Loksound 73100 install in FVM GP60

[Steveruger45]

[ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ] Just finished this one.
I did not want to modify the frame if possible.  The only frame mods was to widen the distance between the two front board slots a tad. The OEM distance is 7.8mm and the 73100 is 8.2mm wide.  I just scraped out the slots with my smallest jewelers screwdriver and smoothed After with a tiny file. On this one I used the onboard aux1 and aux2 leds for front and rear lights.  They are a tad dimmer on the front, but rear is bright enough. This saves a bit of messing about soldering leds on the board, especially at back where there is very little room and very close to the aux2 onbd led.
Speaker is a 8x12mm in a roll your own enclosure 6mm tall.  The four keep alive caps are 100uF x 20v poly tantalum and configured in an upside down L shape to fit the space ahead of the speaker.  The negative wire for the caps is soldered to the underside of the board on a scratched clear area through the solder mask.  The decoder is hardwired to the motor. Kapton tape applied where possible shorts exist and over soldered pads on the underside of the board. There is very little clearance between the frame and under board components at the front.  You could file the frame here to allow the board to slide in but I chose not to and put the board in before assembling the frame halves. Once in there is plenty of room for said underboard components.

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[Steveruger45]

 In furtherance to the above install write up I would recommend to others who may use this as a guide for themselves to use either a 0603 led or one of the provided 3mm leds as the front light.  The aux1 is a little dim when compared to others.  There is room for either option.  I would also recommend to keep the aux2 light, its proximity to the rear light is just right and really really close to the light lens.

[RBrodzinsky]

Nice work, Steve.  Yep, the rear Aux2 LED works for rear lights, nicely, but the Aux1 tends to be just too far from the light pipe.  To get nice bright lights, need something more.

[tehachapifan]

Nice install!

[Steveruger45]

Thanks guys.
Well I wasn’t happy with the brightness of the fwd headlight so I soldered on one of the provided 3mm leds.
Now much better.
What I like with this install is that the frame has had no major modifications and you can always go back to fitting the original dc board and put a plug-in lokpilot into it if you want to.

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[narrowminded]

What I like with this install is that the frame has had no major modifications and you can always go back to fitting the original dc board and put a plug-in lokpilot into it if you want to.

That's what I strive to accomplish when making modifications.   It makes them easily undone or easily applied to another unit. I've also eyeballed a PCB adapter board that will allow some different placement along the order of what @RBrodzinsky mentioned in another thread.  Unfortunately, this approach sometimes creates more work than it's worth and its own set of problems that outweigh the advantages.  You seem to have snuck this one in pretty painlessly.

[Steveruger45]

That's what I strive to accomplish when making modifications.   It makes them easily undone or easily applied to another unit. I've also eyeballed a PCB adapter board that will allow some different placement along the order of what @RBrodzinsky mentioned in another thread.  Unfortunately, this approach sometimes creates more work than it's worth and its own set of problems that outweigh the advantages.  You seem to have snuck this one in pretty painlessly.

Thanks, yes a lot of measuring and note taking was done on a few options before settling on the way I did it.
On this one I angled the decoder up towards the rear to gain height for speaker underneath.  The hard wiring needed helped here.
Now that we have these narrow boards as an option, with their associated pluses and minuses,  I try to look at an install from a few angles and prioritize the wish list to select the best option for me.
Generally I look at it in this order
1. Can I fit a decoder in and speaker with sufficient cubic capacity enclosure and caps in without too much frame mods.
2. Can I make any modifications needed and keep backwards compatibility.
3. Ease of wiring up. (Imho, the 73800 is easier if the 73100 or 73199 will not be plug and play and need some hardwiring, due to the closeness of onbd components to a few of the solder pads).
4. Shell modifications to be kept to minimum or avoided completely.

On this one, the 73100 was the best option, despite its minuses, as only slight frame mods needed due to width apart of the frame slots. No shell mods were needed at all, just remove the shell and place it back when done, which is good as these shells are a little delicate.

[UP Simon]

Hi cBeen asked to do this install by a friend can I ask what speaker you used?

[Steveruger45]

I used a soberton SP1208, 8ohm, 8 x 12mm.  Digi-key part number  433-1130-ND

[UP Simon]

Steve do you wire the capacitors in series or parallel?

[Jbub]

Steve do you wire the capacitors in series or parallel?

You'll want to wire them in parallel. When wired in parallel, capacitance will add together i.e. two 20v 200 uf capacitors will provide 400uf at 20v. If wired in series you double the voltage but also decreases the capacitance related to the number of capacitors. With the above example wired in series you'll get 40v but only 100uf of capacitance

[peteski]

If someone is interested in a bit more details about capacitors (it is always good to have some knowledge about things we work with and use) here is some light reading. It included formulas for calculating series- and parallel-connected capacitance.
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/capacitors

Generally, for our application, we use parallel connection for standard electrolytic of tantalum capacitors (to arrive at a larger capacitance). The only exception is the SuperCap-based keep-alive banks of capacitors. SuperCaps are rated around 2.5V of operating voltage but they have enormous capacitance. Those get connected in series to increase the working voltage of the capacitor bank to something usable by us (more than 13V).  That type of connection result in a much smaller capacitance than what single SuperCap has, but still large enough to be used for our purposes.

[Steveruger45]

Steve do you wire the capacitors in series or parallel?

Sorry for late reply but Just back from a trip for work.  Yes, as others have already mentioned I wire the caps in parallel, all positives to positive and all negatives to negative.  In case you are wondering where on the ESU decoders to solder the caps positive and negative wires, Peteski did a great job indicating the locations on both the 73100 and 73199 slide-in decoders.  As I have done quite a few of both of these decoders with caps now I can share some experience on this.   For the 73199 decoder which has no provided solder tabs for either the + or - I use the the indicated pink end of one of the onboard caps on the left side just aft of the first recess in the decoder for the positive and the indicated green end of one of the other onboard caps on the left side behind the former, just be sure to clean and tin these spots first.
On the 73100 decoder I use the provided UB+ solder pad for the caps positive and then I clean a spot through the solder mask on the decoder just a little further forward between the writing where it says AUX4 and ESU to make my own solder pad to attach the caps negative.  I have found that a capacitance value of around 400uF to 440uF is just right to stop any sound drop-outs.  I tend now only to use 20v poly tantalum caps from known brand makers. Either four Panasonic  100uF or two AVX 220uF.  I haven’t found the need to increase capacitance above these values. 

Another snippet is that if you want to upload a new sound file with the lokprogrammer on a loco with caps already installed you need to disconnect at least one of the caps wires first to avoid programming issues.  In this case I tend to desolder at the caps not the decoder.  However, just changing cvs has been no problem for me to leave everything intact.

Hope this helps.

[jdcolombo]

Just to highlight Steve's last point:

If you are using a LokProgrammer and want to re-load a sound file, you'll need to disconnect the caps.  Otherwise, you'll get read/write errors.  You also can't read the current decoder values with the caps attached, although you CAN make changes and write those changes (usually - I've had a few failures even doing this with caps wired up).  Also, you CAN make CV changes via ops mode (programming on the main) with no problem.

What I typically do these days is wait to wire up the caps until I'm sure that I have all the sound effect volumes correct; speed properly programmed; function keys assigned as I want, etc.  When I'm sure the engine is programmed exactly as I wish, THEN I wire up the caps.

John C.

[RBrodzinsky]

What I typically do these days is wait to wire up the caps until I'm sure that I have all the sound effect volumes correct; speed properly programmed; function keys assigned as I want, etc.  When I'm sure the engine is programmed exactly as I wish, THEN I wire up the caps.

Hear! Hear!