Using the Digikeijs DR5000 with TrainController

[melmerby]

Hi all

 

Is anybody using TrainController with a Digikeijs Dr5000?

 

There has been a discussion on the Freiwald forum about doing this but Herr Freiwald has decided it has gone on too long and deleted it.

His excuse was that we should be discussing his software, even though we were discussing using the DR5000 (Hardware?) with TrainController in the "Hardware" section of the forum!

 

I'm particularly interested in using the Lenz options as so far I haven't been able to get TrainController to respond using the RS bus to any RS occupacy modules even though they show up in the DR5000 RS bus monitoring window..

It will do if I change the detection system in TC to "Loconet" and the addresses to the Loconet equivalent e.g. 65-1 becomes 513. etc.

 

Cheers

 

Keith

 

 

 

 

[Johnsy1975]

Hi keith, I am using the DR5000, but not with RS bus. I am using Loconet with LDT turnout decoders on the DCC buss and LDT block detection using LDT S88 interface.

[melmerby]

Hi keith, I am using the DR5000, but not with RS bus. I am using Loconet with LDT turnout decoders on the DCC buss and LDT block detection using LDT S88 interface.

The more the merrier. It all adds to the wealth of Knowledge.

 

The DR5000 seems, because of it's numerous connexion options, to have a multiplicity of ways of configuration. Getting it right isn't simple.

 

I have a Lenz 100 set-up but would like to split up the layout into different areas using two different systems (Lenz & Digkeijs) and some LDT DB-4 boosters.

 

To start I have tried the DR5000 as a straight replacement for the Lenz system using the Lenz USB setting (COM6 on my PC) and most of TrainController works. e.g. using TC I can change turnouts, I can drive locos and I can operate functions but TC does not display any occupied blocks.

Using the control windows on the DR5000 I can drive trains, I can change turnouts, I can operate functions, I can also monitor the occupancy detectors (LDT RS-8s) with the RS bus scan, however that information is not being passed to TrainController.

 

If I reconfigure Traincontroller so that the block monitoring is "Loconet" (COM7 on my PC), leaving loco addresses and turnouts with Lenz USB I can get block occupancy showing in TrainController as long as I re-assign the block addresses in Loconet format.

e.g. My first block is Lenz address 65 input 1 which equates to Loconet 513.

This means the block data is being received by the DR5000 from the RS bus in Lenz format but is being sent to TrainController in Loconet format! Very complicated.

 

I would like TrainController to work with Lenz bus occupancy, leaving Loconet for other things. It must be possible

 

Cheers

 

Keith

Edited July 20, 2016 by melmerby

[melmerby]

Just tried a basic test set up

DR5000 + 1 x RS-8 module + TrainController with 8 blocks.

It works!

 

The RS-8 was reporting rubbish block numbers on the DR5000 to start with. I tried to re-program the address and it kept coming up with stupid numbers.

I swapped around J&K and it works perfectly. The DR5000 doesn't mark J&K but it needs them. J is the LH output with the connector upwards.

 

Keith

[fcwilt]

Hi Keith,

 

I finally got my LDT RS-8 to be seen by the DR5000.

 

The problem seems to be that the RS-8 requires the track power output from the DR5000 to be connected to BOTH sets of track power inputs (IN1 and IN2) on the RS-8.

 

Previously I only had IN1 connected.

 

However the "occupancy" states are wrong.

 

See attached.

 

The first four sensors are reporting unoccupied and that last four sensors are reporting occupied REGARDLESS of the actual circumstances.

 

Also in the area marked in RED in the attached image a component is VERY hot.

 

Do you suppose that hooking up the RS-8 without the IN2 connections has damaged the board?

 

Back when I first started trying to get the RS-8 units to work I tried both of the two units I have.

 

And both times I did not connect IN2.

 

So if not connecting IN2 can damage a board I did it to both of mine - but that seems a rather fragile design.

 

So could you check the area I marked in red on your RS-8 units and see if a component in that area is very hot?

 

Thanks much.

 

Frederick

 

 

 

[john barry]

Hi Keith, Frederick,

I got here at last. This is pretty much what I last wrote on the TC forum.

I found LDT turnout decoders were sensitive to J-K polarity. I reverse engineered one ages ago to convert it to a signal decoder and I found the DCC input circuit via the CNY17 optocoupler was weird and barely seemed to work. I will post it if I can find my sketch.

I mention this because looking at Frederick's picture it looks like they use a similar arrangement to get DCC from the top RHS (IN2 circuit?) down to the PIC processor chip.

