Advice on E-links & boosters

[96RAF]

I thought these days you mainly had to beware of Karens?

 

 

Woteva.

[Fishmanoz]

Paul, I have exactly the same memory as yours on the need to split ADS decoders on startup due to CDU inrush current. But I don’t think any booster in use, just switching in limited banks of decoders sequentially.

LLJ, let me get this clear - are you saying the eLink won’t initiate on bus B because there is no bus current as the booster hasn’t kicked in at eLink start?

That implies to me you are putting the whole bus on the booster when you try to use it? If so, wouldn’t it be better to have half direct to the eLink and the other half via the booster? Or do I have this wrong?

Similarly on bus A, I’d assume you have 4 districts, one direct to the eLink and 3 more via the Tam Valleys?

This is where we really miss Chris and his excellent custom circuit diagrams. How did he find the time?

[LuLuJo]

I am totally fed up with railmaster. I have spent hours on this issue and the system will not load reliably. I seem to me its an issue with railmaster itself. I have tried every combination of configurations and sequences which i can think of but still cannot get the system to reliably load. I am convinced the boosters are an irrelevance as the issue arises whether they are in the system or not. So it seems to be a Windows 11 railmaster issue.

What happens is that for every 4 attempts to start the system 1 will work. Two will fail on one of the elinks but the other will start and then it will work on the layout. But which elink will fail is random. The fourth attempt will see both elinks fail. I get the failure to communicate message remove the USB cable for 5 seconds message. Sometimes that will resolve it but usually does not. Windows tells me both the devices are there on Ports 3 & 4 and working properly.

I have used a total of 4 elinks including one which is brand new. I have changed the USB cables. I have tried my old Windows 10 PC and get the same results. Attached are the .ini file. I cant see anything wrong with these but I may be blind.

Any suggestions ?

[96RAF]

Best thing you can do is give HRMS remote access and let them poke around under your supervision and find out where the problem is.

Send them a request from within RM giving basic details and requesting they sort it remote. They will respond with details of what to install and settings to enable such access.

They will sort it.

[St1ngr4y]

@LuLuJo

I'm wondering if you are aware of a little known feature of DCC, which involves the loco controller constantly sending two or three packets of data out onto the DCC loco bus for every loco that it knows about ? Not only that, but part of RM's startup routine, is to send data for each loco that it knows about, too. So the more locos you have defined in your RM roster, the more data is initially sent to your loco eLink, which then constantly transmits this information onto the DCC track bus. This applies to all your locos defined in your RM roster, even if they are parked on an isolated siding. The only way to cut down this data traffic is to split your locos into groups, then only the current "group" of locos details will be sent by RM to the controller on startup.

Ray

[96RAF]

RM looks after the roster overload mentioned by ‘Ray by limiting roster groups to 64 locos per group.

[Fishmanoz]

Definitely contact HRMS via the email facility in the Help tab as Rob suggests.

However, one thing our experience tells us is that RM installations almost always work once set up correctly. We also know that setups not working despite our best advice here can usually be fixed by HRMS remote access as they find so far undetected setup problems.

[LuLuJo]

I did not know that was the reason for the restriction on the start up group but did find the way to control over 64 locos. My start up group is always a small, group of shunting locos which I then switch to an group of All once the system is loaded. I always move back to the small shunters group before closing the app. I have been testing the system with the small start up group.

I have reported the issue to RM and await a response.

[LuLuJo]

I have made some progress which might also be related to other issues on the forum.

I raised my issue of unreliable loading of the elinks with my new Windows 11 PC with railmaster support. They were unable to help as they said they had not seen this issue before but in discussion I have now moved the problem forward.

I isolated the elinks from the layout. I set up a duplicate system using my old windows 10 PC and two spare elinks. I repeatedly tried to start the system, shutting down each time before restarting.

The new Windows 11 Pc never initialised although on the first few tries the ports COM 3 & 4 were recognised and the devices were supposedly working properly.

The windows 10 PC loaded up and initialised every time. I attached a rolling road to the windows 10 PC on bus A and tested a sound equipped Jinty. The sound and motion both worked. In sequence I have tested all the 4 elinks from both systems. They all work on the Windows 10 PC. Noe work on the windows 11 PC

The clear conclusion is there is an issue with the Windows 11 pc. It is brand new and shows no other sign of an issue apart from an initail waring message about a file from Windows teams being missing. I did also note the comment on another thread about the different USB description and have the same experience.

My next step it to connect the Windows 10 PC to the layout and do a gradual start up to see if there really are any issues with boosters. But I would like to use my new pc.

Quite what to do next I am not sure and would welcome suggestions?

[Fishmanoz]

There are of course 2 possibilities:

• the new PC USB ports are faulty.
• there is a W11 driver problem

W11 has been around for a while now so would have expected others reporting problems if it is a driver issue. So seems more likely your PC.

[Rog RJ]

What make is the new pc? Doesn't happen to be a Lenovo does it?

[LuLuJo]

I think its time to draw this thread to a close as I now have a solution to the power booster issue and a configuration of power boosters which works reliably . I will attach my crudely drawn schematic.

The position is that if the elinks will load up ( and that's a big if and will be the subject of a separate thread) then the layout will run happily and reliably. I have set up the ammeter and voltmeter meter across the system at each point and the load is reasonably shared across the devices and the current drop on the elinks reduced. I think there is quite a lot of capacity in hand now.

On Bus A ( track) the layout has around 120 Gaugemaster DCC80 frog juicers. The quoted current draw is 50ma each which I believe should produce a load of 6amps. If fact the total steady load before anything moves is around half that but I think is higher on start up. This would explain some of the past issues. The steady load on Bus B is a bit less but noticeably higher on start up due to the known issue of charging the dcc concepts adsx decoders. Its still necessary to switch each BUS B section on in a steady sequence. I watch the voltmeter and wait until the voltage has stabilised but would say its around 20 seconds per section to be on the safe side.

My start up routine as described earlier in this thread is:

starting with all the sections on bus A & B switched off

1. switch on elinks
2. switch on PC
3. wait for pc system to load and settle down
4. Start railmaster
5. When the system has loaded switch on the boosters
6. Starting with Bus A switch on each section in sequence.
7.