kendo

Not wishing to sound pedantic could I just point out that in the article on Falmouth Dock, in several places the positioning of ships has been referred to as birthing. Birthing is what midwives do for a living. Moving ships into dock is berthing.

Hi people, the scores are in........ Hattons were unable to answer my query and put me in touch with DCC Concepts in Oz. I exchanged several e-mails with Rand Cooley (despite his location he is actually American) who was very friendly and helpful. The decision to make the setting up codes 197 - 199 was not arbitrary but neither was it technical. It was made for the convenience of users of the most popular DCC systems who may well have been using all the numbers in the lower regions already. I have apologised to Rand for suggesting they had not done their homework. The initial batch of ip motors did have the self-centering ON by default, which did require turning off before an operating address could be set, so my earlier comment, that DCC use by Dynamis users was not possible, was fair comment. However, to assist Dynamis (and Select) users, subsequent batches are being produced with the motors physically centered at the factory but the self-centering command is OFF by default. It is no longer necessary for anyone to enter 198, and power off and on again, before setting an operating code, just connect the power and follow your system's instructions and do it. . (Confusingly the instructions in the box and on the website still say self-centering is On by default) Obviously it is still not possible to reverse the direction of throw from a Dynamis unit but, hey, half a loaf and all that. Dynamis users will therefore be able to set a code. The instructions seemed to suggest that having set a code, and moved the motor, self-centering will no longer be available if your system cannot access code 199 to turn it on again. Not so. To quote Rand : "You can still put the motors back to centre manually by simply cutting power to the motor mid-run and the arm will be at centre again. So you don't have to be reliant on the 199 function ." So, my assumption that because every time I put 198 into my handset it instantly reverted to 098 (I knew it would because I had read the instruction book) and the Cobalt instructions appeared to say I needed to use that code before setting an address, I believed I was stumped. Having been informed by Rand that current batches on the market should have the self-centering OFF by default, I wired up a motor and simply entered a code of my choice and low and behold it worked. If I had read the instructions on the web-site first, as some people so tactfully told me I should have done, and believed what they appeared to be telling me, I would not have bought the motors, which it now turns out I can use in DCC mode and they appear a much simpler and economical way of getting slow action motors without the need for separate accessory decoders (I would have needed six) and a 12v DC power supply, in addition to your basic DCC controller. Unfortunately the first motor I accessed and tested quickly began to malfunction. Having described the symptoms to Rand he has informed me I can return it to Hattons for replacement. Hopefully it is a one off and all the others will be fine - the second one does seem to work brilliantly. I was concerned that if I tested them all straight away I would not be able to re-centre them for fitting when I have finished the track laying and wiring, but that problem was answered by Rand as above. So, rather like a Shakespeare play, there have been a few twists in the tale but as the old Bard says "All's well that ends well" and as my boyhood hero, PC George Dixon, used to say "Mind how you go." Regards to all Kendo

To all those who have responded - it is apparent to me that many of you hold DCC Concepts in high regard, and far be it from me to spoil their reputation, but I have a reputation for telling things how they are. The facts here are these. A company has produced a DCC accessory and advertised it as such. My DCC controller has been on sale for well over five years and I had no idea what the maximum number of accessory addresses of DCC is, I have never had cause to find out, presuming like USB equipment for computers it is all "plug and play". In fact I have just researched the recently released Dynamis Ultima and see it still has the same 100 accessory address limit as my original version. If I was marketing such a product, and therefore much more tech savvy than I actually am, I think I would first of all check to make sure it would be compatible with as many makes of DCC controller on the market as possible. I would not assume that they all have the same range of addresses, however many that might be, and arbitrarily allocate an access code that was beyond the range of some well known brand of controller. As some of you have pointed out the instructions for Dynamis are available on the Web. Manufacturers have as much access to that information as potential customers, probably more so. (My poor brother-in-law lives on a farm in rural Suffolk where he still cannot get a Broadband connection and mobile phone reception is abysmal, so his opportunity to research products he sees advertised in papers and magazines is pretty well non-existant.) I appreciate the helpful suggestions like using a SPROG, (forgive me I have yet to look that up - to someone of my age sprogs is military slang for your children). If that is all it takes then perhaps DCC Concepts may offer to take the motors back and recode them, time will tell, so there is no point in anyone else telling me it is my fault I am in this situation because I trusted an apparently reputable company to be clear in its advertising and not expect me to be a technical wizard. The appeal of DCC to me was the ease of wiring things up and having a hand held controller instead of miles of wiring and a bank of switches. My purpose in opening this thread was to warn others of the situation I find myself in. I spent half my working life as a uniformed police officer and if I came across a situation likely to cause danger to someone else, such as a tree about to topple into the road, it was incumbent on me to take appropriate action to warn unsuspecting people, not just ring the council to come and do something about it and swan off. I promise to update you all on the outcome so there really is no need for any further comments. Regards Kendo

