RailMaster eLink CV helping hand please.

[TaytiusRail]

Hello all not long ago 2 months or so i got the RailMaster with the eLink Perfect purchase right up my alley of pc stuff. I know how to get the train up and running Yayy :) .

Write the Cv's for acceleration and deceleration also Braking this is the easy part for me.

Setting the Funtion buttons for to turn the light on/off easy. Now i wish to get into using the funtion on/off buttons to control all of my lights .

The lights that comes on are ( red green directional x2 ) looks great love it. There is also a middle white light (front back) .

So what ive done from trial and error is reset the cv got it going again. to the pseeds i like so on.

Now the fun stuff what i have. Just 1 loco to get me started i once did have HO Scale now im running N Scale .

1 Loco: ATLAS #52129 H15-44

Decoder:Lenz-designed H15/16-44 Custom Decoder ~ 128 speed steps

It says - Directional or complete 17 lighting effects. (i wish to change to these) just too see what i like, and if i can set the middle light on with the other directioanl lights as well. maybe have the middle light do a slow flash/blink or something.

I also have (i think) is the Decoder Manual. http://www.atlasrr.com/DCC/N_H15-44Manual_Atlas.pdf

(i think is Bits) witch is 8 digits ? i could be wrong. Also would this then be under Manufacturer Unique ? in Railmaster.

Thanks all in advance i have done a lot of looking at youtube videos tho they mainly look at setting up speeds and creating a Loco NO: . Any Additional Informatoin please ask. Thanks

[96RAF]

Welcome

If I am correct in thinking that you want to know how to change the lighting characteristics by way of selecting bits of a CV, then you need to refer to the decoder manual and see the table of effects for the CV involved.

 

The Hornby Sapphire decoder has special lighting effects which are set up exactly the same way.

 

Once you know the decimal number to write to that CV then your lights should work as you want them to. What number to write to get it to do that?

 

A CV is a byte of information represented by a decimal number from 0 to 255. Any number entered can only represent a combination of the eight bits that make a byte. Bits are numbered 0 to 7 and oddly read from right to left in the table and have values reading 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, so if you want to select on bits 1 and 4 say then you would enter value 18 (2+16), or bits 0 and 3 you would enter 9 (1+8), etc You can see if you selected all the bits on the value would add up to 255, 

 

Obviously you will have a more limited range of numbers that you can enter as you can only have one lighting effect on at a time for each lighting group. This will be shown in the decoder manual.

 

If RM is correctly identifying your decoder in CV7 then it should load the correct set of CVs with a description of what each does. Some CV values can be right or double clicked to bring up a table of options (e.g. CV29) making the job of working out the value required easier.

 

I hope this helps but if not please come back with more questions.

[Chrissaf]

The lighting effects are controlled by setting Bits in various CVs (I'm just using CV51 as an example). CV51 contains an 8 Bit (Binary) Byte. In Binary to Decimal conversion a Byte (8 Bits) can be represented by a Decimal number between 0 and 255. Since it is a Decimal number that is written to CV51 then you have to convert the Bit pattern you want into a Decimal number.

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To do this, you use the table conveniently put in the manual (copy below). The column on the far right (highlighted in yellow) contains the Decimal numbers that relate to the individual 8 Bits of the Byte.

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Let me give you a worked example:

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/media/tinymce_upload/015ac0b40668fc03652ebdeea0a5c9ea.jpg

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Let's say you want to set Bit 2 to 1 to enable the dimming of the front Headlight AND you want to set Bit 5 to 1 to enable the Mars effect. All other Bits are set to 0 to either ignore (not used) or set as per their stated 0 values.

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Then you add up the values in the right hand column working from the top down:

0 (Bit 0) + 0 (Bit 1) + 4 (Bit 2) + 0 (Bit 3) + 0 (Bit 4) + 32 (Bit 5) + 0 (Bit 6) + 0 (Bit 7)

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0+0+4+0+0+32+0+0 = 36 and this is the decimal value you would write to CV51 to set the following lighting configuration:

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• Headlights are Directional (Bit 0 = 0)
• Front headlight always dimmed (Bit 1 = 0)
• Headlight can be dimmed (Bit 2 = 1 [decimal 4] )
• Not used (Bit 3 = 0)
• No effect (Bit 4 = 0)
• Front headlight Mars effect (Bit 5 = 1 [decimal 32] )
• No effect (Bit 6 = 0)
• No effect (Bit 7 = 0)

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I'm not saying the example above is a valid configuration, it is just a mathematical example of the Binary to Decimal conversion needed to use CV51, CV54 and CV57. The same Binary to Decimal conversion technique can be applied to any DCC CV that uses individual Bits in a Byte to set conditions for example CV29 is the most commonly known one.

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Incidently the manual does go on to explain the above, on pages 13 & 14 but perhaps not as clearly exampled as my version.

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EDIT: Rob's reply wasn't visible when I started preparing my own. So there is some duplication in our answers. However, I think my worked example probably gives you the information in a more easy to understand format.

