I have a few questions about the ERR Sound Converter. Will it work with Williams True Blast Plus? Will it work with PS1? And also, it said that it may not work with diesel ramping on the ERR website, is there any truth to this?
Thanks!
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The converter will allow you to keep you original sound board when installing your new TMCC upgrade. I would say the Williams might work but I doubt that PS1 would work. The installation appears very simple and yes you will not get sounds of the engine revving up or down.
Frankly, if I were doing a TMCC upgrade I would take it all the way with the Railsounds Commander, unless I had some fantastic sound set I wanted to preserve. In addition to, probably, better sounds you will get the revving up and down.
Maybe another Forum user with some experience with the converter will chime in.
If you could get it to work with a PS-1 sound board, you'd get the prime mover sounds going full bore all the time. PS-1 uses motor feedback to control the motor rev/steam chuff sounds.
What he said. 
The Sound Converter was designed to enable you to use a conventional horn/bell sound board and trigger it under command control. Other functions are not supported.
There are three LED outputs on the board as well, and I use them to add Ditch Lights to diesels, I have hacked the code in the board for proper operation of the ditch lights. My next project is to take the 3rd LED and program it for a realistic MARS light simulation. Since I have serial data, I can have the MARS light operate only when in forward and in motion, should be a nice addition.
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the Williams True Blast Plus card has prime mover sounds where the RPM's are driven by AC voltage. So, if you try to use it with the Railsounds Commander, I think your constant 18 volts would crank the RPM's at full throttle constantly.
Perhaps if you substituted an older Williams True Blast II card (which only has horn/bell), it would work with the Railsounds Commander.
Greg, see above responses.
gunrunnerjohn posted:What he said.
There are three LED outputs on the board as well, and I use them to add Ditch Lights to diesels, I have hacked the code in the board for proper operation of the ditch lights. My next project is to take the 3rd LED and program it for a realistic MARS light simulation. Since I have serial data, I can have the MARS light operate only when in forward and in motion, should be a nice addition.
John, does that mean chuff sounds will also not work? I can understand the chuff not working if it's voltage controlled, but what about a chuff controlled by magnet and reed switch?
gunrunnerjohn posted:Greg, see above responses.
Thanks. I read through the previous posts, but nobody addressed the use of the Williams True Blast Plus card. Dan said it might work, but without mention of the diesel RPM issue.
Thinking outside the box, I wonder if there is any way to use a Williams True Blast Plus card with a Railsounds Converter in a manner where the Williams card is normally powered directly by the motor power (which would need to be inverted to AC). That way, TMCC throttle adjustments would indirectly trigger changes to RPM on the Williams card when actual motor speed changes occur. Are the pinouts from the converter to the sound card always outputting a constant 18V?, or does power to the sound card only get triggered when the converter receives serial data to active the horn/bell? If the pinouts only receive power on a horn/bell command, perhaps a relay could be powered by this output and toggle the sound card's power source from the motor, to the sound converter when the horn or bell command is triggered.
I believe you can use the blue rail trains Bluetooth boards with the Williams true blast plus locos.
The main reason I wonder about the sound converter working with True Blast Plus is because the Williams semi scale Pacific seems like an ideal candidate for TMCC conversion and the sounds included with it are pretty good.
The sound converter supplies the AC power to the conventional sound card directly as it needs to provide the DC offsets to trigger the horn and bell. There's no way that I know of to "graft" the motor voltage in for the Williams board and still use the sound converter. I can't even visualize a method that wouldn't be hopelessly complex.
