Digirails DR4018 Digiswitch

[2Gingers]

Hello again, has anyone had any success in programming the Digirails DR4018 accessory decoder using Railmaster.

I have had one now for two years and have been unsuccessful changing the pulse output to continuous i.e. for light signals.

Maybe i am missing something but I cannot get railmaster to change it.

Any help will be most appreciated.

Kindest regards,

 

 

[St1ngr4y]

Hello,

I've had a quick look at the manual for this beast and it looks horrendously complicated. Could you tell us the steps you are going through with railmaster, which CVs you are trying to change etc?

Ray

[2Gingers]

Hi Ray,  In the manual on page14 is the CV I need to change (16x permanent on/off switch) but not sure how to do it.

In Railmaster if you click the 'Program Accessory Decoder' button a box appears and within that is a drop-down box with a number of decoders including the DR4018.

From this it should be possible to change the base address and the pulse to continuous output but for some reason I have not been able to so far (it will not accept any changes).

I am using the Elite and Railmaster so it should be possible to do it either way, I just dont know where I am going wrong.

Many thanks for your help.

Kev.

[96RAF]

I would use the Elite to program it direct by connecting the Digigubbins to the Elite Prog terminals then use the Direct Programming Mode to alter the relevant CV to the required value for your desired output.

 

Reconnect the Digi... to the layout and RM should operate it as required.

Rob

[Chrissaf]

In the manual on page14 is the CV I need to change (16x permanent on/off switch) but not sure how to do it.

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Can you confirm what CV you are trying to change to achieve the above requirement. AFAICT from the manual you should be writing value 1 to CV47 to achieve this, is this what you have been trying?.....see below:

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The layout of the manual page is a little misleading. When I first looked at this page my initial reaction was [ because of the CV113 to CV128 text immediately to the right of the number 47 ] that Preset 0 was CV113, Preset 1 was CV114, Preset 2 was CV115 and so on. However after looking again, I realised that the CV113 to CV128 range has 16 values and not 13. Thus, there were more CVs in the 113 to 128 range than Presets in the Table. I then realised that the CV113 to CV128 reference was just a poorly placed note relating to those specifically numbered CVs further down the page.

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So have you been trying to write 1 to CV114 instead of writing 1 to CV47?

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For anybody who wants to see the whole manual....download it here.

[2Gingers]

Thanks to all for your help,  

Chris - yes that is what I have been trying to do, but every time it just 'Bricks' the decoder and then I have to try and reset it which after numerous attempts I seem to manage it.

I have been trying to change the CV using POM but just tried Direct Mode as Rob suggested using the prog output from the Elite.

Well!.....  I now have a continuous red lights showing - but cannot change to green.

So will now persevere and try and solve the problem - I must be doing something wrong somewhere.

Regarding using Railmaster - It just dosn't work.

Any further help will be much appreciated,  I will keep you informed how I get on.

Kindest regards,

Kev.

 

 

[2Gingers]

Hi  Forgot to mention that I changed the value of CV 47 to '2' (8x 2 light signals with fade effect)  by the Direct Mode,  not sure if this had any bearings on the continuous red lights.

 

Kev

[2Gingers]

Hello, Thank you all for your help but still struggling with this decoder.

Does anyone out there actually use this decoder with Elink & Railmaster?

I was hoping there were and perhaps had similar problems and could guide me through it step by step.

It will probably end up back in the cupboard again.

 

Kev.

[Chrissaf]

Personally, I had never even heard of this decoder until I read your post. Given that as a moderator I read 90% of the posts on the forum. It is not a brand I recall being mentioned before. However that said, if I do a forum search, I get one previous hit in the search results and that was dated Jan 2014. So either it is not a commonly used decoder, or nobody else has had any problems using it that needed to be posted about.

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https://www.hornby.com/uk-en/forum/configuring-digirail-dr4018-decoder-in-railmaster/

[Chrissaf]

This you can try and might just work for you.

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Background to this suggestion. When using earlier versions of RailMaster Standard edition, there was no 'factory reset' option for the R8247 Accessory Decoder [this feature has now been added to the ProPack edition].

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I found this RailMaster workaround where you could connect the R8247 to the 'Programming' output and and open the 'Loco Settings' screen. You could then just treat the R8247 Decoder as if it was an unspecified loco ** and write 8 to CV8 to perform a 'factory reset' [using the Loco CV Read / Write screen " i " icon]. I know this workaround works because I have used it more than once myself in the past. Don't try reading the CVs, just use the write function.

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Note** what I mean by unspecified loco is you leave the loco fields blank as far as you can and just go straight to clicking the loco CV Read / Write " i " icon.

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Now if you can use this unorthodox method to write 8 to CV8 on a Hornby R8247 decoder which clearly is not a loco, then I see no reason why you can't use the same method to write 1 to CV47 on your DR4018 Accessory Decoder.

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Why not try it, it can't do any harm.

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PS - I would do the 8 to CV8 factory reset first using the same technique, just to give yourself the best fighting chance of success.

[Fishmanoz]

An aside to Rob with apologies to the OP - thanks for the note Rob, I had no idea you could use DMP with any form of gubbins until you mentioned it.  Learn something new every day.

[2Gingers]

Good afternoon,

Here is an update  -  The good news is that I (we) have got it working, the not so good news is that I am not 100% sure how I managed it.

Thanks Chris for the post last night with the link to an old post,  I read it and found it very interesting - the problem was identical to mine.

So I decided to try again - I had contiuous red lights but would not change,  so thinking what Fishmanoz wrote about connect to prog, put in learning mode, and then throw the required point or signal - this I tried and after a lot of attempts to get it to stay in learning mode I pressed the learn switch and held down and tried that - no joy but when I powered down and back up again - Hey presto all signals working.

 

All I can think of is that writing 2 to CV47 put the outputs in 'continuous mode' only until I selected address 1 and changed it to green i.e. threw it that it learnt that the first address of the block was 1 ?

 

Your thoughts on this are most welcome.

 

Now!....... not fully knowing how I got it working I am tempted to do a full reset and start again,  this time documenting it as I go along - This would help me in the future if I ever have problems with it (Fingers crossed) also I would post it on the forum - it may help someone here later ?

 

Just need to pluck up enough courage to do it.

 

Once again thanks to Eric, Chris, Rob & Fishmanoz for your help.

Kind regards,  kev.

[2Gingers]

Sorry Ray - thank you also for your help,  dont know where eric came from ☹️

 

Kev

[Fishmanoz]

No need to thank me on this occasion either, all I did was throw in a bad joke for Rob.