Hornby 2023 - Bluetooth decoders and control system

[WIMorrison]

The Network Host is the decoder that you are trying to connect to 😂.

 

Bluetooth is just another network protocol, like TCP/IP that your computer uses to access the world wide web.

[JSpencer]

7 minutes ago, WIMorrison said:

The Network Host is the decoder that you are trying to connect to 😂.

 

Bluetooth is just another network protocol, like TCP/IP that your computer uses to access the world wide web.

 

If that is the case, the chip is refusing to connect to the app and just goes "Beep", "beep", "beep", "beep".... I think this chip is faulty.

[meatloaf]

On the 73 it looks like the decoder is upside down. On 21 pin locos the black bit is normally at the top. - like on the blanking plug. Having said that one of the pins on the decoder is normally blanked off so should only fit one way.

 

The 73s had an issue on DCC, not sure if thats fixed on later releases.

 

 

 

 

[Marcoblanco]

Maybe check eurail video he did on YouTube as he used a Dapol 73 and had to do several 'power cycles' before everything worked correctly. I checked the orientation of your decoder and it looked ok but makes sense to check and re check before assuming the decoder is faulty. Good luck.. 

Waiting for Android before I dive in and have a play as don't use apple stuff. 

[tezzrexx]

46 minutes ago, Marcoblanco said:

Maybe check eurail video he did on YouTube as he used a Dapol 73 and had to do several 'power cycles' before everything worked correctly. I checked the orientation of your decoder and it looked ok but makes sense to check and re check before assuming the decoder is faulty. Good luck.. 

Waiting for Android before I dive in and have a play as don't use apple stuff. 

 

I had a two problems when trying to get started; having to reload the profiles a couple of times, and then it wouldn't run. After a couple of power cycles, that seemed to do the trick.

 

Separately, will these decoders cope with Seuthe smoke generators? 

[Bulleidboy100]

The decoder is upside down - black strip should be on top - I made that mistake🤫

Edited March 26, 2023 by Bulleidboy100

[RAF96]

In the photo showing the blanking plate the blank pin is top right but in the photo with it removed the blank pin appears to be bottom right. The photo with the decoder in seems to have the blank pin correct but normally the flat face of the decoder would be at the plug, not plug to socket.

Edit - I would suggest the decoder fits flat face down and facing right.

Edited March 26, 2023 by RAF96

[RAF96]

7 hours ago, tezzrexx said:

 

I had a two problems when trying to get started; having to reload the profiles a couple of times, and then it wouldn't run. After a couple of power cycles, that seemed to do the trick.

 

Separately, will these decoders cope with Seuthe smoke generators? 

 

The power cycles are important, just like restarting your computer after an update.

 

If the smoke generator is less than 100mA current draw then it will run from a high level Aux function output. If not you will have to arrange to feed it from a relay controlled by the decoder.

Edited March 26, 2023 by RAF96

[RAF96]

15 hours ago, Bob83a said:

Has anyone tried the Legacy Dongle. What is it capable of, e.g how many decoders can it control simultaneously.

 

What DCC systems have you tried it with, Hornby say Elite/Select but no guarantee for any other Expressnet controller.

 

No docs that I can find on the Hornby site.

 

I have used the dongle on beta testing and it works fine. At present it is not yet available until formal pre-release testing has been accomplished.

Each regular decoder equipped loco is assigned in the app to the dongle which passes app commands to the Xpressnet capable controller hence regular DCC commands to the locos. No limit on number of locos that can be assigned to a single dongle. Each dongled loco appears on the control screen in its own right same as the bluetooth equipped locos. Note - the dongle is only needed to control regular decoders from the app via a suitable DCC controller.  They can still be controlled direct.

[RAF96]

12 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

What about motor control?

 

 

Each sound profile is tuned to its associated loco, be that in OO or TT . That usually works fine.

If the default control is inadequate say because the Hornby profile has been installed in another loco make, then there is auto-calibrate. This usually corrects any cross-make mismatch and is a simple procedure requiring F0 to be set to off before you start as this is the trigger. Set CV149 to value 0 to arm the system. Press F0 and the loco will race off at max chat for around 2 metres then stop. Procedure complete. CV149 is now set to value 2 and the motor PID CVs are set accordingly. FO reverts to controlling the lights.

In the event auto-cal is not good enough then full manual adjustment of the motor PID characteristics is possible. The whole process is detailed in the 130 page decoder manual.

I have found any disparate loco will reliably run back and forth on my shuttle track using speed step one after auto-cal.

