Have a Command update question

Nobody have any ideas? I figure it could be done with a battery but that would take a shell removal to put in or take out a battery.

Ron

Well here is what I found out so far. A 1.5 volt battery will almost trigger the sounds. A 9 volt battery works fine. One triggers the bell and the reversed triggers the whistle in the trainsounds tender. I'm thinking a dc offset direct from the track voltage would be to much so expect my next step would be to determine how much current is drawn when the whistle is blown on both tenders. Then I could determine the size of a voltage drop resistor to get the output voltage down to below 9 volts.

Ron

Ron, there is such a board tat receives the TMCC serial data and generates the track power with the DC offsets.  It's a prototype that ERR (Jon Z.) produced some time back. 

I had hoped that eventually ERR would offer these for sale, that was discussed in the past.

Here's the content of a post I wrote a while back.

That's actually something that has been done.  I have a beta version of it.  I was thinking that ERR would have posted it for sale by now.  It takes the serial data and actually powers a horn/bell button.  Contact ERR and see if they're going to offer it any time soon.  I know Jon Z. said he was busy and didn't have a lot of time to devote to side projects, so maybe this is still in the pipeline somewhere.  I have no idea what the pricing might be, but I know he was thinking of a pretty reasonable price point.

 

It works great connected to the serial data from a Cruise Commander and driving a couple of different whistle/bell boards.   Here's a quick shot with my cellphone camera.  If you want to discuss this further, I'd suggest a separate thread in the TMCC/Legacy forum.

Thanks John. That's close to what I had in mind and just to make sure you understand what I'm looking for, I want to put this inside the locomotive and drive it from the cruise lite and put the offset back on the rails. This would eliminate a tether in each of the tenders. That would leave the tenders totally stock and the engine upgraded. The more I look at this the tethers may be the easier way to go by far. I have some relay boards that trigger with a 5v logic plus that need 20ma of current. I was thinking the cruise lite would trigger the relay. Supply the relay contact with track power and a couple of rectifiers on the other contact and back out to the roller. Am I all wet on this? Maybe have to reduce the voltage down to 7 or 8 volts as total track power may be to much.

Ron

Putting the offset back on the rails may be a challenge as you'd be fighting the AC that has plenty of current.  You'd probably have to arrange for the locomotive to draw significant current through the rectifiers to actually put a sufficient bias on the track to trigger the whistle.

I think the tether is the better way, it won't have to be so "brute force".  You could do what amounts to a "whistle control board" in the tender with the relay doing the same thing a pushbutton would do in a whistle control box.

The cool part of the above board is that it handles both whistle and bell with DC offsets so you can trigger all the sound effects.

Never thought about the incoming current. That's a good point. To put it back out on the rails then would require a dedicated pickup roller to put the signal back on the track. A tether is probably the way to go.  

Ron

John question I have ( well I think anyway lol) a mini-ex commander won't that do the job of doing the whistle and bell and all he wants

I don't believe the mini ex does anything more than the cruise lit does Rt. Pin 3 of the cruise lite gives a logic plus 5v on horn/whistle activation so the signal to trigger the whistle is already there. I was just thinking a way to put the dc offset back on the rails would be pretty easy. I have a relay board that will make on this signal I believe (haven't tried it yet) but getting the dc back to the track from the inside of the engine seems to be more trouble than its worth.

Ron

Nope, it doesn't do anything special with the whistle and bell, other than send serial data to the RS boards.  Same problem we have now.

OK i'm missing something here, but the old TAS 1308 Whistle Controller from Train America Studios did at least half of what you're discussing here.

From the TAS instruction sheet:

"The Whistle Controller is designed to receive and decode the serial data stream from the R2LC command receiver and generates a positive DC offset to activate a conventional whistle or horn soundboard. This board only activates the whistle or horn, not the bell. Once the TMCC Whistle Controller is installed it will operate in both a command and conventional environment."

In view of the fact that TAS has been absorbed into Lionel, how much re-inventing of the wheel would be required to further develop this unit to provide the offset required to activate the bell as well? Perhaps i'm either missing something here or am just plain electronically challenged or maybe just stupid?

For what it's worth i have a dead TAS 1308 sitting on my bench that i'm willing to donate as a cadaver for an autopsy and further research.

jackson

I think my next step will be to see if pin 3 will trigger my relay board. I think for easy working I'll try this in a Williams trainmaster first. If it triggers the relay my next step will be to see what happens if I put a dc offset back on the rails. If I can then I guess I'll see if I can fit everything in the baby berk. If it doesn't work I may spring for the railsounds board.

Thanks,

Ron

What you're missing is the source code for the PIC processor is not available, and the parts are locked for reading, so you can't clone it either, even if it was deemed legal.

Not suggesting anything illegal, but couldn't ERR build upon this as i understand the TAS patents, intellectual property, etc. are now Lionel's and may well be available to ERR for them to further develop.

jackson

It must be not on Lionel's radar as I've emailed Jon about this and he didn't mention it. I do agree there might be a market for this device. I have 2 baby berks I would like to put cruise into. Both have trainsounds in them. Railsounds would be a lot better in them but for and old man like me the trainsounds are good enough if I could get the whistle and possibly the bell to trigger without a lot of extra work. A schematic and parts list along with the pre-programmed processor would sell pretty good I would think. 

Ron

Ron, I suspect you'd want this fully assembled.  There's a lot of surface mount stuff on there, most folks would not be happy trying to solder that on.  I've build a few of my boards with a similar amount of SMT, and it's somewhat tedious to do them by hand.  You'd also need the 1.5mm connectors with the socket pins crimped as they're pretty hard to do without the proper tool.

ERR could do it, and if I ever get the time, I'm planning on something similar.  My point is having the TAS module is really not needed as you'd be recreating it anyway.

If you read farther up, you'd see that it's already been done by the folks at ERR/Lionel in beta form, and it does both whistle and bell, and it also has flashing ditch light outputs as a bonus.