DCC DCC cry for help

[Rob Pulham]

Hello all,

I haven't dabbled in DCC since I moved up to 7mm 6 or 7 years ago. Back in August I bought a Lenz LH100 set up and collected a couple of Zimo MX645 chips from Digitrains at Telford. I have finally got around to getting everything out of the box setting it up and wiring in one of the chips/speakers etc.

I have managed to set up the Lenz to english etc. and not getting any sort of response out of the unit movement wise. using the standard "to track" wiring I moved the leads to the programming track terminals and tried again.

I have managed to go through the programming menus to get to read the address of the chip (I had in mind that the default address was no 3 but since I wasn't getting any movement when attempting to get it to run on address 3 I looked to confirm the actual address) but all I get is Error 02 which according to the manual is that it doesn't find a chip.

Below is a photo of the wiring set up -

Red and black to the track

Orange and grey to the motor terminals

The two purple to the speaker

The Blue and grey from the opposite end of the chip to the keep alive

All as per the diagrams/notes that came with the chip.



Initially I had the wires soldered to a couple of strips of PCB but I have taken them out of the equation and I have even tried clipping the crocodile clips direct to a pair of wheels and the soldered joint between the wires coming from the wheels to the red/black wires to eliminate any dirty track/wheels from the equation

Despite having done quite a bit of DCC in the past which included a couple of the old Bachmann split chassis, it was so long ago that I class myself as a complete DCC novice and any help that you can offer will be greatly appreciated. It's also my first foray into sound/keep alives.

 

[3 LINK]

Hi Rob,

I feel your pain, I'm afraid I cannot help as it's all double Dutch to me, but I'm sure someone will be along soon.

Happy New Year,

Martyn.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Thanks Martyn,

A Happy New year to you and yours too.

 

[SteveB]

Hi Rob

I'm a novice as well, but I have managed to get Zimo decoders to work okay. I've got an NCE system and I'm afraid I'm know nothing about Lenz. The decoder will work fine without a stay alive capacitor. Is it possible that the capacitor have been wired the wrong way round? It might be worth checking it or trying without the capacitor. Your wiring of the decoder looks to be right.

All the decoders I've had have always had the 3 address as standard.

Hope this helps a bit.

Regards

Steve

 

[Steph Dale]

Rob,
I'm not familiar with the decoder, but all those I've tried with keep alive have proven to be a bit iffy with CV read/write.

I suggest removing the keep alive and read CV3 again. If that works, reset the decoder according to the manual, then programme and fit the keep alive afterwards. Don't forget to set CV29 to digital-only operation, otherwise the keep alive won't be fully effective, if at all.

It might just be worth hard wiring the decoder inputs to the command station.

Steph

 

[richard carr]

Rob

As others have suggested first remove the stay alive.

If it still doesn't want to play ball it's probably a dud decoder you do get them and more often than you might imagine.
If you have another one try it.

Richard

 

[Scale7JB]

I must admit, in my experience the Lenz controllers don't work too well with Zimo chips..

I had my K2 with admittedly an older generation chip on tinkers green sidings, and it blew the amplifier on the chip. Might be worth checking compatability with a Google search..

JB.

 

[Rob Pulham]

Thanks guys, I will remove the keep alive and give it a whirl from there. I have a second chip to try if needed and I also have a couple of non sound Lokpilots.

I haven't heard anything about incompatibilities between Zimo and Lenz so hopefully that's a thing of the past.

 

[John K]

I must admit, in my experience the Lenz controllers don't work too well with Zimo chips..
JB.

Sorry John you are well wide of whatever you were aiming at.
The decoder doesn't know what brand of system its connected to, it only sees control packets and they look identical whatever the handset and command station.
I have used Lenz since the last millennium, and the ZIMO 64x Sound range performs superbly with the Lenz 100 hand set.
I have several of the current version of the decoder with active braking on F2 and I think they are the best.
The sound quality will depend on who set up the sound set on the decoder. Anything by Paul Chetter will be good.

Rob
The tiny stay alive cap supplied with the Zimo decoder will not prevent its programming with a Lenz system.
Put the loco on your programming track and set CV8 = 8. That will return it to the settings with which it was sent to you.
It's unusual for any supplier to send out a duff decoder - most merchants test the decoder before despatch.
If it then does not respond to address 03 after CV8 = 8 we can assume it has been shorted and blown. This can happen after installation if the open terminals of the speaker meet the inside of a brass engine.

Best
John K

 

[Rob Pulham]

Thanks John,

I think that I have a faulty Lenz unit. - I have tried connecting all the other 3 chips that I have to the programming track connection - croc clips connected to the red and black wires and they all report error 02. I find it hard to believe that all 4 are faulty chips given the 2 are Zimo and 2 are Lokpilot.

I bought the unit from Hattons so I will talk to them on Tuesday

 

[Scale7JB]

John,

As mentioned in the post it was just something that had happened to my particular Zimo chip, which I could only put down to being controlled by Lenz system.

I was also under the impression that Lenz system sent out a slightly different signal, and may be the reason why the older generation chip went bang.. It may have been a short in the layout somewhere, but I'm sure Simon would disagree.

Needless to say after having to send the chip back to Zimo to be repaired, I'm very wary of the Lenz system now.

JB.

 

[Nigel Cliffe]

Thanks John,

I think that I have a faulty Lenz unit. - I have tried connecting all the other 3 chips that I have to the programming track connection - croc clips connected to the red and black wires and they all report error 02. I find it hard to believe that all 4 are faulty chips given the 2 are Zimo and 2 are Lokpilot.

I bought the unit from Hattons so I will talk to them on Tuesday

A decoder without a load on it will NOT be detected on the programming track. The Decoder must have a load on it, such as a motor.



