Kato FEF with Sound

[jdcolombo]

OK - it took four days, three different motor decoders, a heavy-steam Tsunami in the tender along with a Knowles Dumbo (13 x 18mm, in a custom sealed enclosure), and hours with Decoder Pro and a speed table, but I've finally got the FEF running pretty much how I like it, with sound.  At the risk of Peteski reminding me that I should be posting this in the DCC forum , and although I'm still tweaking the speed table and Tsunami sound settings, here's the result (sorry about the background clicks from my DT400 throttle; I'm just too tired to try to record it all again!).

/>
Photos of the component layout are in a thread in the DCC forum, here:
https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=34913.0

John C.

[Nato]

       John, Nice work, if I had the skill to put sound in my factory DCC equiped locomotive I would go the way you have done.                             Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

[jdcolombo]

Thanks, Nate.

What skills do you think you don't have?  I should post a photo of the component layout I've used in tender; you do have to do some soldering and build a speaker enclosure, but the rest of it isn't that involved.  I'm always happy to answer questions via e-mail at my gmail address (jdcolombo at gmail).

John C.

[skytop35]

He's done it again.  Outstanding work John!

[nstars]

Looks great John. Just a question, do you use any momentum in the Tsunami decoder (CV3 and CV4)? My guess is not much. It will be a hell to program it, together with another decoder in the loco, but to unleash the full potential of the Tsunami a considerable momentum is recommended.

Marc

 

[jdcolombo]

Looks great John. Just a question, do you use any momentum in the Tsunami decoder (CV3 and CV4)? My guess is not much. It will be a hell to program it, together with another decoder in the loco, but to unleash the full potential of the Tsunami a considerable momentum is recommended.

Marc

I have the momentum set for both the Zimo and the Tsunami at 30 (e.g., CV3 and CV4 both = 30).  I may play around with these settings, but not any time soon!  Still recovering from getting it all to work . . .

John C.

[carlso]

John,

very nice and thank you for the video and updates. Much appreciated. After seeing how small the Zimo 621 is I was thinking that it might fit in the boiler , maybe on the underside of the factory light board. I have not stripped the boiler off on mine to even take a look yet.

Carl

[soo]

Let me say that is AWESOME!!!! I am not a steam modeler,,, I have seen the 844, 3985, and the Milwaukee 261 up close, watching your video made feel like I was trackside again. The sound was right on the money, ( I think ). You did a most awesome job,,, sounds great and moves even better. I am just amazed, wow.

AWESOME WORK!!!!

Adios, Wyatt

[jdcolombo]

John,

very nice and thank you for the video and updates. Much appreciated. After seeing how small the Zimo 621 is I was thinking that it might fit in the boiler , maybe on the underside of the factory light board. I have not stripped the boiler off on mine to even take a look yet.

Carl

Yes, it will fit in the space between the frame halves underneath the rear of the Kato analog DC board.  It's almost like Kato left this space specifically for a hardwired decoder!  If you go to the DCC forum, I've posted photos of the component layout for both the Zimo in the boiler and the speaker/Tsunami in the tender.

John C.

[Cajonpassfan]

Nice work John ( and a lot of work!)
I assume you went the dual decoder route again because you couldn't get the Tsunami motor control to work with the coreless motor? (I've done a number of dual decoders but was hoping new N scale steam was getting to a point where the Tsunami motor control was good enough...like the Challenger; it's hard to get the dynamic sound effects and coasting without a LOT of momentum).
Again, very nice, you're the master of N scale sound in my book!
Regards, Otto K.

[nstars]

I have the momentum set for both the Zimo and the Tsunami at 30 (e.g., CV3 and CV4 both = 30).  I may play around with these settings, but not any time soon!  Still recovering from getting it all to work . . .

John C.

It's higher than I expected, but it could still be interesting to try even higher settings. But I can imagine all the work it needed to get everything running like this. 

Marc

[jdcolombo]

Nice work John ( and a lot of work!)
I assume you went the dual decoder route again because you couldn't get the Tsunami motor control to work with the coreless motor? (I've done a number of dual decoders but was hoping new N scale steam was getting to a point where the Tsunami motor control was good enough...like the Challenger; it's hard to get the dynamic sound effects and coasting without a LOT of momentum).
Again, very nice, you're the master of N scale sound in my book!
Regards, Otto K.

Hi Otto.

Honestly, I didn't even try, for two reasons.   First, I wanted to avoid running wires between the tender and engine if I could avoid it.  Kato's design to "snap on" the tender to the engine is just so elegant I preferred not to screw it up, although I probably could have used some sort of four-pin sub-mini plug in the tender to address this.   The second reason is that the TSU's motor control circuits have uniformly been inferior (for me, at least) to those in the European decoders.   When I had problems with even the ESU LokPilot, I decided I wasn't even going to try the Tsunami.  I may well be shortchanging them, but I suspect that the TSU's performance with this new coreless motor from Kato would be an exercise in grief.   So, I stuck with the two-decoder route, knowing that I give up some functionality with the TSU by doing this.

One day, someone will produce the perfect sound decoder; it will have the motor control of the Zimo, with the sounds of the Tsunami, with the chuff timing using BEMF like QSI, ESU, Zimo and others, and the open-cocks steam hiss on startup, and the automatic blow-down, and . . .

Zimo makes a sound decoder; if they had US prototype steam files for something like the FEF, I might try that.  But they don't.  And ESU is supposed to release a new file specifically for the FEF, although ESU's files don't have some of the dynamic sound effects the Tsunami has (and that I don't get in this type of installation).   So . . . still looking for the magic sound decoder.   In the meantime, I do the best I can with what's available.  Having a silent FEF just isn't acceptable 

John

[nstars]

I agree john, the magic sound decoder doesn't exist yet. TCS and Soundtraxx need to update the motor control and Zimo and Esu need to update the sound files. My hopes for the future are on the ESU Locsound and TCS Wow decoder. They have the potential for the future.

Marc

[Cajonpassfan]

One day, someone will produce the perfect sound decoder; it will have the motor control of the Zimo, with the sounds of the Tsunami, with the chuff timing using BEMF like QSI, ESU, Zimo and others, and the open-cocks steam hiss on startup, and the automatic blow-down, and . . .

LOL John, its gonna happen and I will drink to that this New Years Eve!
Meanwhile, it's still fun to work with what we have, and compared with 10 years ago, we have a lot!
Happy New Year to you, and everyone on this board!
Regards, Otto K.

[up1950s]

Maybe the ideal sound system would be 4 basic boards . One for ridged , articulated , 3 cylinder , and shay .

 with plug in add on boards for loco pacific chuff sound , loco pacific whistle sound , loco pacific start up sounds .