Bob Knobbe Installing DCC for his AP EE
Bob Knobbe E9 DCC With LED Lights
Bob started with a Life Like Proto 2000 E9 by removing all the wires from the DC motor and incandescent lighting
With all of the old wires removed and a new plastic plate in [lace of the old lighting board Bob installed a NCE decoder with a 9 pin plug. The first work was to wire in the power from the trucks. Red wire goes to the right (engineer's side) and black to the left side. Next the orange wire goes to the top of the motor and gray wire to the bottom of the motor.
After the track power and the motor were connected a test on the program track showed no shorts so a quick test on the main was next. The engine ran backwards!
Bob replaced the gray and orange wire to connections to the motor in the opposite polarity and all ran well. It was on to the LED lighting.
White, Yellow and Blue wires all the way to the cab and add 560 Ohm resistors. Remember, the polarity counts with LEDs so tests were made before wires were soldered.
With the wires in place it was time to program the decoder. Bob used JMRI on the Program track of the NCE Power Pro system. A laptop computer connected to the serial port allows Bob to program the Loco systems including the lighting effects.
After finishing the programming on the program track Bob put the loco on the main and used a wireless throttle to test the operation of the motor and lights. With all systems working and the decoder programmed Bob added the shell and the loco was ready for operation.
The final step was to match Bob's 2 E units. Bob's other E unit had a Digitrax Decoder and so we matched the new unit to the old E unit and now they run together, Elephant style.
A small foot note: the Digitrax decoder CV7 had version 51 which Dave Heap, a JMRI Programmer from the land Down Under, Identified as ="Series 3 with FX3, silent, readback" mfg="Digitrax" lowVersionID="49" highVersionID="51" JMRI file="Digitrax_01x3.xml". We edited the JMRI record in the computer to reflect this and read in the CVs.
Updated 04/07/15
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