2014_03_02 G Class Lighting!

2014_03_02 So another frustrating weekend spent trying to decipher the oriental mind :(  I think it is even worse than trying to understand the female mind.
These notes have been posted on Rail Page * and VR Enthusiasts ** so if you have been on there, you probably already read it.

Well the dramas are over and the Tsunami drives and sounds pretty good. Not as nice as the Loksound, for sure, but at $80 lower in price a necessary compromise when you need another 24 Decoders to finish the fleet off. Gee I am so glad that Auscision are building NSW crap (ha ha) for the next few years to allow my bank account to recover a little.

This was posted today on FailPage just to see if I can get some ideas how to continue with this project
The post...

Just wondering if we have some electrical bods here that can sort this out for me Smile
But before I go into this i want to state clearly...

YOU DO NOT have to go this route. Simply putting a decoder and speaker in the room provided and plugging into an 8 pin plug will do the job for you Wink

But for some reason I saw that each light source was separated from the other, and I thought lets turn the lights on and off individually. Maybe not my best idea, but if it does pan out in the long run, given time I might think it was worth it Sad
Here are my work notes, and I would love to hear what I can do to get over these Chinese builds (They really do want to smeg with our heads, of that I am convinced. Why else would you do this.....)

I am finding the G Class wiring confusing and frustrating.
I used the Jaycar diode tester to get these results.

In the body itself you have two identical boards, one at each end. Each board has two LED's on as well as resistors and capacitors.

white wire always connects to K (-14v)

green wire is number board and connects to Anode (+14v)

Blue wire is headlamp at each end connects to Anode (+14v)

I want the headlight to come on using the DCC Controller button 0
I want the Number lights and the marker lights to come on using F5 (Note 1)

These connections create a problem for me as I have to run a supplementary 14 v power line on my Tsunami, because the light power is unloaded 2.0v which is stopped from turning the LED's on by the on board res/caps.

I would want to join the Marker lights to the number lights on the F5 Tab


Bottom Board is tiny and runs three LED's And the identical board is mounted both ends.

The white wire is connected to white markers, and so I joined them both together and connects to K (-14v) (Note 2)

The yellow wire is connected to red markers and connects to K (-14v) and I intended these to hook to headlight at other end via a reed switch.

The orange wire is connected to ditch lights and connects to Anode (+14v) (Note 3)

I want the ditch lights to come on using F6.

One solution is to ditch the Tsunami board and find one that allows LED's to operate without the 14v shunt. Even so the Chinese have lost an opportunity to do it right for once. I doubt if I will ever hard wire one of these again, just put up with the circuit boards provided in future
Would love to hear comments.
Cheers
Rod Young



Note 1. I don't want red markers on at this stage. I prefer to have white markers on when pulling a train. Red markers on the rear of a train loco was always an error, and signalmen could stop you to order the red lights be pulled. I am thinking of using a reed switch to turn red on for light engine work.

Note 2. The top board has the LED K (-14v) common and separated wires for the two LED's A (+14v)
and the Bottom board has a mixture of connections possibly to assist some control of when ditch or red marker light is able to switch on?

Note 3 The bottom board has both marker light control wires connected to K (-14v) except that the Ditch light which is connected to A (+14v). When I tried to get this to work from the headlight K (-14v) on the top board it would not. In order for it to work it needs to be connected to the white wire (marker Lights) K (-14v) You must have the markers on to get ditch lights to work, not the Headlight as expected. I don't know how to make this work, particularly as the circuit board is possibly too tiny to modify about 6mm square double sided?

Note Extra. NMRA wiring standards dictate the blue wire is common A (+14v) to all lighting..ok?
That means the tsunami is designed to switch only the K (-14v) wires which should be white to headlight and yellow to rear headlight, and green or purple (?) for F5 and F6 which can be used for marker lights and ditch lights
So they really botched this up, and my next thought is that I might be able alter the tracks on the top circuit boards to make them NMRA compliant and thus used separately as I want? this would swap the top board headlight wire Blue from Anode (+14v) to K (-14v) Then that would connect to Ditch Anode (+14v) to allow the ditch to swich on only when headlight is on. Can I still route it through F6, I don't think so Maybe another reed switch..damned if I want that.

Extra note It is possible that when all boards are connected to their correct LED's the Ditch lite will work from the headlight. However I cannot duplicate that on the LED test box, even with all LED's connected to different values but correct polarity

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