over the transceiver board in each device before closing it up.

This and a whole lot more is all in MTH’s “The DCS Companion 3rd Edition", available for purchase  from many fine OGR advertisers and forum sponsors, or as an eBook or a printed book at MTH's web store!

Thank you Barry...and your book came the other day, I just haven't had time to crack it yet.