idlemarvel
Neither idle nor a marvel
I have one of these for my BR80 steam loco and recently found there are more sounds than documented.
The documentation says there are four sounds that can be assigned to function keys:
0 – no sound
1 – bell
2 – (steam) whistle
3 – engine sound
4 – uncoupling, and
8 – fade in/out
These can be assigned to function keys F0-F12 in CVs 903-915.
(BTW the PIKO sound module is a rebadged Uhlenbrock Intellisound module.)
I recently acquired the equivalent module for a V36 and found there are many more sounds available, because it is based on a later model of the Uhlenbrock module with more channels, more memory, more function keys. So I did some experimentation to see if there were more sounds loaded on the BR80 module and indeed there are four more:
5 – conductor’s whistle (short)
6 – station announcement (in German)
11 – “all aboard” announcement (in German)
12 – conductor’s whistle (long)
If like me you have reduced the top speed of the loco then you might want to reduce the number of chuffs per second at maximum speed by increasing CV 938 from default 0 (unlimited) to 64 or 128 (range is 0:255).
You may have difficulty setting the CVs in the sound module as it is difficult to read the current CV settings, or at least I haven’t been able to (with Lenz LZV100 command station using Lenz software or JMRI DecoderPro). I can write CVs so I just have to go for it and test the result. Anyway I am quite pleased with the end result as I can now play some additional realistic sounds while the loco in the station.
The documentation says there are four sounds that can be assigned to function keys:
0 – no sound
1 – bell
2 – (steam) whistle
3 – engine sound
4 – uncoupling, and
8 – fade in/out
These can be assigned to function keys F0-F12 in CVs 903-915.
(BTW the PIKO sound module is a rebadged Uhlenbrock Intellisound module.)
I recently acquired the equivalent module for a V36 and found there are many more sounds available, because it is based on a later model of the Uhlenbrock module with more channels, more memory, more function keys. So I did some experimentation to see if there were more sounds loaded on the BR80 module and indeed there are four more:
5 – conductor’s whistle (short)
6 – station announcement (in German)
11 – “all aboard” announcement (in German)
12 – conductor’s whistle (long)
If like me you have reduced the top speed of the loco then you might want to reduce the number of chuffs per second at maximum speed by increasing CV 938 from default 0 (unlimited) to 64 or 128 (range is 0:255).
You may have difficulty setting the CVs in the sound module as it is difficult to read the current CV settings, or at least I haven’t been able to (with Lenz LZV100 command station using Lenz software or JMRI DecoderPro). I can write CVs so I just have to go for it and test the result. Anyway I am quite pleased with the end result as I can now play some additional realistic sounds while the loco in the station.