ColinB

If you do it properly (read the Train O Matic description of their product) you need one pin for ground, one pin for Vref and one pin for the charging circuit. Now you can get round this by including the charging circuit on the "stay alive" pcb which is what they have done. As I said I didn't design it but if you wanted to truly control the charging rate that is how you would do it. The LokSound decoder has a separate pin for the charging circuit. Either way that is not how the current product works. As I said when I was looking at "stay alives" I did a lot of background reading and tried out many different products.

I know, that is what it says in the datasheet but I suspect either they put it in, in case they needed to use the three wire device or wanted to use the three wire device but found they could get away with only using two wires. People quite often explain away their reasons for doing something, when the truth is a lot different. As I said I didn't design it so I don't know. I do know I designed a lot of electronics and software and I always added connector pins just in case I needed that signal in the future.

Actually you are so very wrong, I use these an awful lot, they are probably one of the best on the market. You obviously have never used them. Strathpeffen's tutorial explains how to make one but the thing it doesn't do is explain how to overcome the issue of when you try to program the decoder. With a simple capacitor network strung across the Vref and Ground supplies you get the issue that it takes a while for the voltage to rise when power is applied to the decoder. So in the case of a programming pulse of power the decoder can never work properly because of that huge time lag. So you need some sort of intelligence. If you analyse the Powerpack and LaisDCC "stay alives" you will see that they contain a transister/fet/triac (not sure what) and a couple of other components that basically overcome this issue. Now some people tell me that they get the simple "stay alives" to work in programming mode, how, I must admit I don't know. They have never worked for me. I did take the Hornby Powerpack apart and considering it is supposedly controlled by the decoder the circuitry didn't back that up. There again I didn't design it so I don't know. I do think though that originally they meant to use the same type as the Train O Matic ones, which would explain use of the three pin connector. Anyway cutting to the chase, the Hornby one works ok as does the LaisDCC one. In the case of the LaisDCC ones you have to attach them between Vref and Ground rather that the 3 pin connector. Incidentally Digitrains initially guided me to LaisDCC ones as they said those and the Train O Matic ones are the ones they used all the time. The LaisDCC ones are cheaper.

Put the PDF through Google translate, exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

Surprisingly since I spent a lot of time in Germany, non existent. Thank you though for the link, I can always use the Google translator. Seriously though, thank you for the information.

It is probably the front bogie, I have had many A1s that do that. It could be back to back spacing on the bogie wheels, the bogie bolt that holds the bogie to the bogie bracket is not long enough or you either need to add a light spring between the bogie and the bogie bracket. On some of mine I have had to add a spring on others I have had to remove it. Initially try measuring the distance between the wheels on the front bogie (back to back spacing) that is the favorite.

I must admit I was looking for a break down of commands so basically how the bytes are broken down. Seeing as the dongle seems to work on other platforms other than Hornby I wondered if there is a standard set of commands that is defined for all manufacturers.

Well perhaps they didn't realise that a HM7000 is basically a DCC decoder, so this model is no different to buying a Bachmann model with sound fitted. Trouble is people get carried away with the bluetooth capability ignoring the fact that as far as DCC is concerned not much different to TTS. Ok it is better sound and can be reprogrammed but it is just another sound decoder. The difference is that there is a big deviation from Hornby's other P2s in that the decoder also controls the smoke so if you don't like the HW7000 sound you can't just rip it out and replace it with a Zimo or LokSound decoder.

I hate to say it but other manufacturers manage to do it, we used to call it product planning. In our company they got paid extremely well for it, as the risks were recognised. Being as I have picked up various models at incredibly discounted price just lately, I get the opinion it is not working that well for Hornby anyway. As you say though, it does seem to be a trait unique to Model Railways. For me it doesn't matter much, I have as many locos as I will ever want so I doubt I will be preordering many more anyway.

Yes to you closely involved with the hobby you know that, for the average person that buys a catalogue or looks at a web page they don't. Hornby make it worse because they often put over optimistic release dates on their product. Nothing new though, Triang used to do it, I remember as a child being hugely disappointed to go round the toy shop and find the model had not arrived by the date stated in the catalogue. Most industries got rid of those practices once they had to face Japanese competition.

