ColinB

From what you are saying 96RAF Hornby did what we used to do with van radios use the same circuit board but depopulate the components (cheap vans didn't used to have a comms interface for the radio). Mind you 3 devices to support plus the HM7000, you can see why they would want to get rid of it. They should have done what Fleishmann did, bin their old devices and merge them to a new design.

If the new management has any sense it will be one of their top priorities. Trouble is quality control is perceived by many as non value add. Bigger issue is though if you get a duff loco you are probably more likely never going to buy another one rather than sending it back.

Yes Going Spare that was the figure banded around in the media. I know, nothing to do with model trains, but a guy making luxury wallets out of leather decided to get them made in China. When they got delivered he found out about the 10% failures which really ate into his profits. In the end he got them made in the UK, more expensive initially but because his failure rate was lower and he could get in his car and drive there, cheaper in the long run. I think it was an item on some program on the ITV. Batteries are another one you have to be very careful with. A lot of the ones on EBay are that 10%, we used to have a lot of issues with car remote controls where they fitted those batteries.

Yes I see 96RAF not as clever as I thought.

Thanks that explains a lot.

Oh that explains a lot, so it only has a USB interface. I can see why it is obsolete then.

You would have thought with the advent of the Bluetooth dongle R8312 eLink would be very useful, does it not do Xpressnet? Looking at the HM7000 app's screen, I do wonder if Hornbys long term plan is to port Railmaster there.

Here is an interesting point, with the new Bluetooth dongle you are transferring the user interface to the App on the smart phone, so is there any need to invest in an Elite anymore? Surely a Select will do, as you are only using the XNet to DCC conversion routines in the unit.

Sorry LT&SR_NSE what are you on about, all I said was it doesn't bother me about Select as I have an Elite. My point was that you are using the Select's communication capability. I know Hornby are a business so if they are doing it properly and cheaply, they will have used the same interface for both Elite and Select and as I also said the whole idea of the dongle is to put the user interface on the Smart Phone using the app. So the dongle I assume is just converting Bluetooth commands to DCC ones through whatever software is on the Select or Elite. From my point of view the dongle is just an interest I am more than happy with my PC end that works will my current system, I only use the Elite for programming. So when using the dongle on a Select does it put the same limitations on the data, as these would have been put there because the Select can't store much data, but now the App should be doing that. As I said for me just interested.

ff2nd you are right but on the other hand the lack of decent quality assurance has to be part of your formula for putting the work overseas. I remember all those years ago when I lived in Kent one of their managers was on the local news saying the formula to success was to have decent quality control in China. This was at a time when anything coming out of China was considered rubbish. So I assume years of bankruptcy and change of ownership has got rid of this. The general failure rate for Chinese production (what they accept as reasonable is 10%), most British firms it is less than 1%. Now that is ok if you are making thousands and they cost virtually nothing but when you are talking Hornby Dublo at £300 plus and a run of 500 models, 10% is quite a hit. Trouble is a firm like Hornby doesn't have the finance to have designers jetting out to China to sort out issues, like my old firm used to do. People will tell you that video conferencing works, but believe me for technical stuff it doesn't (been there got the tee shirt).

LT&SR_NSE has anyone actually tested that, to me it makes no difference as I have an Elite, but a lot of the limitations of the Select are because of its screen and lack of decent keyboard. So has anyone actually checked? With the dongle basically all you are doing is converting bluetooth signals to DCC, the intelligent bit is being done by the App on the phone.

Thank you Peter-376650 for the information, I very nearly ordered a HM7000 as the sound on all my other HM7000 is not that bad and it is about half the price of the LokSound one. Fortunately in the manual for the loco it lists the "Sound" commands and realised there might be an issue, hence this post. I got most of the necessary information off RMWeb via the Cavalex guy.

Thank you DJB61 for the information, I got the same details off a Cavalex person on RMWEB. It is nice to have them all individually controllable but you wonder if with some logic they could of made the list a bit smaller. On a lot of other locos I have the cab lights only come on in the direction of travel, but that is the way they decided to do it, so that is it.

When I convert an old loco to DCC I always use a socket, that way you can change decoders and revert back to DC if there is an issue. Hornby do 6 pin and 8 pin sockets and they are superior quality to those you get on the web, especially the latest versions. I seem to be always saying this, but by the amount of locos I have bought second hand where they have been hard wired, not many people share my view.

I know 96RAF, I looked at the profile for the class 56. Functions 21 thro 24 do the 4 aux functions, F0 does the front/back lights. Cavalex seem to have done a Dapol where a lot of the normally F0 lights are on separate functions, hence they need more.

