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Question Gaugemaster OMNI and Zen decoder
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Offline ocram63_uk  
#1 Posted : 31 December 2015 00:32:45(UTC)
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ocram63_uk

United Kingdom   
Joined: 07/01/2015(UTC)
Posts: 704
Location: England, Suffolk
Good evening everyone !!
I have found in the shop of the town I live in that they do sell some decoders as well. I wanted to test run a loco I bought in October and so I decided to give it a go with the brands Gaugemaster and Zen DCC (which BTW I have been told are manufactured by the same people)

The loco is a Rivarossi/Hornby, it fits a 21 pin decoder, of an italian tree-phase loco.

The Gaugemaster works fine except that setting CV3 and CV4 to zero has no effect, the loco still has its momentums active.
I tried to limit the Max speed and used CV5 and CV6 and these as well have no effect whatsoever.

I tried to use double addressing, this works, I tried using the built in speed curve by setting CV29 accordingly and this works too.

The command station is an ESU EcoS 2, so not a basic model of command station too.

The same applies to the Zen DCC decoder, identical situation, but being made by the same guys probably I could have expected this to happen.

I really have no idea if it is the make of decoders I tried or not.

Anyone has used these decoders ? Issues ?

Thank you very much
Marco

P.S. still have to upgrade my EcoS to 4.1.2 BigGrin
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Offline H0  
#2 Posted : 31 December 2015 07:29:22(UTC)
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H0


Joined: 16/02/2004(UTC)
Posts: 15,266
Location: DE-NW
Hi, Marco,

I have no experience with those decoders.

You can read CV 8 to get a manufacturer code.

With respect to CVs 3 & 4: have you tried setting them to 1?

CV 29 can enable or disable CV 6. So before changing CV 6, make sure the three-point speed curve is enable in CV 29.
Regards
Tom
---
"In all of the gauges, we particularly emphasize a high level of quality, the best possible fidelity to the prototype, and absolute precision. You will see that in all of our products." (from Märklin New Items Brochure 2015, page 1) ROFLBTCUTS
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Offline ocram63_uk  
#3 Posted : 31 December 2015 11:49:38(UTC)
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ocram63_uk

United Kingdom   
Joined: 07/01/2015(UTC)
Posts: 704
Location: England, Suffolk
Hi Tom,
thank you for your input.
As a matter of fact CV29 allows to select between speed setting using CV5 / CV6 and internal speed curve.
By default CV5 / CV6 are enabled.

I tried using the internal speed curve but I have to modify by hand the corresponding CVs 67-94 to limit the speed of the loco, it is not as easy as with CV5 / CV 6

Setting CV3 / CV4 to zero removes any delay in the loco's engine settings when you try to 'tune' it. I usually re-enable it when I'm happy on how the loco behaves. In this case this does not work as expected.

Thank you and Happy New Year

Marco
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Offline kiwiAlan  
#4 Posted : 31 December 2015 16:04:08(UTC)
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kiwiAlan

United Kingdom   
Joined: 23/07/2014(UTC)
Posts: 8,107
Location: ENGLAND, Didcot
I don't know about the Zen decoder, bu the Gaugemaster one is probably an MHI decoder, as Gaugemaster market the prodigy controller series under the Gaugemaster name.

I would suggest that you investigate using JMRI Decoderpro software on your PC, to identify the decoder and to program it. The program vastly simplifies setting up decoders. JMRI will connect to an eCos, but I am not sure how well this combination works when programmimg, so you may be better off to get an SPROG to look after the programming track.

JMRI is available here. The eCos support page suggests the current version of JMRI should be able to program decoders on the programmimg track, but not do programmimg on the main.

SPROG hardware is available here.

The SPROG has been designed as programming hardware to use under JMRI, and can also be used as a control unit for a small number of locomotives using throttles on JMRI.
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Offline H0  
#5 Posted : 31 December 2015 16:34:33(UTC)
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H0


Joined: 16/02/2004(UTC)
Posts: 15,266
Location: DE-NW
Originally Posted by: ocram63_uk Go to Quoted Post
I tried using the internal speed curve but I have to modify by hand the corresponding CVs 67-94 to limit the speed of the loco, it is not as easy as with CV5 / CV 6
All decoders I know allow to set minimum speed and maximum speed respectively with CV 2 and CV 5 respectively when the speed curve is active. Those decoders of yours could be the exception.

Regards
Tom
---
"In all of the gauges, we particularly emphasize a high level of quality, the best possible fidelity to the prototype, and absolute precision. You will see that in all of our products." (from Märklin New Items Brochure 2015, page 1) ROFLBTCUTS
UserPostedImage
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Offline ocram63_uk  
#6 Posted : 07 January 2016 23:00:10(UTC)
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ocram63_uk

United Kingdom   
Joined: 07/01/2015(UTC)
Posts: 704
Location: England, Suffolk
I wrote the producer of the decoder about my problems and they replied thus:

These decoders will not show some CV changes on SS 28. You need to be on SS128 for it to take effect. This is not the case with all our decoders just a batch made last year."

I set the control of this loco to use 128 SS protocol and 'bang' magically CV5/6 started responding to my settings.
In all honestly I set CV10=0 and CV61=0 too to get rid of all the momentums and BEMF, played around with CV5/CV6 and once happy I set CV61=1 to have BEMF back.

This required a bit of tweaking with CV3/4 but now all is fine.

Experiment done, next time I'll spend a bit more and buy ESU, Lenz, Zimo, the saving is not worth the hassle.

On the other hand if the "batch" hadn't been dodgy this would never have happened, benefit of the doubt !!!

Regards

HTH

Marco
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