DCC How To Wire An V4 XL decoder

Pete Harvey

Pete Harvey

Active Member
Hi all I have been working on my Heljan Deltic and modeling as 55016 yes the purple one.

I have made the lighting boards for each end and I have mounted and connected up a Loksound XL V4 Leggomanbiffo Sound loaded, decoder to the motors, the only thing I'm stumped on is the lights as I would like proper modern type lights.

55016 Lights.jpg
Markers fronts and rears on F0 and will change with direction, with the rears switchable (on off) if possible and the fans, this is where I'm lost with the XL.

I would like Day & Night high viz lights as independent and independent head code lights at either end.
55016-31.jpg
My question to those that have more experience with the V4 XL which AUX connectors should I use out of the 10 available on the XL?

All suggestions and advise appreciated

Pete
 
BrushType4

BrushType4

Western Thunderer
Before any one answers your question I think you need to post a few more pictures of the build and painting of that beast. :)
 
Pete Harvey

Pete Harvey

Active Member
I have a 4mm version in build and will try to get that finished during 2015.

SH107442.JPG
SH107447A.jpg

The buffers are solid and from A1 Models, the ETH connectors are mine and a link to them is in the 3D Printed section of my website.
I shrunk my 7mm Deltic set and had it etched in brass for the steps.

I will be fitting Nano Led in the 4mm model from Express Models.

Pete
 
BrushType4

BrushType4

Western Thunderer
Superb! I hope someone comes forward and let's you know how to get the chip working as you want. Your model deserves it.
 
adrian

adrian

Flying Squad
That is a brave and brilliant bit of hacking the Heljan model. Sorry I can't help with the sound chip but the etchings and paintwork look fantastic.
 
Cliff Williams

Cliff Williams

Western Thunderer
Its eas yPete

Use front headlights F0 for front headcode, rear headlights for rear headcode
Use Aux 1,2,3,4,5,6 as needed to light up other lights.
YOu will then need to assign a function key to the aux ports, you may need to get help from Biff on this, get the loco wired up then pop over to see him and he will do the magic on the Lokprogrammer.

My locos tend to use six aux ports as well as front and rear headlights, for example my 37/4s and 24/1s are:
Front route indicator/marker lights white
Rear route indicator/marker lights white
Aux 1 - No1 cab high intensity/ lucas headlights
Aux 2 -No1 cab lights
Aux 3 - No1 cab red tail lights
Aux 4 - No2 cab high intensity/ lucas headlights
Aux 5 -No2 cab lights
Aux 6 - No2 cab red tail lights

Usually these auxs are assigned to F13 onwards, then I will tap on things like Notch up, notch down, reduce volume 50%, shunt mode, accell brake time which can take the function keys over F20, but worth the effort for sheer fun!.
 
Pete Harvey

Pete Harvey

Active Member
Thanks Cliff

I will post my results here when done.

If anyone else has any ideas please contribute?

The more the merrier.

Pete
 
Softvark

Softvark

Active Member
Not sure if it's relevant for your requirement but my blue diesels need the requirement to have either one or both rear lights switchable. I use the little circuit below to enable me to select either or both of the rear lights using Aux 1 and Aux 2 (although it can be any of the XL v4 aux outputs) and feed the relay from the rear light output of the decoder. This way the selected rear light configuration automatically swaps ends when you change direction and you can separately choose which rear light configuration (or indeed no rear lights) are on by turning on Aux 1 or 2.

The relay I tend to use is this one from Rapid electronics.

Hope that's of use to someone.
grab.gif
 
Steph Dale

Steph Dale

Western Thunderer
Julian,
Like it - a great way to get some extra functionality out of a decoder without needing actual decoder functions! The link for the relay is useful too...
Steph
 
Pete Harvey

Pete Harvey

Active Member
Well everything with wiring the V4 XL decoder is going well the last part I'm stuck on is how to wire the fan control and what to keep from the original Heljan parts?

Do I wire the black wire to the Common and the red to a function or do I wire the black to the Ground terminal on the decoder and the red to a function?

All suggestions welcome?

I will post images of how I have wired everything when it's all done.

Pete
 
Pete Harvey

Pete Harvey

Active Member
Hi Warren

If you look back at the images of the build before I painted the model you will see the light units are etched.

If you contact me trough my website (link Below) I will give you more details on the light units.

Pete
 
Softvark

Softvark

Active Member
Pete Harvey said:
Do I wire the black wire to the Common and the red to a function or do I wire the black to the Ground terminal on the decoder and the red to a function?
Click to expand...

I've just had a look at a Heljan Class 20 fan board (I think they are all the same) that was lying about and it doesn't matter which way round you connect red and black. On the board the first thing the supply goes to are 4 diodes configured as a bridge rectifier - then to the voltage regulator. Therefore you can wire them either way around and the fan will still go in the correct direction.

I do recall on a couple of Heljans that I had to wire another diode in series with the fan connector in order to drop the voltage by 0.7v to get the fan to go slow enough - there wasn't quite enough range on the preset. However others have been OK.

One of the really nice features of the XL v4 is that you can configure an aux output to ramp up the voltage slowly when turned on and correspondingly down when turned off. On a JLTRT Class 37 I wired a small geared motor from DCC Supplies directly to one of these aux outputs and turned it on with the same function as the sound of the fan. After a bit of experimenting I managed to get the sound of the fan speeding up synchronised to the slowly increasing speed of the fan rotation. That was very satisfying!
 
Softvark

Softvark

Active Member
Assuming you want to connect the fan to Aux 1 on the XL v4, connect one wire from the fan board to the Aux 1 terminal and the other wire to the common +ve terminal. It doesn't matter which wire you connect to each terminal. The actual terminals are on the right hand side of the board - Aux 1 is the 4th terminal from the top and the common +ve is the bottom terminal. They are both labelled (common +ve may be labelled as U+) and you can see them in the picture on this page - http://www.esu.eu/en/products/loksound/loksound-xl-v40/

The manual also shows this clearly on page 16. You can get the manual in pdf format from this page http://www.esu.eu/en/downloads/instruction-manuals/digital-decoders/

If you want to connect to Aux 2 (or any other Aux) simply connect one wire to Aux 2 and the other to the common +ve, etc.

Hope that helps.
 
Pete Harvey

Pete Harvey

Active Member
Julian

Thank you for your reply, now I have a definitive answer on how to connect the fan controller.

I can work it in to the wiring scheme for the model.

I do have the maV4 Manual on .pdf but with an XL being an expensive item, I did not want to connect it incorrectly and release the blue smoke when I tried it out.

More to follow soon.

Pete
 
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