MTH 30-9102 Operating Fire House

1) Where can I wire these flashing lights to on this fire house that they will flash when the door opens and the truck comes out? The power for the opening door and rotating platter?

2) Where can I wire the two added white LEDs to enhance the interior lighting of the fire house? Off of the existing light?

3) Does anyone have or know where I can get my hands on a wiring schematic for this Operating Fire House? Been awhile since ours was apart, do you still have the original wires? 

4) What was I thinking?   Yep! Stopping in the middle makes every project more exciting!!

This might help with the wiring.

MTH Firehouse Wiring v2_0.pdf

I was able to use the diagram given to me by John to wire my interior lighting with ease, my next step is wiring up the new flashing lights.  I was going to try and tap into the 4 wires that are designated for "LED 1" and "LED 2." I tried testing the wires with my test light but they didn't seem to be getting power.  I tried hooking a light up to one of the positive lead wires and to the other  negative wire and still nothing when I push the button to activate the fire house.  My new question is, what voltage were the two original LEDs and is it even possible to use the existing leads?  Or should I try a different approach?

Don't know what was connected there, so I'd be looking at tapping off a known source with a transistor or FET to switch the flashing lights.

Thanks John, I'll check it out.  By the way, did you get my email about the tether for my E8?

Yes, I even answered it.

That's funny, I don't seem to have it in my email 

Ahh! It was in my spam folder!

Odd, you responded to it!

You consider me SPAM!  Shame on you.

Thank you to everyone for your help!  I couldn't have done it without you.  Here is the finished product, I have a couple bugs to work out still.  I hope you enjoy!

https://youtu.be/J4F8F253RPA

Looks good, but one major omission.  All the firetrucks I have ever seen have lights on them!

I have one of these firehouse units, and I'm going to put lights and strobes on the truck.  When it backs in, there'll be spring contacts to connect and charge the supercap in the truck that runs the lights.

That's genius!! When you get that rigged up let me know, that would be awesome to do on mine!

Genius may be going a little far, but I think it would be a cool upgrade.

Nice work, just add some lights to the truck. Flashing prior to the door opening seems to be the procedure around here.

My mod would probably start the lights whenever the truck lost contact with the charging springs.

Hi gunrunnerjohn,

I was wondering if you ever made the modifications you mentioned in your post to the truck. It would be nice to see as I just purchase and want to do the upgrades.

Can someone share with me where and what they used for LED lights on the building and the fire truck? 

Thank you

Not yet, I have to get my layout up, lots of other stuff has conspired to keep me busy.

I used leds  from Evans Design mounted wires to traveling arm,car wiring to traveling arm motor.Did same with fire station can't find pics for that yet. 

That's another way to skin the cat. 

Not the best video best I could do with my limited tech ability.

That's so cool!! I still have to work out a bug on the firehouse, for whatever reason, I can trigger the truck to come out and the lights come on by when I press the switch again, the truck won't go back in.  I have to turn the transformer power off and back on  again then it automatically resets.

That looks awesome. I will wait for the update on the fix.

Thank you 

So, quick question on this. Is there any way to alter the sounds on this firehouse? I’m toying around with the idea of turning it into the Ghostbusters Firehouse replacing the fire engine with Ecto-1, but figured I’d see how feasible it is before I get my hands on one. 

Thanks!

No. G

The only way to alter the sounds is to disable the on-board sounds and add your own sound module with the desired sounds.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

My mod would probably start the lights whenever the truck lost contact with the charging springs.

Being on the Local Volunteer Fire Department I will throw 1 cent in the ring. We just enacted a new rule saying Lights are NOT to be turned on till truck is in motion out the door. John this fits with your plan!

@metsno1fan posted:

 

So, quick question on this. Is there any way to alter the sounds on this firehouse? I’m toying around with the idea of turning it into the Ghostbusters Firehouse replacing the fire engine with Ecto-1, but figured I’d see how feasible it is before I get my hands on one.

Any way, yes.  But realistically or practically, no.  That is, you might have seen threads about guys reverse-engineering how MTH stores sounds in the memory chips of Protosound engines.  So given enough time and effort, I suppose the same could be done for the sounds in the Fire House.  It's one of those when pigs fly scenarios!

As GRJ suggests, your best bet is to effectively disconnect the stock audio electronics and replace it with a sound-module with your custom sound.  It would not be particularly expensive (say, less than $10) but would require soldering, poking around the Fire House circuit board with its tiny components, and so on.  There have been many OGR threads on custom sound modules for layout accessories and rolling stock. 

Above photo from this OGR thread.  What you have going for you is the Fire House's existing source of DC power and speaker. 

Also, you probably have in mind what the sound should be - perhaps a segment from the movie.  As mentioned in the various OGR threads you can use a "free" audio editor to create the MP3 file to store in the memory card.  There are "free" youtube-to-MP3 converter programs also since most popular scenes from movies are on youtube.

But, it's not plug-and-play so understandably not in everyone's comfort zone.

@stan2004 posted:

Any way, yes.  But realistically or practically, no.  That is, you might have seen threads about guys reverse-engineering how MTH stores sounds in the memory chips of Protosound engines.  So given enough time and effort, I suppose the same could be done for the sounds in the Fire House.  It's one of those when pigs fly scenarios!

As GRJ suggests, your best bet is to effectively disconnect the stock audio electronics and replace it with a sound-module with your custom sound.  It would not be particularly expensive (say, less than $10) but would require soldering, poking around the Fire House circuit board with its tiny components, and so on.  There have been many OGR threads on custom sound modules for layout accessories and rolling stock. 

Above photo from this OGR thread.  What you have going for you is the Fire House's existing source of DC power and speaker. 

