Powerbank charging

[SteveM6]

From the outset, and by default, the powerbank is charged only when the loco is in motion. However, testers identified that occasionally locos would initially stall with an uncharged PB.

The new profile for Tornado now has ‘charging when stationary’ as the default. I understand that this function will be added to the other profiles in time.

This does mean that when loading sound profiles the required power cycles take a little longer while the PB uses up its remaining charge.

The instructions do say that a power cycle with a PB may take up to 60 seconds - in practice I have found it to be a little more than that.

I have developed my own process for this - you can just take the loco off the track, but I have a length of thin plasticard that I place under all the wheels on one side of the loco to isolate it from the track. Then I keep an eye on the decoder code which is coloured blue when the decoder is connected to the app. When it changes to red, the PB has powered down and the power cycle has completed. Remove the plasticard strip and wait for the code to change back to blue before going on to the next step in the setup.

[Britannia Builder]

That's interesting, and a good enhancement. I downloaded the Tornado profile yesterday and I can confirm that its power bank does now charge when stationary.

You say that this is the default - is there a way of turning it off? The only reasons that I could think of for turning it off would be prior to a profile download to speed up the power cycling (which takes a long time on my Tornado, even with the sounds playing, which they won't be during a download), and to allow conventional CV updating on a programming track. But now that the app allows the complex speed curve CVs to be set up, I can't see much reason for doing the latter.

Regards, John

[96RAF]

The proposed plan was for for the charging to be a user option by way of a CV change but at present in order to get this enhancement out to gen-pop it was decided to incorporate it into each sound profile.

The downside is the longish decay rate during a power cycle. There is a built in delay before charging starts, which would cater for the service track programming case as the short programming burst would be over before the delay timed out.

Edit - I should add that eventually all existing sound profiles will be reworked to include power bank static charging.

[SteveM6]

It probably adds around 5% to the overall time to set up a decoder so the message on the app and in the documentation will need to be changed (they currently advise waiting 60 seconds).

Use the red/blue change as outlined above and you won’t go wrong.

[SteveM6]

SD002 A4 (OO) has been added and also has the stationary charging function included.

[Fishmanoz]

A simple power cycle method for TT:120 set owners - just slide your loco from the track onto the re-railer.

[Britannia Builder]

How will we know when existing profiles have been updated to include the charging when stationary? I have a Bachmann 3MT Tank which needs it - I'm currently running the Black 5 profile, but I would switch to another similar profile if it got the update earlier.

Regards, John

[SteveM6]

I can’t answer that definitively BB but as each sound profile will need to be updated I suspect you will see an ‘update required’ message as each one is released.

In time static charging will be the default setting although there was some discussion around making it switchable to marginally speed up the download process.

I suspect new profiles will have it from the word go while the tech team work through each of the existing profiles.

[96RAF]

Unfortunately, as the power bank charging is part of any specific profile one simply cannot load a profile with it then go back to profile of choice without the functionality as it does not stay resident in the decoder, it follows the profile.

The ideal situation would be to have it under CV control with on set as the global default but that is not the way it has made to work.

As Steve says all profiles will eventually be reworked but whether this will flag up as an update or is left to the user to pick up on is not clear at this time.

[Britannia Builder]

Thanks Steve and Rob.

When a new version of a profile is released for this or any other reason, will it be possible to update just the APROM code and SPIROM sounds without overwriting all the CVs and functions that have previously been amended by the user? I imagine that this charge-when-stationary feature is a change to the APROM code rather than a feature of the sound file - will it just download the small APROM file if the SPIROM is unchanged? And is the APROM actually different for all the different sound profiles?

Regards, John

[SteveM6]

That’s above my pay grade BB.

[96RAF]

@Bb

you are right, you should be able to update one without the other as described in the famous manual, but the way it is set up at present means there are two routines and the sound profile installation has muscled in over the individual load. It was discussed in the test team chat but I can’t remember the exact conversation now.

Edit - I found this chat …

There is an APROM version.

There is a SPIROM version.

There is ALSO a APROM+SPIROM version. 

 If we update just the APROM, what happens to the APROM+SPIROM version?

[Britannia Builder]

Thanks Rob.

The APROM version is in CVs 47-49 and the SPIROM version is in CVs 202-203, but I can't see a combined version number.

Interestingly the APROM version in my charge-when-stationary Tornado is 0.0.5, the same as my other two TXS decoders which were installed a couple of months ago, so perhaps the new charging feature is not in the APROM?

Regards, John

[96RAF]

That’s why it’s being handled in the sound profile for now, until they find ‘a more elegant solution’. The profile handles both in concert, whereas the decoder could handle them separately.

The problem being if you change the one separately by way of a decoder update how do you synch the pair when you add a new profile. It would do the same as it does now when you load a moving charge profile, it would over-write the existing decoder version.

It will get sorted in time.