I answered my own question. I remembered I had a LaisDCC 21 pin decoder in another loco, so I put that in to see what happens. F0 is front headlight F1 is front lights F2 is back lights F3 is fan #1 F4 is fan #2 So no cab lighting. A HM7000 will not work properly if you want all the functions.

Has anyone tried fitting a HM7000 to a Cavalex class 56. Obviously the sound will be right but it is the auxiliary functions I am more concerned with like the lighting and fans. Now looking at the class 56 function map you definitely can control all 4 auxiliary outputs, but it is whether Cavalex have used more as in the case of Accurscale.

For the HST, DCC is direction dependant so if you think about one HST is facing forwards the other is facing backwards so when you tell the HST to go forward the white lights will come on the forward facing HST and the rearward facing HST will have red lights as it is going backwards. What I do is buy a decent decoder for HST with the motor in and buy a cheap decoder like a LaisDCC for the rear one as it is only controlling lights. You could use a function decoder but a normal decoder is cheaper. I very rarely program CVs unless I have to, but you will have to set the address in each loco. My layout was DC with lots of separate sections. I kept the separate sections although they are all powered by the same DCC feed, it makes it easier to find a short if you get one. For your insulated frogs the only issue will be those locos with a small wheelbase, same issue as DC, but with DCC you can add "stay alive" circuits which means the loco will behave like it is running on a battery for the sections of the track where it loses power.

I think the search software is a bit iffy. I had an issue with my HST, first one, no issues, second one it definitely had its sulks. Normally when they are delivered they are set in DCC mode, but perhaps Hornby had been testing it in Bluetooth and forgot to convert it back. When they are running they are really good, but reading all the issues on this site I think the App needs a lot more work especially on error handling (a common issue in a lot of software).

To me it sounds like it is set in Bluetooth mode. Lets go back to basics, have you downloaded the Hornby HM DCC to your smartphone? Next assuming the APP works does the APP find your decoder, when you do a scan. Excuse me if I am telling my Granny to such eggs but to me it sounds like you haven't used the APP.

To be honest programming mode is great as a final check but doing a continuity check between pins and track is probably more useful. I normally do a continuity check with all the locos I have done work to, but in this case the loco was in mint condition so I assumed wrongly that the wiring would be correct.

Ok it sounds like it isn't the decoder, I am assuming you are using the supplied loudspeaker. I have bought about 6 of these so they generally work and I have never had to play around with CVs or volumes. First thing to do is load another profile and see if that makes a difference, it doesn't matter which as you are only using it to test that the profile works. Now the other thing is those speakers are useless without a surround so have you inserted the speaker into a sound box made from the plastic spur parts supplied. Finally it could be that there is something wrong with your 21 pin socket on your loco. Unlike the 8 pin the speaker connections come out to the 21 pin connector on pins 9 and 10 (pins vertically above the missing pin), there could be a short across pins 9 and 10 which has damaged the decoder and any other decoder you fit. Finally if you have another loco with a 21 pin socket, test it on that. What I normally do is test it with a normal DCC decoder something like a LaisDCC that is cheap and if you blow it up you haven't lost much. It is a good way to check that there isn't a fault with the 21 pin socket. A good idea is to invest in a DCC decoder tester it solves all the issues of working out if it is the decoder or the loco.

I use one of those Peco track cleaners or an ink rubber, not too abrasive to take away too much metal but good enough to remove the oxide that collects. We used to use the same technique on gold edge connectors on PCBs where you cannot afford to remove too much gold. I use the Dapol track cleaner, there are are few issues with it. On mine the pickups were terrible so I had to rewire them. Then it is not really heavy enough, cured by adding weight but the really big issue I found was it stops working on dirty track what a surprise. Now if you run DCC this is easy to cure. Put "stay alive" in the pulling loco, in my case use Accurascale class 37 on DCC, then run the cleaner on DCC with "stay alive" then it works really well.

The first thing to check is that the loco makes good contact with the track. The other thing I have noticed, is if it is going to program properly you should hear a relay in the Elite click two or three times ( depending on the decoder). The next thing is if someone has added some types of "stay alive" that can stop it programming. Finally on some old types of decoder they just seem to fail to program. I could list all the ones I have had issues with but this is probably not the place to do. The makes I have less issues with are Zimo and Train o Matic, the newer Hornby ones seem to be ok.

The trouble with the Hornby decoders is they don't have a very high current rating 0.5 verses 0.8 amp for a Zimo and Train o Matic. The 0.5 amp might be a bit marginal for one of these motors. The Hornby decoder is also usually more expensive that the ones I quoted.