Thank youi.

Actually Bulliedboy that is a bit unfair, do you know exactly how long it takes to make things from design to production. It is Hornby's fault they announce new models generally before they have done the donkey work to work out how to make them. I worked on a two stroke Fiesta many years ago, it never made production but Ford never announced it would be making it. If they had they would have announced it when they were about to make it.

Actually 96RAF it is not, it just switches the steam off and on. The steam is a function of the algorithm within the decoder. So on Friday to clear the loco of water I basically had to drive the loco to generate steam to empty it. What I was talking about was a function to bypass the algorithm to just generate steam with the loco stationary just to empty the water.

Actually for once I am with Hornby. I was really surprised at how quickly it got released considering how long it takes to release a normal model. I was even more surprised that it works well. They could have perhaps told us that F24 switches the steam on or off, but I wonder if that was an afterthought. There again F24 is a long way up the function list so I suppose less people would have seen it and if they had defaulted it to off, then we would have had lots of posts on how do I get it to work. The original P2 without smoke was released ages ago so there was no wait for the model, in fact I now have two of them one with smoke I bought ages ago and this one. The only thing that concerns me is running it dry to put it back in the box, I am wondering if they could have included a function which basically keeps it smoking to get rid of the water.

I keep reading about Loconet and Xpressnet commands. I assume there is global set of commands defined for each, although I appreciate that individual implementation may be different. Is there a web page that lists the commands and format?

You have probably been lucky, if it had blown you would smell it plus it is guaranteed for a year. If you were into electronics there are ways you could make it work but the simple solution is just get the right equipment. You need to activate F1 to get it to smoke which you can't do on DC plus the amount of smoke is dependent on loco speed etc. so you need a computer (in this case the decoder) to work out how much smoke. If you have a "smart phone" then the decent power supply is the cheapest option. To be honest it doesn't matter whether it is half wave or full wave when you are talking about nasty spikes.

You are absolutely right Going Spare, that is exactly how I got into DCC, bought a Hornby loco with sound that would only work on DCC. In my case it wasn't so bad, I already had an Elite that I had picked up cheap because it needed fixing.

Yes it was under the "First SS loco to be released" thread. Supposedly it can be run dry but to be safe F24 toggles it on or off, and it does work I tried it, unfortunately no in the supplied user instructions.

There are two ways to do this. You can either go the Hornby App route which means you have to buy a proper approved power supply, I know from personal experience that powering with the Duette is a "no,no" I blew up a decoder with one of those. I assume an HM 2000 is the same. So if you have a smart phone just buy an approved power supply off Hornby and load the App on your Smart Phone. If you don't have a Smart Phone then an easy solution is to buy a Hornby Select controller which will just do DCC, but will run your new loco quite happily. You could buy an Elite but they are super expensive. There are lots of DCC controllers around but probably the Select is the cheapest and easiest, there are some on EBay for about £80.

Yes I think you do, to switch it on you need to enable the F1 function. If you have a "smart phone" the Hornby app is the easiest solution.

I don't think Dapol never stopped doing it. They seemed to have always had that facility. If you ever go round a heritage railway their souvenir wagons always seem to be made in the UK by Dapol. I suppose they can do small runs at reasonably short notice.

Great thanks 96RAF, that is really useful information. Why does the Quick Start Guide not say that? It just lists F24 as Aux4 (HF06).

Perhaps what Hornby should have done is had the steam generator on a separate function so you could turn it off without turning off the sound. Currently both are operated by the F1 function. As I imagine this is controllable from the software perhaps someone should suggest it as an upgrade for a future release, then there would be no issue with running out of water.

I received mine today and I have to admit it was worth the wait.

That is interesting, DPD finally took delivery of my loco yesterday (Wednesday), probably out for delivery today. So it took longer to send to Essex, UK than the USA. I suspect there must have been some issue in Hornby's despatch department.