This would explain the J-K polarity problem and why Frederick needed to connect IN2 to get anywhere. And I could speculate that maybe their PIC firmware requires the presence of J-K to operate even when not programming. Hard to see a reason but who knows.

Frederick, from looking at the board there seem to be two groups of 4 channels with series diode current detection feeding into two LTV844 AC input optocouplers. Very similar to my various S88 boards, LDT and homemade.

They should be pretty rugged and isolated from the PIC and RS Bus side and the RS Bus is again isolated by two more optocouplers.

I would guess that if you have damaged the input somehow it would only be the diodes and resistors around that side. The only way without a deliberate effort would be a sustained track short (or a connection mistake with the same result) which would put track power across the back to back diode pairs and when they gave up it could be across the optocoupler input if there was no limiting resistor(surely not!).

You could check the LTV844 input and output sides with a multimeter to see if it reflects the occupancy pattern you are seeing on the DR5000. The input pairs should have ~ 1V across them when occupied (DCC waveform) and in that state the corresponding output should be closed ie close to zero volts. The LTV844 pin out/block diagram is easy to find with Google. If you mail it to me I will fix it for free (only you Frederick) but the time and mail costs might not be worth it.

-john

[melmerby]

John & Frederick:

 

The RS-8 is devised so that it can be used on two separate circuits (boosters) 1-4 & 5-8 both need to be fed if you are using it on one circuit as the DCC signal is only taken from the one side.

 

Where Frederick said it is getting hot there are a 39 ohm resistor which should have the same voltage across it as the other 7 sandwiched between the BY251 diodes. (assuming you ar using the same load on each of the 8 outputs).

The other 2 are 750 ohm and mine have about 14v AC across each. they all run cool with a 1k ohm load on each output. I am using 16v DC in to the DR5000 to match my track output on the LVZ100

 

They are JK sensitive and you cannot program one if it is the wrong way round. The DR5000 track output should be marked as it could cause problems when using LDT modules.

It's actualy the LH one with the connector uppermost.

 

I have the DR5000 set up with a spare RS-8 and 8 "dummy" blocks in TrainController.

I get these results:

 

 

 

 

It all seems to work perfectly except the DR5000 doesn't show any track current. It should be about 100mA!

 

I wonder why this setup doesn't work with my layout, maybe I should swap J&K?

 

Cheers

 

Keith

 

 

[john barry]

As promised this is the input circuit of the LDT S-DEC-4 turnout decoder. Strange way to use an optocoupler! The fall time of the output would be horrendous.

I bet the circuit of the RS-8 is the same.

-john

[john barry]

Sorry I meant rise time I think.

On the J-K question this could become a problem if using the Digikeijs boosters which have auto reversing of the polarity. Presumably the actual DR5000 output is always the same way.

-john

[fcwilt]

As promised this is the input circuit of the LDT S-DEC-4 turnout decoder. Strange way to use an optocoupler! The fall time of the output would be horrendous.

I bet the circuit of the RS-8 is the same.

-john

SDEC-4.jpg

 

No connection for the emitter? That doesn't seem reasonable. 

 

I will have to check my RS-8 units.

 

Frederick

[melmerby]

Ignore my twaddle about the resistors in the previous post!

I've been checking my assembly instructions (I make my LDT units from kits)

 

The two on the right are R12 and R13 which are the two 1.5k in parallel shown in John's diagram, (the diode is D33 above them!)

These feed pin 1 &2 of IC4 (CNY17-4) the output from 5 goes to pin 9 of IC1 (Z86E08) and is tied to 5v via R24 220k. Pin 6 is connected to pin 4 of IC9 which is an 814 opto.

There is seemingly no connexion to pin 4 of IC4!

 

The 8 x 39 ohms feed the 8 inputs on the quad optocouplers 844, (IC6 & IC7)

R16 (3.3k) takes the DCC signal from IN1 to pin 1 of IC9

 

Keith

Edited July 22, 2016 by melmerby

[melmerby]

These are some of the last uploads i made to the Freiwald forum:

 

Bus Monitor settings:

 

The RS Bus Window:

 

The Loconet Window:

 

Traincontroller screen grab:

These were the only blocks I got to show as occupied and even the one on the right is showing occupied when it isn't

 

DR5000 monitor window:

 

Note the track current!

That is 50 stall motors, 35 locos, 2 other peripherals, Turntable & traverser with no action going on whatsoever!

 

Keith

Edited July 22, 2016 by melmerby

[fcwilt]

I did some testing on the RS-8.

 

The two 1.5K resistors are dissipating about 400 mW which may account for the heat.

 

Poking around in that circuitry with a scope indicates nothing unusual.

