ERR Cruise Commander / Rail sounds w/ smoke/chuff question

There is no puffing smoke with ERR.  Normal Lionel TMCC smoke units have a 5Vdc power supply to drive the fan motor, with AC into the smoke unit.  So it would need to me like an original Lio TMCC smoke unit or a MTH PS-1 smoke unit.  Later PS-2 or Lio independent smoke unit can't stand alone connect to ERR.

Gunrunner makes the extra component to add to have puff, he also has the tach for chuff.  G

Well... It doesn't matter now... I spent all day working on it yesterday (I've done installs with this board on Diesels with no issues)...  And I just smoked it.  I think it may have been a bad board as it wasn't acting correctly and was sending my CM80 into protection mode - so stupid me, I figured it just needed *more power*.

Hooked up the good old ZW.... *smoke*... 

So - this project is now on pause...

Did you smoke the smoke unit or the radio board. Both can be repaired for much less than buying new. Fan motors and resistors can be had for a few bucks and triacs used to power them even less.

Pete

Sorry for the confusion.... I forgot I was asking originally about the "smoke unit"..

LOL!

Ohh no - I freaking *SMOKED* the ERR cruise board - output FETS went up like a smoke bomb... the ZW puts out a LOT of current - cooked those baby's in about a second.

I've got a message in to ERR asking what I did wrong... I'll order another board if I ever figure this out... ut not until I'm sure I won't create more fireworks.

Funny thing is - with low power I could get sounds to work, I could program the features via AUX commands... just the engine wouldn't move correctly - it would studder and barely move forward... It would take off like a bat out of **** in reverse with no control if I switched directions. 

Dangit.... I think I figured it out...

I had the motor connected to the frame ground... and it shoul dhave been only to the two motor outputs.  I got confused by "motor 1 and motor 2" thinking it was talking about two seperate motors..... So I grounded the DC rectifier to an AC ground... and poof.

@Escher posted:

Ohh no - I freaking *SMOKED* the ERR cruise board - output FETS went up like a smoke bomb... the ZW puts out a LOT of current - cooked those baby's in about a second.

You clearly either shorted the motor drive or had at least one motor lead grounded to do that.  It is sometimes possible to replace the FET's and revive them, it depends on exactly what happened to the board and if the heat also damaged the PCB.

@Escher posted:

I had the motor connected to the frame ground... and it shoul dhave been only to the two motor outputs.

Yep, there's your problem!

Sweet... I got my other board swapped in (again) and now its working perfectly... can't believe I did that.

It's not uncommon to release the Magic Smoke doing work on the electronics, I've done it a time or two, and I should know better.

Ok.. So I now have everything working - except the chuff sound.

(Smoke is on hold for now - It appears I have the older style PS2 smoke unit with no logic and just the fan and heater - so I'll deal with that later)

I have the reed switch and magnet hot glued in place (to test)... and I can hear the reed switch activate as the wheel spins... the wiring is correct per the instructions (reed switch to harness and then into the plug in the sound board).

All the other sounds work, startup, whistle, bell, direction reverse... but no chuff sound.  I've also tried re-selecting the feature (#4) with no difference.

Ideas?

Is it possible I killed just the chuff sound somehow?  This sound board was in the engine when I blew up the other cruise commander board.

I am pretty excited  that this engine is now working great otherwise... I even have the rear coupler working via the remote.

Where did you wire the reed switch to. It can only do one thing, drive the chuff sound or turn the smoke fan on and off.

Pete

It is into the trigger input on the railsounds board per this pic.

It's actually pretty hard to hear most reed switches activate, but I'd try an ohmmeter across it to make SURE it's actually actuating.

Removed the reed switch and shorted the feed lines to test - still no chuff... so I think I'm ordering a new sound board.

Also - anyone happen to have a part number for the rectifier used on the Cruise Commander board (V4.1)?  Looks like that is all that smoked...  I'd rather try replacing a $1 part first before I order the board.

A recommendation for removing the bridge.  It's very hard to cleanly remove that without first breaking it up, it takes too much heat and will wreck the PCB.  I cut the bridge up with the dremel and trim the leads flush to the PCB on both sides.  Then it doesn't take as much heat to remove the remaining leads.

The required bridge is a D-72 footprint 8 amp bridge.  Here's two at Digikey: 8A D-72 Bridge.