I am obviously from a different generation to a lot of the people posting on here. I am 65 years old and in my lifetime I have bought several new cars. I never felt it necessary to buy the Haynes manual in advance to check that every system on the car complied with UK construction and use regulations, I took it for granted they should not be sold if they did not. Why should I have to trawl through the internet to read the instructions in advance before buying point motors that purport to be DCC controllable and do not, in the advertising, specify any particular DCC system as incompatible?. I never did that before buying the Bachmann Dynamis controller and it did what I expected it to straight out of the box. I have asked Hattons of Liverpool for assistance as they are the supplier and the first port of call for dissatisfied customers under retail law is the retailer not the manufacturer. I presume they are in contact with DCC Concepts for advice and the fact there has been no immediate response leads me to believe there is unlikely to be a quick resolution. I still think DCC Concepts have made an error here but discussing it privately with them will not prevent other Dynamis users making the same assumption I did and coming a cropper, so that is why, in the meantime, I felt it right to point out this problem to other Dynamis users via a thread under DDC Topics.

Hi Ian, You are correct in that two boxes of Cobalt motors are not cheap. Call me old fashioned but I assumed that if a point motor is advertised for use under DCC control my DCC controller would be able to operate it, isn't DCC supposed to be a universal system? I have been in contact with Hattons of Liverpool who supplied them and still await a reply. There are issues even if they can be returned to have the self-centering switched off in that - a) they will then be physically more difficult to install - an unfair discrimination against Dynamis users, b) another function under code 199 - to be able to reverse the direction of movement- will probably still be unuseable to me ( unless the units can be recoded entirely, which I presume would entail returning them to the factory which I believe is in Australia ), and c) it is a pain in the neck to have to repackage things up and send them back when it could and should have been avoided because of manufacturers who have not done their homework. I think my comments are quite valid at this stage and are meant as a warning to anyone who is like me and may order them without realising their shortcomings in regard to the Dynamis system as nothing in the adverts says they are not compatible with Dynamis systems - which at this point in time they are not. If the problem can be solved I will immediately update this thread to that effect - I am not a troll! In my long experience as a consumer I have found there is nothing like bad publicity to get manufacturers to fix their mistakes quickly and I hope I will be able to report good news in due course, but until then my comments stand. Magazine reviewers often pass adverse comment on new products and they haven't shelled out the cash for them as I have and some other Dynamis user might well do before this gets sorted. Regards Kendo

Having had a small shunting layout for several years , on which I have used a Bachmann Dynamis controller and changed my points by hand, I decided to invest a little of my retirement pension pay-out on a larger layout. Having acquired 24 live frog turnouts and two boxes of the latest Cobalt ip digital motors I am faced with an apparently insurmountable problem. The Cobalts have come with a self-centering function active by default. In order to allocate accessory addresses when they have been installed, the self-centering needs to be turned off using a code on your DCC controller. DCC Concepts, in their wisdom, have chosen the code 198. Owners of Dynamis systems will immediately realise the problem here. Their handsets only have 100 accessory addresses numbered 001 to 100. Nothing higher can be entered. Therefore the self-centering cannot be turned off and a suitable operating address cannot be allocated to the turnout. As far as DCC control is concerned the Cobalts are useless to Dynamis users. Not being very technically minded I assume the code DCC Concepts selected is an arbitrary one. Could it not have been 001 or some similarly low number which every DCC controller on the planet would be guaranteed access to? It seems to me DCC Concepts have tripped up on this one for a lack of research on the specifications of the various DCC controllers available to their potential customers. In the words of the infamous Jeremy Clarkson - " How hard would that have been? " I suggest my fellow Dynamis users give the Cobalt motors a miss unless you want to wire them up for 12v DC use, which is entirely possible, but rather defeats to purpose of DCC control.