(parallel threads on two forums isn't the best way to fix things as both have mis-information from well-meaning but wrong contributors in them ).


- Nigel

 

[Rob Pulham]

Hi Nigel,

In light of your post above and not wanting to miss a possible solution I wired one of the lokpilot chips into another loco that ran fine on DC and tested it on the programming track with the same error result.

 

[Scale7JB]

Does this help Rob?



JB.

 

[Nigel Cliffe]

Rob,

( I think JB's post is unlikely to be relevant as I'd expect a new Lenz system to be set to 28/128 steps, so should just work with a new decoder which will be set the same. So, its old information for older system changes ).


That's now pointing to a problem with the programming track output, which is may be a setting in the Lenz system, or user mistake, or may be a fault.


Lenz manuals for programming, making sure the "right" part is being followed:
V3.6 manual for the LH100, page 49, section 12.3 " Programming on the Programming track – F8"
Section 12.3.3 - connect the programming wires to terminals P and Q on the command station, from there to the red/black decoder leads (or loco pickups), with decoder connected to a motor (or in a loco).
Section 12.3.6 - reading/writing CV's directly (ie. bypassing any "friendly" help which may be obstructing us). Go through the steps carefully, and you should read a value back from CV1 (expect 3 from a new decoder) and from reading CV8 ( for CV8, an ESU decoder will read 151, and a Zimo 145). If you can read CV1 and CV8, then I think the programming is working. You could confirm by reading back CV3, and then setting a different value (keep the values below 10), and reading back your newly set value.
Around Section 12.3.6, the manual talks of "direct", "register", and "paged", with the default being "direct". Modern decoders work with "direct", so that should not be an issue.

A loco which passes the above, should run on address 3 on the main track output. Or, if you put the loco back to programming, you should be able to change the address in CV1 to a value between 1 and 99.




One further test (this test is outside of normal recommendations, but your wiring in pictures looks fine, so I think the risks to a chip are minimal). Do you have a DC power controller (a simple one, such as an old H&M Clipper, or a non-feedback design, or a 9v battery ) ?
Don't use a feed-back based DC controller such as some Gaugemaster models, nor a Pentroller, in both cases the chopped output will lead to problems (some more serious than others). And no system with a Relco or similar electronic track cleaner connected or that is fried chips !

An out of the box new decoder ought to be setup for DC running, I think LokPilots will be set that way. (The manual for the LokPilot V4 contains values which don't make complete sense to me, but imply DC running is enabled from factory)
With the LokPilot chip wired to loco, will it run on DC via the chip ? The behaviour on a controller will be nothing until about 5volts, and then should accelerate up/down the speeds, and will stop if below about 5v. Or, on a 9v battery will speed up to a middle-ish running speed, and reversing the battery will cause it to run the other direction.

That test would show us that the chip in the test loco appears to be OK
( NB, this isn't the way I'd normally test a new installation, but as you don't currently have a working programming track, and need to know the loco+decoder is working).





If the loco+decoder works on DC, but fails to read, I'm running out of diagnostics, and it points to something wrong with your Lenz system (or systematic failures in your installations, which seems unlikely from the photograph).
If you can perform a full reset of the Lenz system, do so, and if still broken, contact the retailer.





- Nigel

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Rob

ERROR 2 on the lenz system is a failure of the unit to acknowledge and/or read the decoder. This is usually down to a faulty connection between the track and decoder, decoder and motor and/or dirty track/wheels.

I'm with Nigel on this and my approach is always:

Isolate programming track from rest of system
Check programming outputs P and Q from command station are secure to the programming track
Check the programming track and wheels are clean
Check pickups from wheels are functioning
If necessary remake the solder joints from the motor to decoder and track to decoder

Then as Nigel suggests follow the instructions on page 49 of the throttle manual.

If you are going to do a fair amount of programming I would invest in the Sprog decoder programmer.

Nigel - ESU decoders are DC enabled from the factory. I always have to turn this off in CV29 for digital operation only.

 

[Nigel Cliffe]

Dave's confirmation that ESU decoders are DC enabled means that the battery or DC controller test will work.
It is not a recommended approach (because a mistake in decoder wiring or a faulty motor could result in shorting the decoder outputs and thus decoder damage), but with this level of "stuck" it may provide a way of confirming one decoder is working correctly. And thus reduce the potential issues that we're chasing down.

( Sprogs and computers are a side issue here. An alternative to Sprog is the Lenz computer interface box to connect the Lenz system to a computer. Both use the same JMRI software, so decoder setup is the same. For just decoder programming, the Sprog is considerably cheaper. But the Lenz box opens up computer control (including using smartphones as extra driving throttles) of the entire Lenz system. ).


- Nigel

 

[Rob Pulham]

Thanks again Nigel,

I do have a simple DC controler - but I think it's a Gaugemaster. I am not sure if it has feedback or not also it does have one dial (right hand one) that's some sort of simulator. I have never used it so I haven't really paid it any attention.

I will give your recommendations a go and let you know how I get on.

 

[John K]

Rob
Are you near enough for any of the DCC savvy folk at Keighley club to taker a look for you?
It may be faster than sending you Lenz set back to Hattons.
John K

 

[S7BcSR]

Jonathan

Reference to Tinkers Green Sidings, I use ZTC system not Lenz. I have to say that I am not predisposed to Lenz system as when I was looking at systems years ago I felt that Lenz was the least of the systems I tried and more recently on a DCC course it was suggested by the lecturer that Lenz systems gave the most problems (not specified). However, that is not to condemn Lenz systems as I have no doubt that many people get them working very well.

Rob