Legacy SD40-2 not responding to Bluetooth?

Did you move the Bluetooth switch on the bottom of the locomotive to ON?

I don’t see a Bluetooth switch anywhere, and the instructions don’t mention a switch…

@Steaming Jon posted:

I don’t see a Bluetooth switch anywhere, and the instructions don’t mention a switch…

Given you can see the engine ID showing up in the APP that is NOT the problem. The bluetooth switch literally TURNS OFF the bluetooth function and would not show up in the app.

Given the engine ran fine under Legacy and you never heard the connected horn blow, and it's a new version of the app, you either failed to actually connect or there could be something buggy with the app.

In your scenario, I would do two different things:

#1 because these engines have multiple control boards and each has a microprocessor, I've seen recent Lionel Legacy engines boot up a little wonky as the first power up of the day. I just turn off the power for 15-20 second on the track (hold the direction button for me on my Z4000) then power up the track again to 18V (o in your case, with a Z1000, full power) and then try to connect the app.

#2 Try a different phone or tablet with the app. So if you tried apple, try and Android device since the app is different software and thus version for that device.

FWIW, Lionel has broken the Lionchief app quite a few times with updates in the last 18 months. Sometimes it beaks on a certain device, sometimes it crashes and so forth.

And last, if you try multiple tablets and if someone a your club cannot get it to connect bluetooth using an orange universal remote, then call up or contact Lionel support.

http://www.lionel.com/contact

Tried installing the app on my wife’s iPhone, won’t connect to that either. Trying to get our kindle fire (pretty sure that’s android based) working to see if it works on that…

I think the planned obsolescence has kicked in on the kindle. It won’t recognize amazon passwords so I can’t download the lionchief app on it…

@Steaming Jon posted:

I think the planned obsolescence has kicked in on the kindle. It won’t recognize amazon passwords so I can’t download the lionchief app on it…

Do a factory reset on the Kindle and set it up again.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Do a factory reset on the Kindle and set it up again.

No go. It just gives a wrong password/user ID error. It’s that deal where you need the latest update but it’s too old and they don’t have updates for it anymore…

“Smartphones are the way of the future for the control of our trains.”  

Sorry I’m not more help OP, but I find Bluetooth either works or it doesn’t, and more often than not it doesn’t. I can’t count how many times I put in my Bluetooth headphones only to have them not connect or the mic not work. Controlling trains with them is a non-starter for me.

@rplst8 posted:

Sorry I’m not more help OP, but I find Bluetooth either works or it doesn’t, and more often than not it doesn’t. I can’t count how many times I put in my Bluetooth headphones only to have them not connect or the mic not work.

I tend to agree with you for older Bluetooth stuff, but all my newest stuff seems to work just fine.  This includes a Sony headset (5 years old), a TV transmitter that allows you to listen to the TV on BT headphones at night when you want it to be quiet (3 years old), three laptops for data transfer from phones (oldest is 4 years old), three phones for both data transfer and headphone use (all less than 2 years old), a vehicle diagnostics adapter that plugs into the diagnostics connector on my cars (5 years old), and last but not least, three cars with Bluetooth and Microsoft Sync.

All of the cars, even the oldest of these (my 2009 Ford Escape with Sync), have worked without fail, the Escape for 13 years, and with 7 different phones of varying vintages over that time.  I use them every day and I'm very pleased with them.

Other than the cars most everything older than 5 years was indeed problematic and was retired not too long after buying it.

I understand the typical problems with locomotives and the controller's distance from them but when you're standing right next to the train there should be absolutely none.

Mike

I love the engine, even without Bluetooth, so it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t work. But it sure would be cool if I could use it! I’m going to see if I can find someone with a universal remote or an android tablet and try it with that…

Just a thought, if you connect to to the module but get no response from the locomotive it may be possible the RCMC isn’t getting the serial command from the BLE module. This may be as simple as a loose connector or a bad Bluetooth module

It’s got to be either the app is not fully connected, or isn’t sending commands, or it’s an issue with the engine. I don’t have any other Bluetooth engines, so I can’t try the app with another engine, and I don’t have any other way to try to connect to the engine (uni. remote, or android device). My wife has the same model iPhone as me, and the same version of the app, so the fact that her phone won’t connect doesn’t really help with diagnostics. I wonder though, if there was an issue with the current version of the app wouldn’t we expect to see other people posting about it??

I have a SE 2020 and from the few time I've tried I have had no problems with the LC app. There is one locomotive that I think I had a similar issue with now that I am thinking about it. The UR also did not work with said locomotive that is why I was leaning towards a Locomotive problem, that being said I never looked into the issue further with that particular Dash 9 as it's always ran via LEGACY

Pretty sure that grey wire is supposed to be attached to the last solder pad on the BT receiver board…

@Steaming Jon posted:

Pretty sure that grey wire is supposed to be attached to the last solder pad on the BT receiver board…

Definitely be a good place to start 😉

@Steaming Jon posted:

Pretty sure that grey wire is supposed to be attached to the last solder pad on the BT receiver board…

I'd be wanting to know where the gray wire came from, just to make sure.   It does look like it broke off there, that that would certainly break the BT functionality.

According to Burks diagram it says that pad is just a ground you can follow it back to the RCMC

Important point, it's a DC ground, not a frame ground.

That was it! Soldered the wire back on the BT board and the BT works great!

Here’s a great big Thank You to all who helped!!

My layout has a TMCC system with a CAB-1 controller.  I recently bought a Lionel Legacy 4-4-2 Atlantic, 1931170.  This engine works fine on TMCC and I decided to try out the LionChief app.  I already had the LionChief app (latest version 2.6.30) loaded on my Android phone (fairly recent model Samsung S22).  There is no Bluetooth switch on my engine.  At first, the app didn't work.  Sometimes it would seem to detect the engine, but wouldn't connect.  I tried my older Samsung tablet, and it worked!  So I went into the settings on the phone (Settings: Apps: LionChief: Permissions).  I "allowed" all the permissions.  That did the trick.  The phone connected to the engine and the LionChief app controlled the engine just fine.  A couple of comments:

1. The engine doesn't "chirp" while waiting to be connected to Bluetooth, like one of my former engines with Bluetooth did.

2. An engine can run on Bluetooth and TMCC at the same time.  Both controllers (CAB-1 and phone with LionChief) will work.

3.  Dave Olson, Lionel's Director of Engineering, has a YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR2vIBdqN7c  that mentions turning on permission for location on the phone.  I turned on all permissions.  It's possible that turning on just the permission for location would have worked.

4.  I like the LionChief app for a couple of things:  the high momentum setting seems to be more realistic than what I get with the CAB-1 and the engine will just crawl along at the lowest speed setting.