jaym481

It looks like there's room for a chamber heater, in fact Elegoo plan to bring one out specifically for the Saturn 4 soon. Which heater did you get @ianmaccormac? I may just go that route if I end up with the Saturn 4 as the replacement for my aging Saturn 8k (well, not that old, but I could do with a few of the ergonomic improvements of the 4.)

I saw that video, and he mentions that the Thermal Vat Band which is a strip of heating elements inside a thin (less than 1mm I think) case that adheres to the tank might fit. The "band" is 1" wide, so if the tank has 1" of the side that doesn't decend into the chassis with the tilt, it just might work. My basement printer room has the same issue as you - in winter the temperature gets down to 17C and sometimes lower. I also have a portable heater for the room, but I don't think it's adequate to get the resin in the vat up to 25C or more. I have a Thermal Vat Band on order for my Saturn 8K, so I'll have a better idea of size etc.

How much does the vat move on the Saturn 4 Ultra? I'm putting a heater band on my Saturn 8k, and wonder if I were to try the same on the 4 Ultra would it foul the mechanism.

Are they shipping immediately? The Elegoo Canada "store" says "shipping June/July."

Should offer the loco and van as a boxed set.

I have a similar layout and chose the reverse loops on either end. Works well.

Glad I saw this. I am in the process of gradually buying sound decoders for my non-fitted locomotives. Now I know to wait.

Mine had the speaker in the housing, but the wires weren't soldered to the PCB.

They seemed to be close to the longest bar, but they are a necessity at this point, so I'll live with it. I don't understand why UK outline can't do close coupling like Continental HO. I have a rake of Roco coaches that negotiate 20" curves with ease and are so close on the straight you need to look very hard to see daylight between them. That's out of the box.

Thanks. I may have been biased by how locomotive bogies are often sprung in order to keep them on the track.

My short rake of four arrived today. Lovely things in crimson. I'm using Roco close couplers instead of the NEM bars provided as I need to be able to remove them from the layout easily. I had the same upside-down tension-lock couplers described earlier. Annoying, but not in any way a deal breaker. I do have an issue on one bit of code 100 track work where a curve goes into a point. The join is elevated slightly, and three of the four coaches' trailing bogie derails on the leading wheel set. I noticed then that the bogies are attached by a substantial screw, and have a spring which pushes the bogie towards the body of the coach. That seems backward to me - shouldn't it be pushing the bogies towards the track?

ESU does that. https://www.esu.eu/en/products/digital-control/mobile-control-ii/

If it runs OK on DC with the blanking plug in it should run on DCC even if the other functions are not working correctly. Did you get the 36-571 new? If not, the address may be changed and it will need a reset as @WIMorrison mentions above. Not sure if the EZ Command system can even do that though. As for installing it correctly, there should be some indication of what Pin 1 is on both the socket and the decoder.

An update: With the help pf DCC Train Automation and their effort to fix an international postage glitch, I've replaced the Digikeijs module with the LoDi KSM. The first thing I noticed when I powered up the track is that the current draw had gone from about 17mA down to 7mA, so clearly the DR5013 was drawing a fair amount of current. In any case, tests so far the KSM has performed flawlessly, and I've had no issues with the locomotives which caused grief to the 5013 before. Next is to get it set up for detection in the reverse loop. Thanks to all for the suggestions.

My last order was split as well. I especially thought it odd that the one locomotive I ordered was shipped separately, yet there was more than enough room in the box containing the rest of the order. As for the charges, I suspect they decided that absorbing the postage for the final push was a loss they could take.

The time difference makes calling anyone out of the question. I may try email though. As Iain said, it's the Digikeijs DR5013 that goes wobbly. The Z21 is fine. I'm just wondering what aspect common to TTS and TXS decoders might cause that, when ESU and Zimo sound decoders don't have an issue. Understanding that might enable me to make more informed choices going forward. As for the DR5013, it's slated for replacement as soon as I can find one that doesn't cost as much to post as it costs retail.

Does anyone know enough about the electrical magic of these to explain the issue I'm encountering? Note that it also happens with TTS decoders, but none of the other sound decoders I have (except, possibly, the decoder in a Dapol Black Label A4, but the issue only manifest once with that one).

I've turned off the Loconet short forwarding message in the DR5013, which solved the problem of the stop command to the Z21, so the only section that cuts out is now the loop. The cut out now seems to also happen further into the loop, about 20-30cm further in. I've run a few more locos through, including a Hornby one with a TTS decoder. The results show that only the Hornby sound decoders, TTS or TXS, cause this issue, and they only cause it when sound is turned on. With sound on or off the current draw difference seems negligible (perhaps a couple of hundredths of an Amp). My next change will be to set the short circuit delay higher and see if that changes anything. I'm baffled by how/why the issue is only with Hornby sound decoders (both types) and only when sound is on. I don't think it's inrush current from switching on the layout as that happens outside of the loop, and it doesn't happen with any other decoder. I'm going to pose the question on the Digikeijs discussion group and see if anyone else has encountered the issue. Jay

Not yet. I have had it set up for some time working without issues, so I had another look at the manual and realized it's probably set up to send the loconet message, and that could well be what's triggering the stop commnand for the Z21. More to follow once I get stuck in to the programming. Do you think I should change the short reaction timing? Just to be clear, I'm talking about the reaction of the unit to a short not related to the reverse loop, since mine is configured to change over by current sensing, not short circuit.