Also, you probably have in mind what the sound should be - perhaps a segment from the movie.  As mentioned in the various OGR threads you can use a "free" audio editor to create the MP3 file to store in the memory card.  There are "free" youtube-to-MP3 converter programs also since most popular scenes from movies are on youtube.

But, it's not plug-and-play so understandably not in everyone's comfort zone.

It is one thing to say you can modify a read/write chip that is meant to be reprogrammed.  And another to say you can change a read only write once chip under a blob of epoxy, so do tell how you would reprogram the board, even if not realistic or practical.  Doesn't that really mean no not yes? 

Sure you can add your own sounds etc...  But the integrated board is triggered off switches to do the specific sound when the engine or what ever accessory it is, is at a specific phase of the operation.  Replicating that is much harder unless you are going to manually trigger it at each station.  Gas station, car wash, firehouse, etc...  Integrated motion and sounds.  Not a reprogrammable board.  G

Actually, the firehouse looks pretty straight-forward, it only has two sound tracks, one for the truck going out, and one for the truck going in.  A fairly simple sound board with two sound clips of your choice would probably do the trick here.  I have made several sound modules with multiple selectable inputs, and I have one in process with totally isolated input triggers that would do this function very well.

Obviously, it would be a case where you'd have to dig into the firehouse to pick a trigger point or two.

@GGG posted:

It is one thing to say you can modify a read/write chip that is meant to be reprogrammed.  And another to say you can change a read only write once chip under a blob of epoxy, so do tell how you would reprogram the board, even if not realistic or practical.  Doesn't that really mean no not yes?

...

Are you looking at a fire house circuit board and is there really a "blob-of-epoxy" (a.k.a. COB or chip-on-board)?  Please post a photo for the greater good.

I was relying on the wiring diagram that GRJ posted earlier in the thread:

I do not see a COB component on the board - but a photo would tell all.  I suppose the COB could be on the bottom of the board too.

But I am convinced this board uses re-programmable read/write digital memory to store the audio.  The board is dated March 2015.  If this was a design from the last century, then perhaps they used read-only technology.  But today, an engineer who designs-in read-only memory for a product like this should consider another line of work.

Again, a photo would tell-all, but circled on the diagram is a 28-pin SSOP chip next to an 8-pin SO chip.  There are 3 pins labeled SCK, SO, SI.  This suggests the 28-pin chip is a microcontroller and the 8-pin chip is a serial read/write flash memory, Serial ClocK, Serial Out, Serial In.  To wit, I just checked DigiKey and a 4 Mb serial flash chip goes for less than 25 cents.  As I recall, the initial PS2 engines only had twice that much memory and I figure a fire house is not as complicated audio-wise as an engine.

As stated previously, the heavy-lifting is reverse-engineering what is stored in the memory chip.  Is it just two snippets of sound as GRJ observes...or is the sequencing of the lights/motors also stored?  This would require test equipment that very few OGR readers have.  And it would take much more time than adding an external sound board triggered by some light or motor signal coincident with when the audio is active.

Pretty sure it's not a COB, here's a picture of the actual board I got from this thread.

MTH Fire Station 30-9102 sound improvement modification

Here's the wiring diagram, it appears that it would be pretty easy to trigger on either the lamps or motors with the proper sound board.  I think I have settled on a sound board design that I'm going to produce, it offers five totally isolated triggers for five sound clips of any duration, and it also has an option to plug in an RF receiver to remote control one or more of the sound clips, I'm waiting on prototypes now.  I think it would make adding the sounds fairly easy, the hard part is actually coming up with realistic sounds for the sound clips.

Thank you everyone! Those individual sound boards look like they would definitely do the trick, just ordered one.

Follow up question: How easy is it to remove the fire engine? Does anyone have any pictures?

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

 

Pretty sure it's not a COB, here's a picture of the actual board I got from this thread.

...

Well that seals the deal!  The 28-pin chip is the MSP430G2403 microcontroller (less than $1) which doesn't have enough memory for audio.  Hence the companion reprogrammable read/write flash chip.  That the board has evenly spaced pads for SO-SCK-SI suggests this might be how the manufacturer programs (or re-programs) the sound memory chip in-situ.  The days of popping out and replacing a memory chip to change sounds is so last century!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

...

I think it would make adding the sounds fairly easy, the hard part is actually coming up with realistic sounds for the sound clips.

I think the OP could cut-paste some clips from the movie.  And perhaps using Audacity or similar "free" audio editor can mix in some additional mechanical-sounding effects. 

I dug up this video of a fire truck I made in 2003.  It uses the microcontroller plus read/write flash memory combo.  The sound was spliced together from various audio clips off the web.  It can take hours and hours to scour the web to find a snippet of clear audio that doesn't have music or whatever in the background.  

Plus, based on the linked OGR thread on distortion in the fire house audio amplifier electronics, I don't think modifying the existing memory is worth any further study.  If you do go with an MP3-based sound board with integrated audio amp (as shown in an earlier post), the audio quality will be vastly superior to what I heard from the online videos of the fire house.

I stand corrected on the fire house board.  Other accessories have used the "COB".  G

Stan, that's a firetruck that would be cool to install in the firehouse!

BTW, what movie are you referring to get sound clips for the firehouse?

I was referring to metsno1fan's Ghostbuster modification.  If you search Ghostbusters Ecto 1 on youtube there are hundreds of clips from the movie.  Or, many free MP3 downloads of just the Ecto 1 siren.  Also lots of assorted electronic gadgets, kits, and paraphernalia to simulate the lights and sounds from the Ecto 1.

That's true Stan, lots of Ghost Buster clips available.