 

[96RAF]

You can see in Chris‘s example the effect one bit may have on another and how other CVs may be involved e.g. bits zero and one.

Rob

[Chrissaf]

PS - The numbers in the far right column that are NOT in brackets ( ) are the Binary factory DEFAULT settings for that particular CV.

[TaytiusRail]

Thanks so much for the information - i did notice a clash (or me) in Railmaster cv51 is used for Brake Mode i use this and it works 100% for Brake Mode. Question is if i change the cv in cv51 does that also alter the brake mode or is the byte/bytes in the cv allow for more then 1 thing to be changed in the 1 cv ?

ill for now muck around with this cv to see if i can do something with cv51 i can always Reset it that's fine. Thank Again. /media/tinymce_upload/b9b283269726b4084617970d12116c46.png

[Chrissaf]

Its either an error in the Hornby RailMaster (RM) database for the Lenz (Atlas) Decoder. Or RM has incorrectly detected the wrong decoder. What values do you read for CV7 & CV8, this should indicate what decoder & Manufacturer brand has populated your screen capture table.

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No, a CV does not have a dual purpose i.e both Brake and Lighting. It should be either one or the other. If it is just a database error, then writing the value to CV51 as per the table in the Atlas manual should just affect the lighting.

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NMRA Specifications.

(click the link above to see all of the NMRA Specifications from which the extracts below were taken)

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• CV7 contains information about the decoder model.
• CV8 contains the Manufacturer ID number.

/media/tinymce_upload/18feb6b0ae4bad409ba27cfe1b0caeb4.jpg

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Atlas Manufacturer ID is 127 - see extract below:

/media/tinymce_upload/3614467a21fc94e61567b7f9688d12df.jpg

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Lenz Manufacturer ID is 99 - see extract below:

/media/tinymce_upload/94e62eb08edb52aabc41ca73d81ba7bf.jpg

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Thus if your CV8 is not 127 or 99 then it has most likely incorrectly detected the decoder. If this is the case, you can 'double left click' the CV7 entry to open a selection box and manually choose the correct decoder. Again if CV8 contains a different number, then look it up in the S.9.2.2 specification via the clickable link above. To see what decoder brand RM thinks you have.

[TaytiusRail]

Ok i should of told you that it asked me to upload a manual to support- for the decoder. Tho as in my 1st post i posted the link to the manual that im not 100% sure if it is thee correct manual. Link Below./media/tinymce_upload/f40260b55bc167400504d0f6543ad697.jpg/media/tinymce_upload/8cd844510bceedf1fd4be25611ff7aa4.jpg

http://www.atlasrr.com/DCC/N_H15-44Manual_Atlas.pdf Thanks once again, it's making more sence to me now haha. Oh the cv's :

/media/tinymce_upload/b320a56bfe2fa247cb80953b95b188c5.jpg

[Chrissaf]

In that case you will have to be patient until such time as HRMS add your decoder to the RM database for the table to populate correctly.

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In the meantime just select a decoder that is similar (maybe one of the Lenz's) ignore the descriptive CV text in the table for function. Then just write CV values as per the decoder manual user guide. The descriptive text in RM for the CV is just there for the convenience of us humans. If you think about it logically, if you were using a more traditional hardware controller like the Elite for example. Then you would be doing just that. Using the controller knobs and buttons to write CVs based upon the manual table with no display of what the controller thought that particular CV did, and you would be none the wiser.

[TaytiusRail]

Dear .............Just to let you know we received this and will incorporate it in the next udpate.RegardsRailMaster Support

great news . For now i can always drive the train all is good. Im not sure on how often they update the Program. Tho as said all is good. Kinda cool my stuff get's put in and is then on every 1's pc hehehe. Anyway.

[Fishmanoz]

TR, this is nothing unusual for HRMS and it may happen quite quickly. 

 

It it almost certainly won’t be part of a version change, although they are just about to release a “proper” v1.67 and they may add it in there.  RM detects version changes on startup and asks if you want to install them. This sort of change would more usually be part of a revision update which doesn’t trigger the “do you want to update” process. Chris monitors such changes and will notify on her if there is a revision change.  Then they may just have it update by itself without telling you, they do that to.

 

Simple thing to do is to just download and check from time to time until you find it there, if you don’t get any other notification.

[Chrissaf]

Be also aware, that some database updates are performed silently at start-up without any user notification. Certainly loco additions can be done this way, whether that includes decoder database updates as well, I'm not sure.

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Because these updates occur silently, then you can sometimes find that the database entry in question suddenly becomes available without the user even knowing that it has been added. If you are really observant, you can sometimes spot a very brief message flash up on the RM navigation bar (near the blue box program running indicator) that says something like "database update in progress". I have only spotted such a message on a very small number of occasions as they appear very rarely and are extremely brief when they do appear. These messages only have time to appear if the file being updated is a fairly large one, small file updates happen too fast for the message to have time to appear.

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Looking at the 'RM log' text file, should give an indication as to whether any databases have been updated this way.