 

The outputs of the dual 4-input multiplexer are correctly indicating the occupied state of the track sensing inputs.

 

However I have not yet figured out how the output states ultimately end up being transmitted on the RS bus.

 

Perhaps that part of the device has a problem.

 

Anybody have the schematic for an RS-8?

 

Thanks.

 

Frederick

[john barry]

I can't find one Frederick.

I used to specialise in repairing (undocumented) assemblies of about that complexity by first reverse engineering them but it is a bit hard with only your top view picture!

I presume IC1 (Z86E...?) does the work using the multiplexer to get the inputs and then dealing with the RS Bus.

This is the best description I have found http://www.der-moba.de/index.php/RS-R%C3%BCckmeldebus unfortunately (for me at least) in German.

 

I made the effort to Google translate it a while ago  RS Bus description.docx but it is a bit rough.

 

john

[melmerby]

Are these any use?

 

 

The top one is my board the other two from LDT's info

 

Keith

 

P.S. Good luck in dis-assembling the code in the Z86  

Edited July 23, 2016 by melmerby

[fcwilt]

Hi,

 

Having the parts list and "silk screen" will make it much easier to reverse engineer the schematic.

 

Thanks much.

 

Frederick

[melmerby]

Fortunately we're both on Rev 3.2 boards.

I have some earlier ones as well which have different layouts although the components seem(?) to be the same.

 

Cheers

 

Keith

[john barry]

Hi Guys,

Making good progress on the schematic although a clear picture of the component side tracks would help.

Can someone with a multimeter (and an actual RS8) tell me what IC9 pin 2 is connected to?

[Johnsy1975]

Hi, this is a little off topic but relevant to the polarity switching! I had this same issue with my LDT turnout decoders. I was told by DIgikeijs to deselect all the checked boxes on the track power section of the dr5000 interface, but at times it still change polarity on me.. Very frustrating. I was then told to upgrade to the latest version of the drivers, which I did yesterday! At first test all appears okay but I really didn't give it a good run! When updating the firmware all my turnout modules had to be reprogrammed to work !!arrrrrgghh. Has anyone else had these issues

[fcwilt]

Hi Guys,

Making good progress on the schematic although a clear picture of the component side tracks would help.

Can someone with a multimeter (and an actual RS8) tell me what IC9 pin 2 is connected to?

 

Be glad to take pictures and do whatever tests you need - but it's late here and I'm going to bed.

 

Can you wait until tomorrow (Sunday)?

 

Frederick

[john barry]

Of course I can wait Frederick. (it is 14:00 Sunday here!). A couple of detailed pics of the bottom half of the component side would be good. If you feel like a little multimeter work I would like to know what is connected to:

IC9 pin2

IC6 pins11 and 13

IC7 pins 9, 11 and 15

IC1 pins 1, 4, 8 and 9

D36 anode

I worked out a methodical way of doing this years ago. I will share it here later.

 

Johnsy,

not really off topic. See above about why LDT DCC things seem to be excessively sensitive to J-K polarity. I haven't had the same problem with Lenz decoders or home made Arduino ones. Loco decoders would be useless if this happened!

I suspect there is no answer as their (LDT's) firmware would be based on the input timing caused by their dodgy opto circuit so it couldn't easily be fixed by modification.

I mentioned (on the now vanished TC thread) about losing the settings. One of the improvements in 1.2.3 is the ability to export and restore the DR5000 settings.

 

Which reminds me...Keith and Frederick have you messed with the 'LDT timing' check box? Might solve something. Might also make it impossible to use LDT and Lenz modules on the same bus. Who knows!

-john

[Johnsy1975]

Thanks John, it is interesting considering the dr5000 doesn't denote a polarity on its output terminals. I will persevre and see how the new FireWire goes

[Johnsy1975]

Hello all  (in particular Frederick),

 

I have been asked to post these attached diagrams by Jeremy BRANDON, They refer to schematics of the LDT feedback modules.

 

enjoy

[john barry]

The RS8 Schematic story so far. Hard to get much further without an RS8. I haven't worried about the  power supply.

 

[fcwilt]

Of course I can wait Frederick. (it is 14:00 Sunday here!). A couple of detailed pics of the bottom half of the component side would be good. If you feel like a little multimeter work I would like to know what is connected to:

IC9 pin2

IC6 pins11 and 13

IC7 pins 9, 11 and 15

IC1 pins 1, 4, 8 and 9

D36 anode

I worked out a methodical way of doing this years ago. I will share it here later.

-john

 

OK I'm up and fed. Time to take some pics and do some tracing.

 

Frederick