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Offline river6109  
#1 Posted : 26 February 2021 10:36:21(UTC)
river6109

Australia   
Joined: 22/01/2009(UTC)
Posts: 14,636
Location: On 1965 Märklin Boulevard just around from Roco Square
Over the years I've noticed manufacturers have almost eliminated analog locos and most of them come with sound modules, when buying a loco with a sound decoder you get all the extras as well, e.g. high beam, cab lights, engine room lights,
So when you buy a standard model these extras aren't included, with other words you don't have an option anymore, 1 cheap model and 1 expensive model but nothing between.
Its only because I can add these extras I can buy a standard loco and save myself a lot of money.
I think Märklin has entered this phase whereas you can only buy a sound model, which for me is not an option as I use mainly ESU decoders., the same goes for Roco locos (although they always give an option analog-digital-sound) but they install Zimo decoders (I'm useless with CV's and bits, especially the bits, I just can't get my head around and work it out how to change CV's, I've got an ESU lokprogrammer and I can enter a particular CV for the Zimo decoder but than you have to add value and the bit(s) and this where it becomes completely foreign.
I've never been able to understand the whole thing although a person from Zimo explained it to me and I still wasn't able to calculate the lot.
for some people it is most probably as easy as to boil water but for me, its not. I also had a person from the ESU forum and he tried to explain it to me and it is embarrassing when you don't follow it., unless it is laid before me and the calculation is done in detail I'm afraid I'm not going to solve it.
I've bought this Roco loco with a Zime sound decoder but can't use it because I have to change the braking distance and maybe another couple of CV's

John
https://www.youtube.com/river6109
https://www.youtube.com/6109river
5 years in Destruction mode
50 years in Repairing mode
Offline kiwiAlan  
#2 Posted : 26 February 2021 13:54:44(UTC)
kiwiAlan

United Kingdom   
Joined: 23/07/2014(UTC)
Posts: 8,082
Location: ENGLAND, Didcot
Originally Posted by: river6109 Go to Quoted Post
(I'm useless with CV's and bits, especially the bits, I just can't get my head around and work it out how to change CV's, I've got an ESU lokprogrammer and I can enter a particular CV for the Zimo decoder but than you have to add value and the bit(s) and this where it becomes completely foreign.


This is where software like JMRI coupled with a dedicated control station such as a SPROG is a very big help. JMRI decoder definitions take care of dealing with bit fields in CVs and all CVs and bit field have human friendly names. You don't need to know what CV or bit you are manipulating.

There are some gotchas, like reading all the CVs in an ESU Loksound 5 will take between a half hour and an hour (whatever command station used), but this can be bypassed by importing the information from a file saved from a Lokprogrammer (which uses a proprietry protocol to read the decoder much faster) to avoid the read time.

For Loksound decoders the presented interface on JMRI is very similar to the Lokprogrammer, the individual who has programmed this up (he is also Australian) has had excellent co-operation from the ESU representative in USA to find out all sorts of information and present it in JMRI.

JMRI must have the most complete library of decoders that I am aware of. There are all sorts of decoders I have never heard of with definitions defined in its database.

JMRI also has the advantage that there are versions for Linux and Mac as well as Windows. All the required information to download it is here. Simplifying decoder programming is what JMRI was originally developed for, although it has had many extra modules added to automate layouts, handle freight scheduling and so on added over time. I would suggest you have a serious look at it.
thanks 2 users liked this useful post by kiwiAlan
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