Digitrax and various decoders: compatibility issues

[Johnfromoz]

Hi all,

 

Have been a DCC user for 15 years, almost all of that time using NCE Powercabs which I have found impeccable in performance. About a yr ago I purchased a Digitrax DC50 in good working condition for not much money, and have generally been happy with it on my large continuous run layout (I use the Powercab for all programming and finer control on my end to end layouts).

 

However, I have noticed increasing compatibity issues with certain decoders. With TTS sound decoders, for example, the DC50 is highly sensitive to the direction in which locos are placed on track. One direction full control, the other nothing. On the NCE, no such problems! I appreciate that this TTs issue is well documented and have been happy to overlook the issue due to TTS price etc.

 

Today however, I have discovered that the Digitrax controller is unable to produce simultaneous sound and movement ( one or the other but not both) on a new Bachmann class 57 loco said to be fitted with a Loksound V4. Again, no such issues with control using the Powercab. No amount of Digitrax rebooting or decoder resetting changes things.

 

My question is, have others experienced decoder compatibilty issues with Digitrax controllers and are there any solutions?

 

It seems very telling for me that in 15 years, my NCE gear has never had any problems with command or programming of any decoders, be hey ESU, Zimo, TCS or the cheaper Hornby efforts.

[Nigelcliffe]

TTS is a known bug in the Hornby decoders, so that's solved by sending the decoders to Hornby.

 

The LokSound is a new one on me,  I have an old DCS50 Zephyr, and have never experienced the problem.   (NB. the old DCS50 Zephyr keypad will only go up to Function8, a different throttle connected to the Zephyr will allow any functions to be accessed, current Zephyr Xtra's have all functions available). 
However, there was a bug in some old Zephyrs (random chance that you have one) which might be biting you - check the "Status edit" setting for the decoder, is it one of the normal 28/128 step settings, or something else ?   If something else, change it to a sensible setting (eg. S28 or S128), and see what happens.    If the problem repeats with the same loco some time in the future, then I suspect you have a buggy Zephyr where by on power-off it scrambles the status edit setting for any loco in the stack (of 10) but not the one under current control.    Work around is to constantly check the status editing, or to clear the stack (Op-Sw39) before a new running session.  There isn't an end-user fix for this, other than sending the unit back to Digitrax. 

[RAF96]

The TTS directional issue is as you say well documented and the answer is it has equally long since been fixed. All you have to do is return the decoder to Hornby per their recall on the Hornby forum and they will reprogram it to work correctly.

 

As to other decoders not working. It has been noted on the forums that some decoders will work fine in one chassis but not in another, but a different decoder will work OK in the errant chassis. The oddities of various manufacturers’ interpretation of the NMRA standard I suppose. A bit like famous international NATO standard, sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn’t.

 

I wonder how many manufacturers out there have a wide collection of other makers’ kit that they use to test compatibility of their products with, both decoders and controllers. E.g. have a look at Hornby’s Railmaster software and see how many loco decoders and accessory decoders are in their pull down lists. I am told they also have almost every other controller on hand.

 

Rob

[Johnfromoz]

Thanks for the input guys. I was aware of a Hornby TTS fix, but living in Tasmania, way not be feasible to send back multiple decoders.

 

In any case, I am more bemused that the Powercab exhibits none of these issues with TTS or ESU. I will look into the Digitrax suggestions, but am fortunate in having a spare powercab so will probably just switch to that. They seem bullet proof. Shame really, because the DCS50 has got some good things going for it, like a nice, linear throttle output which seems to give great stopping/starting momentum.