Some added info that I probably should have posted before - I'm not using the DR5013 in short circuit mode. It is combined with a Yamorc Loconet detection module to detect when a locomotive is approaching the isolated section, and it has its own detection to. I think, indicate when the locomotive is fully within the loop. It appears the problem happens as soon as the locomotive's rear-most pickup wheels pass across the isolation point. I can't be 100% certain of that though. What happens at that point is one of two things: 1. The DR5013 goes into short mode - flashing red LED above the green "normal" LED. If this happens power remains normal on the rest of the layout. 2. The DR50134 goes deat - no LEDs. If this happens the Z21 and booster go into "stop" mode - rapid flashing blue lights on the units. It doesn't go into short mode, which is flashing red lights on the units. I also have the bootser set up so it doesn't "forward" a short condition to the Z21 main unit, as that is my accessory bus. I hope my explanation is now clearer. Jay M

I'll look into the Littfinski unit and postage. Thank you. I think what I'll try is to change the short detection settings in the Digikeijs module first, by increasing the wait time as nigel suggested above. Another update: I tested another Hornby TXS-equipped locomotive and it tripped the module's short in exactly the same spot as the other one. I also tried my Dapol Black Label A4 again, and it successfully did several circuits without issue this time, howver I also noted a fluctuation in the current draw with it, and it draws considerably more current than the other locomotives - it once spiked at nearly 0.60A.

Thank you gentlemen. I'll try snubbers. I believe I have some already made up. The issue though is not the speed of the Z21 short circuit reaction, as it gets triggered by the Digikeijs reverse loop module shorting out. I'll dig into the documentation for the module and see if it can be changed there. Iain, thank you for the link, but I already checked with them - postage is £40 to Canada. I've exchanged a few messages through their FaceBook page, but their responses have been slow, and no other postage options have been offered. The German manufacturer of the LoDi modules has a similar postage rate to Canada. Since postage will effectively double the price, I'll wait until I can make an order more proportional to that rate. Mean time I might just put the AR1 back in, as I'm not doing much with detection at the moment.

An update to this. I remembered I had a DCC Concepts Alpha Meter which I hadn't installed because what now passes for a layout is going to be rebuilt over the next year. I connected the meter, and it showed I have 17.5-ish volts to the track, and with no locomotives or lit coaches wagons it shows a draw of 0.17A. The instructions say the meter doesn't read properly with no load, but I think my reverse loop module may be creating a load so it reads. In any case, I tried several locomotives, with sound decoders and without. I can safely ignore the non-sound ones for now. The sound decoders were all bar one a mix of ESU and Zimo. The one odd one was the Hornby TXS bluetooth decoder, set to DCC. The various locomotives showed the current draw to go up to between 0.21A and 0.30A with the sound on, lights where applicable, and with throttle at a steady setting the draw remained steady. The TXS fitted loco showed 0.19 at idle with nothing turned on, which was consitent with the others. With the sound turned on the draw increased to 0.21A, also roughly consistent. When throttle was applied the reading jumped around, between 0.24A and 0.38A. The largest fluctuation happened as the throttle was increasing, but it continued to fluctuate as I left the throttle setting alone, and the fluctuation settled some, varying between 0.24A and 0.30A. Once again as it entered the reverse loop, it tripped the short on the loop module, which triggered the stop condition on the Z21. I tried it a few times, and each time the meter reading at the time of the short was different, but between 0.24A and 0.27A. So it looks as if it's not the actual current draw but the spikes in the draw that may be triggering the loop module's safety system. Finally, I have so far been unable to find a LoDi KSM where the postage cost was almost the same as the cost of the module. It will have to wait until I can decide what else to order so the cost of postage can be justified. I'd appreciate any thought or observations. Thanks, Jay M

As far as I know, and in my experience, the board is agnostic. I haven't used Digitrax kit, so I can't speak to it, but I've used Z21, NCE and now Sprog with the board and haven't observed any issues as you describe.

That's what I have, though the double booster is track feed and the Z21 itself is accessory bus. My layout, such as it is, is more experimental than an actual layout though, so I rarely have more than two sound locos and a bunch of lit coaches on at at time. I do have an issue with a Digikeijs reverse loop module that apparently doesn't output enough to run a Hornby loco with one of their new HM7000 sound decoders installed. I need to sort that out.