I am thinking of ordering a Lionel RailSounds Lite board to use with the Cruise Commander. I am thinking it should connect similarly to the ERR Sound commander boards with added functionality of the wireless tether. Any suggestions or concerns would be helpful. Thanks.
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The problem you may run into is the data format and commands that Railsounds Lite board is expecting and uses. Because only Lionel has some of this deep level programming and information- at best you could be facing buying a board and then finding out when connected- even though you are sending it data- the R2LC (yes, I know ERR uses a R4LC- but C08 firmware) will only send TMCC format commands serial data form of chuff. In fact, I highly suspect chuff could be where you first begin to see incompatibility.
The folks doing more legacy conversions might be able to give more guidance, but in my own dabbling around at Half off parts sales, I found out some of these incompatibilities first hand.
FWIW, a related discussion- there is talk of finding the exact same incompatible situations ERR upgrade being TMCC, and using the typical Lionel parts supplied railsound lite that was for a legacy engine- hence expecting legacy format data commands.
The combo isn't all that satisfactory.
I just connected a Legacy F3 RS-Lite board to my TMCC test set with a R2LC-C08 board.
- Startup doesn't wake the sound board up, it remains silent.
- When the R2LC gets an input on the Chuff pin, it wakes up the sound board and you get the idle sounds. However, no matter what RPM the motor is running, the sounds don't react to the ramp-up.
- Whistle appears to work fine, but won't wake the board up.
- Coupler sounds work, but won't wake the board up.
- Bell doesn't work at all.
- Crew-talk and Tower-Comm don't work at all.
I think it's a loser, pretty much as I remember my previous testing.
Steam, pretty much the same, except that the Chuff actually comes through and chuffs for each input to the R2LC chuff input.
OK, the R4LC-S03 programmed as either Legacy diesel or steam doesn't do any better with the RS-Lite Legacy boards. Just tried it, same results at TMCC.
This makes sense as I was told by someone that surely knows that the serial protocol controlling the sounds changed when the RCMC & RS-Lite were introduced into the product mix.
If I recall correctly, we beat this issue to death years ago and it just wouldn’t work: