Deltang/Micron Receivers - help please

[Tickplan]

I am new to the world of radio controlled model trains but have been "volunteered" on behalf of my local club to try it out on a few locos. So far I have bought and built a Tx22 , installed one Rx41 receiver in one loco and am in the process of installing a second.  Progress has not been straightforward, probably because I am new to all this and while I find it fascinating, and the way forward for the future of model railway control, I also find it frustrating when things don't work. Can I say at the outset I have received exemplary service, help and advice from Andy at Micron Radio Control - even to answering my emails late in the evening at a weekend! However, I do not wish to feel that I am pestering him too much so I thought I would come on here and gather your collective experiences with my current problem.

The problem is this: the second receiver/loco was successfully "bound" with the Tx22 and worked just fine. However, after turning it all off and coming back to it a day later it refuses to sync. The LED on the receiver has the normal steady on-off pulse of once a second but when I turn on the transmitter - with the Selecta switch on 2 - the channel it was bound to- it changes to flashing twice quite quickly, then a second pause before the double flash. The first loco (Selecta switch position 1 ) did have similar problems but they seem to be resolved and when turning that on with the Selecta on 1 the receiver LED goes solid and the loco becomes controllable. Andy at Micron has said that the double flash is "a symptom of the transmitted Selecta value being out of range". He advised me to calibrate the Tx22 which I think I have done correctly and of course it works with loco 1 so why not loco 2?

I have read elsewhere that the problem could be confusion with strong wi-fi signals nearby  (my phone is on my person and I have a Smart watch which connects to the phone by Bluetooth I believe. I don't know whether there is anything in this but taking both off and leaving them some distance away has not resolved the problem.

I don't know whether it is possible to "re-bind" the receiver back to the same or another Selecta position but turning the receiver on while the transmitter is off does not put it in "binding mode" (rapid flashes)

I would love to get all this kit working as it should but I am finding it all a bit too delicate at the minute. Of course it could just be me but if this is to work in a club setting then it needs to be a bit more robust than I have managed to make it thus far.

Any advice anyone on what I am doing wrong?

Thanks in anticipation.

 

Bryan

[Giles]

It sounds to me as if the receiver is possibly being shielded.  It can happen that the Arial ends up masked, or tucked behind something and it doesn't receive a clean signal.

 

I would first ensure that the battery (loco) is charged, and then try taking the body off the loco and re laying the receiver and arial.  Try binding with the body off....... 

 

Mostly, these things are extremely reliable, so it is worth getting to the bottom of. Yes you can re-bind it to the original channel (or any other- it should not make any difference). I've never really noticed any interference with any of my other equipment that happens yo be 2.4GHz, so it's not likely to be the root cause of the problem.

 

Good luck

 

Giled

[Tickplan]

Thanks Giles I will try your suggestion. However, I do notice that when the receiver is on it behaves differently (in terms of flashes) depending on if the transmitter is on or off and set to the correct "channel" on the Selecta. That suggests to me that it is receiving a signal, but not the one it needs to make things work.

 

Bryan

[wasdavetheroad]

 

The problem is this: the second receiver/loco was successfully "bound" with the Tx22 and worked just fine. However, after turning it all off and coming back to it a day later it refuses to sync. The LED on the receiver has the normal steady on-off pulse of once a second but when I turn on the transmitter - with the Selecta switch on 2 - the channel it was bound to- it changes to flashing twice quite quickly, then a second pause before the double flash.

 

Once you have bound a receiver to the transmitter the sequence for subsequent sessions is to ALWAYS switch on the transmitter before switching on the receivers. 

[Corbs]

Has the little aerial wire become broken? This happened on one of mine, I sent it back to Andy who fixed it for very little money.

[Tickplan]

Thanks everyone,

 

In an effort to be methodical and try these suggestions one at a time I did the following:

 

a) Turned the transmitter on first before turning on the receiver - no effect. (I am sure I was doing this previously except when attempting a binding - however, this is such a simple point that it is surprising that it is not mentioned anywhere in the instructions)

b) Took the receiver out of the loco , and then turned on in the correct sequence. - no effect. (The receiver was previously fixed to the underside of the cab roof with some blu tac. This is in a metal-bodied loco. The aerial was trapped partly under the blu-tac so I was hopeful this was the culprit but not so).

c) Charged the battery , and then turned on in the correct sequence - no effect. (I use one of the Micron dedicated chargers rated to the battery so I knew it was fully charged when the LED went from red to blue).

d) Re-bound the receiver - SUCCESS.  (Interestingly the receiver went into rapid flash mode after 20 seconds as it should when "fresh". I had not been able to emulate this earlier except at the initial bind.

 

So what does this tell me? My guess is that it is a combination of these steps. However I suspect that charging the battery until it was "full" made the biggest difference - but not sure why, particularly as I don't think the battery was anywhere near depleted.

 

I have now put the receiver back in the loco (ensuring the aerial is not trapped and with it sort of dangling in free space into the - partly enclosed- cab) and reassembled everything. All now works as it should.

 

A big thank you to everyone on here who has helped and made suggestions. 

 

Bryan

[PaulB85]

Hi folks,

 

Thought I would post in here as I'm having a similar problem. I'm using a Deltang Rx41 receiver with an E-Flite/Blade MLP4DSM transmitter (which I've previously bound successfully with the same receiver), at the moment I'm still working on the build so the receiver isn't inside a model. Here's what's happening:

 

• connect battery to receiver, wait for rapid LED flash
• power on transmitter with left stick pressed in, release stick
• one of two things is happening - either the receiver's rapid flash carries on indefinitely, or the LED immeditately goes off completely
• no binding achieved

I've tried two different LiPo batteries for the receiver and charged them both fully. I've also put new batteries into the transmitter. None of this has changed the situation.

[Giles]

Assuming the receiver arial is OK (if in doubt, replace it with a new length of wire - the same length) and that likewise the transmitter is ok .

 

If you've got another model that you can bind the transmitter to to test it, do so, to eliminate that as a problem.

 

Try binding to the rceiver from a greater distance (I know it sound silly, but it worked for me once - it could have been a fluke, but who knows....), and at with the transmitter pointing in a different direction.

 

It's worth a try!

[idd15]

11 hours ago, PaulB85 said:

Hi folks,

 

Thought I would post in here as I'm having a similar problem. I'm using a Deltang Rx41 receiver with an E-Flite/Blade MLP4DSM transmitter (which I've previously bound successfully with the same receiver), at the moment I'm still working on the build so the receiver isn't inside a model. Here's what's happening:

 

• connect battery to receiver, wait for rapid LED flash
• power on transmitter with left stick pressed in, release stick
• one of two things is happening - either the receiver's rapid flash carries on indefinitely, or the LED immeditately goes off completely
• no binding achieved

I've tried two different LiPo batteries for the receiver and charged them both fully. I've also put new batteries into the transmitter. None of this has changed the situation.

Hi

Once a receiver is bound to a particular transmitter(tx) you should not have to bind it again to that tx unless you have bound it to another tx in the meantime.

 

After a receiver has been bound it is important that when next powering it on the tx is powered on first and left for a couple of seconds and then turn on the receiver. If you do it the other way round there is a very good chance the receiver will drop into bind mode.

 

As @Giles has said if a receiver is reluctant to bind then move the tx 1 to 2m away and it should then bind successfully. Sometimes it is necessary to power off the receiver and tx and go through the power on rx then tx in bind mode after you’ve increased the distance between the two. It does seem a bit counter intuitive but basically it’s possible to swamp the receiver during binding if the tx is too close. Once bound you should find the link is pretty damn bomb proof and works every time, just remember tx on first.

 

On larger Spektrum DSM2/DSMX receivers there is either a bind button or a binding plug used to put the receiver into bind mode. On the small lightweight stuff where a bind plug/button is impractical then they rely on the rx on first routine to go into bind mode that can at times seem a bit vague…😀

 

HTH

idd

 

PS forgot to mention always make sure you are using a fully charged battery when binding as that removes another variable.

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by idd15
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