[Porfuera]

22 hours ago, Pmorgancym said:

Do they maintain a list of what sounds are available?  I know there's a list of proposed sounds, but I'd like to know what I can play with right now :)

 

There is a pdf document of available sound profiles here that contains a date and presumably the date gets updated whenever new additions are made:

 

https://support.Hornby.com/hc/en-gb/article_attachments/8186556539804/Available_Profiles_for_HM_DCC__24-3-2023_.pdf

 

I guess that link won't be much use if it does get updated because the date will change (and therefore the file name will be different) so the link can be found at the bottom of this page, which also contains pdfs of the Profile Function Maps:

 

https://support.Hornby.com/hc/en-gb/articles/8070608241052-HM7000-HM-DCC-Profile-Function-Maps

Edited March 26, 2023 by Porfuera

[Ron Ron Ron]

9 minutes ago, RAF96 said:

 

Each sound profile is tuned to its associated loco, be that in OO or TT . That usually works fine.

If the default control is inadequate say because the Hornby profile has been installed in another loco make, then there is auto-calibrate. This usually corrects any cross-make mismatch and is a simple procedure requiring F0 to be set to off before you start as this is the trigger. Set CV149 to value 0 to arm the system. Press F0 and the loco will race off at max chat for around 2 metres then stop. Procedure complete. CV149 is now set to value 2 and the motor PID CVs are set accordingly. FO reverts to controlling the lights.

In the event auto-cal is not good enough then full manual adjustment of the motor PID characteristics is possible. The whole process is detailed in the 130 page decoder manual.

I have found any disparate loco will reliably run back and forth on my shuttle track using speed step one after auto-cal.

 

That's pretty comprehensive adjustability and a marked step up compared with Hornby's past DCC efforts.

However my question was, how does the motor control compare with the best available?

All the adjustability and tuning in the world, doesn't necessarily guarantee the best results.

e.g. Zimo and ESU have improved the quality of their decoder's already excellent motor drive, with previous successive upgraded versions of their decoder models.

 

 

.

[miles73128]

53 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

That's pretty comprehensive adjustability and a marked step up compared with Hornby's past DCC efforts.

However my question was, how does the motor control compare with the best available?

All the adjustability and tuning in the world, doesn't necessarily guarantee the best results.

e.g. Zimo and ESU have improved the quality of their decoder's already excellent motor drive, with previous successive upgraded versions of their decoder models.

 

 

.

I ran the auto calibrate on a Dapol Class 73. It's working nice and smoothly after that. Cant say for any others, but looks very good so far! 

[D3489gibson]

Well, I bit the bullet lastnight and ordered two power banks, and a 21pin, and 8pin sound decoder. Used my loyalty points to knock £81.43 off the total bill, plus my club discount, took it down to about £68ish, so less than the cost of the 21pin decoder. Now a waiting game for the app to appear on the play store, and for them to arrive... oh and figure out what to put the decoders into...

[RedgateModels]

1 hour ago, miles73128 said:

I ran the auto calibrate on a Dapol Class 73. It's working nice and smoothly after that. Cant say for any others, but looks very good so far! 

I can see I’m going to need a few lengths of flexi to run auto calibrations on, my test track is just a 6x4 rad 2 loop…….

[RAF96]

5 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

That's pretty comprehensive adjustability and a marked step up compared with Hornby's past DCC efforts.

However my question was, how does the motor control compare with the best available?

All the adjustability and tuning in the world, doesn't necessarily guarantee the best results.

e.g. Zimo and ESU have improved the quality of their decoder's already excellent motor drive, with previous successive upgraded versions of their decoder models.

 

 

.

 

I have no other makes of decoders to do a direct comparison with, just that I am very impressed with the control achieved both out of the box and with auto-cal.

[JSpencer]

9 hours ago, RAF96 said:

In the photo showing the blanking plate the blank pin is top right but in the photo with it removed the blank pin appears to be bottom right. The photo with the decoder in seems to have the blank pin correct but normally the flat face of the decoder would be at the plug, not plug to socket.

Edit - I would suggest the decoder fits flat face down and facing right.

 

It depends which class 73. Here are early and later ones. Since trying the Elite as the power source (though the intention was to run via bluetooth), the chip has ceased functioning at all. It just goes beep beep beep. It no longer works on Bachmann DC period and the telephone can no longer detect it. It's going back.

 

On Dapol 73s, there are different circuit boards and the pins do face the other way.  I hesitate getting another of these chips. Might wait for the chips to mature a bit now.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 26, 2023 by JSpencer

[Pmorgancym]

Not seen it expressly mentioned, how do the soundchips fit with locos which already have with factory fitted speakers?

[rmnik]

20 minutes ago, Pmorgancym said:

Not seen it expressly mentioned, how do the soundchips fit with locos which already have with factory fitted speakers?

On the 18 pin decoder pins 7 and 16 are the speaker output, it is likely that these pins will be routed to the internal speaker from the loco pcb and the speaker socket on the decoder.

[Marcoblanco]

what type of phone/handset/ tablet are you using John s?

[Plomax]

On 25/03/2023 at 21:59, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

The pricing is very competitive and certainly a lot cheaper than the SoundTraxx Blunami, even if the sound quality isn't as good

(Note: Blunami is a Tsunami decoder with the added Bluetooth capability. Tsumami sound quality is very good)

 

Early suggestions on here, are that the sound quality is much better than TTS, but short of that from Zimo or LokSound.

What about motor control?

 

If trying to gauge value for money, the added cost of HM7000 decoders, over decent quality budget decoders (£20 - £25), works out roughly as....

£15 - £20 extra for Bluetooth capability (depending on the connector type), plus another.....

£25 extra for the TXS sound.

 

 

.

 

I'd be interested, have you actually conducted an audio test on the Soundtraxx Blunami, ESU and Zimo compared with the HM7000 decoder, or are folk just reading from a spec sheet?

 

I've got various Zimo, ESU and now HM7000 decoders fitted, and with the correct speaker, the different in audio quality cannot be detected by the human ear......or at least my ears and my hearing is good.

 

In my opinion, for what you now get with the HM7000 decoder in terms of functionality, control and audio quality - i cannot justify the additional cost of a Zimo or ESU given what they offer over HM7000 only appeal to probably less than 5% of those that buy them.....

Edited March 27, 2023 by Plomax

[JSpencer]

12 hours ago, Marcoblanco said:

what type of phone/handset/ tablet are you using John s?

iPhone

[RedgateModels]

15 minutes ago, Plomax said:

In my opinion, for what you now get with the HM7000 decoder in terms of functionality, control and audio quality - i cannot justify the additional cost of a Zimo or ESU given what they offer over HM7000 only appeal to probably less than 5% of those that buy them.....

 

But it's not just the sounds, it's the driveability of the scheme and especially for steam outline is the ability to alter the chuff rate to match wheel rotation and not to keep running round chuf chuf chuffing all the time. There is a coasting sound function, which does activate when you are using the auto sounds function when you slow the loco, but it only coasts for a second or too and then we get the chuf chuf chuf again. If you want it on for anything like a reasonable time you have to manually select the function.

 

As I said, all this is possible to fix in a later revision of the sound files, but we will see if there is a will for Hornby to invest the time. If this can be achieved then they are looking to seriously rival the best of the Zimo/Loksound sound schemes out there.

[Plomax]

6 minutes ago, RedgateModels said:

 

But it's not just the sounds, it's the driveability of the scheme and especially for steam outline is the ability to alter the chuff rate to match wheel rotation and not to keep running round chuf chuf chuffing all the time. There is a coasting sound function, which does activate when you are using the auto sounds function when you slow the loco, but it only coasts for a second or too and then we get the chuf chuf chuf again. If you want it on for anything like a reasonable time you have to manually select the function.

 

As I said, all this is possible to fix in a later revision of the sound files, but we will see if there is a will for Hornby to invest the time. If this can be achieved then they are looking to seriously rival the best of the Zimo/Loksound sound schemes out there.

 

Interesting point you made about altering the chuff rate to match the wheel rotation.

 

I've been playing around a lot with the complex speed curve CV's with it enabled via CV29 and actually got very good visible results. I actually tuned it to equal 4 beats per revolution until i time when the wheels were rotating faster than i could count......

 

It's a half way house - but then, we are talking about something that is STILL considerably cheaper than ESU or Zimo.....

[Denny]

I'm really enjoying my first foray into digital control. HM700 has completely changed the dynamic of my small end to end layout. I haven't had anything other than DC so I probably sit within the target market. 

It was an easy migration - DC controller to max and off it went! Fantastic stuff! With the co-co loco at least. 

 

I think I might need to auto-calibrate my Hornby 09. I'm assuming, it's an old enough model not to have gizmos in it which tell the decoder which loco it is in (no PCB, just a socket).

Forgive my ignorance but can the auto-calibration be done by simply propping the loco on blocks and supplying power to the wheels? I don't have 1.5 meters of track! 

 

Couple of sidenotes/findings:

 

I bought two 8pin decoders and both had the missing sound file problem/bug? I found that if you ignore the message, re-install the function map and CV's before re-installing the full profile over the top it'll work properly first time. I tried many times to just re-install the relevant profile but ended up with the same missing sound files unless I installed the other two before re-trying. Others may have figured this out but I've seen guidance to just keep re-installing the profile until it eventually works. That said, my findings might just be coincidence...

 

I also found the default sound volume is way too high and caused crackles, even after sealing the enclosure with UHU glue. Thankfully you can just adjust it within the app! Neat! 

 

I'm planning some cl 09 butchery to install the Power Bank - it looks like it might be a tight squeeze in the cab. Has anyone attempted it yet with the Hornby HM7070/R7377?

Edited March 27, 2023 by Denny