Garden Railway Forum

Just installed an Alan Bond / Technobots programmable soundcard in my Fowler diesel loco.

The card is designed to sit between the receiver and the ESC - the plug from the rx going to the unit and then another from the unit to the ESC. With Deltang this is not normally available as the rx and ESC are combined on a single board.

I tried using a Deltang Rx102 (standard receiver) with an ESC - this was easy to install and triggered the soundcard well, I was disappointed in the level of control which the ESC provided. Nowhere near as precise and controllable as I get with a Deltang Rx65 - and I do enjoy slow-running and shunting.

I tried outputting the Ch1 settings through one of the pads (Pad8) but I think the problem was the Deltang was only outputting 3.3v whereas the soundcard preferred 5v.

In the end I compromised. I used the Rx102 to control the soundboard and the Rx65b to control the motor. They are both bound to the same 'Channel' on my Deltang Tx22 and so I get the best of both worlds - without too much complexity.

URL - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPapJPQ5C9Q

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The sound is synthesised rather than digitised real sounds (as with the DigiSounds card) but can be re-programmed easily by pressing buttons on the card. If I get fed-up with this sound, I can re-program it to sound different.

Rik

Now created a blog posting showing the installation -

http://riksrailway.blogspot.com/2015/10 ... mable.html

Rik

Useful blog Rik, thanks.
However I can't say I'm impressed by the actual sound produced by the Technobots card. My wife heard it from the other side of the room as I played the video, and said, without prompting, "That sounds poorly."

philipy:113863 wrote:Useful blog Rik, thanks.
However I can't say I'm impressed by the actual sound produced by the Technobots card. My wife heard it from the other side of the room as I played the video, and said, without prompting, "That sounds poorly."

It might be the way I've set up the card. There are nine other 'voices' and each one can be adjusted. I was actually looking for a rather clapped-out diesel sound - maybe it's a bit too clapped-out.

Here's an overview of the sorts of settings (but not all the voices) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsIhu18zT_E

He's actually working on a new card which uses digitised sounds.

Rik

ge_rik:113865 wrote: He's actually working on a new card which uses digitised sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvFTQhtDioE

Rik

Cheers.
I have thought about this unit before and NEARLY got one a year or so back, but all the clips I've heard sound rather lightweight to my ears. I realise they are adjustable in multiple ways, but I'm always reminded of 'lawnmower', rather than a DMU/08 type 'heavy duty' growl.