# mylocosound card test drive



## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Played with the inexpensive mylocosound steam engine card this morning that arrived this week from Australia.

The sound card is about 2.5" long and 1" wide and no more than 3/8" tall. So it's pretty compact.

It has one connection for a 9v battery that you will need to hide somewhere on or near the loco that runs the static/background, 'steam hiss' of a loco sitting still. You will need to rig a switch or have the ability to easily remove this battery to turn off this background hiss sound. The soundcard has a potentiometer that adjusts the volume of this 'hiss' sound with a jeweler's screwdriver.

There is another +/- input to be wired in line to the loco motor. OR, it has the ability to be wired to a chuff switch. If no chuff switch you can adjust the voltage input on the sound card to the point that your loco wheels start to turn. I'm working with a HLW Big John that just has motor blocks and really no way to rig a chuff switch. In this event the card has a potentiometer that is in line to adjust the chuffs to the voltage where the loco wheels actually starts turning.

There is a chuff volume, a maximum chuff speed adjustment, and a whistle tone adjustment potentiometers that has a suprising variety of synthesized whistles from 'tweety' to big multi tones. There is also a bell tone jumper that you can use or pull out that makes an auto bell sound at low speeds or removing the jumper cuts it off completely. Sounded like crap to me so I pulled it. The chuff sounds pretty real, the whistle sounds pretty real...the bell sounds like the chime on an elevator as it goes between floors...it does not sound even remotely like a real locomotive bell. They were totally tripping when they thought that it sounded like a locomotive bell... no big deal though, pull the jumper and the bell goes away, for good. [thank goodness]

It also has a jumper that takes the whistle tone from a 'chime', [multiple tone] whistle to a simple, one tone whistle which suits me since my Big John logging engine would have had a simple 'one tone' whistle but other engines I have would have had multi tone whistles.

I built a nice speaker enclosure to go in the cab of Big John for the 2" flat speaker I got from Doc Watson. I did not expect much from this old Dallee speaker but I did several tricks like wrapping the enclosure with electrical tape to deaden the tube and stuffed it full of pillow fibre fill that really improved the tone of the speaker to make it more 'throaty' and less tinny/ toy-like. I also experimented with putting a strip of tape over the speaker to see if that reduced any bright/brittle tone. [It didn't make much difference. your mileage may vary in your engine] It actually sounds so good that i am very likely to buy another one for my Bachmann Connie as I think with an even better speaker and the ability to add a transmitter/receiver to work the whistle on demand which I can do with the Connie's big tender space that the Mylocosound card at 79 bucks should be plenty rich sounding for the Connie even though there are many other more $$$ alternatives. I actually like this sound card a lot so far. We'll see when I finally get it all up and running.

I did try the system with a larger speaker I got out of a USA diesel model. It sounded about the same but the larger speaker takes more voltage to run. What this meant was that if I contacted the whistle contacts the 'chuff' died out on the larger speaker. When using the smaller speaker both the chuff and the whistle played at the same time. Polyphonic-like.

s


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## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

UPDATE;
The Mylocosound card programming has changed! 
I wired my soundcard and speaker in and set Big John up on the rollers to set the 'chuff start' threshold. It all went together as the clear instructions said it would and I adjusted the start right as the wheels begin to turn. BUT, no whistle sound. Everything I read said that this card would automatically sound the whistle for one second prior to moving from a dead stop. I contacted Peter Lucas about it this is his reply;

"We used to supply soundcards which sounded the whistle automatically when the loco moved off. However, we started to get a lot of complaints from customers. Most people are now buying the Crest Revolution controller or radio control systems from RCS, LocoLinc, etc. All of these have the ability to sound the whistle by pressing a button (using the H1 terminal). The automatic whistle was therefore not necessary and, in situations where the loco was switching a yard, drove them nuts. We therefore recently removed the automatic whistle from the software."

He has offered to reprogram it for me free of charge if I mail the card back to him which is great. Just wanted to alert modelers to the change. So if one of the things you didn't like was the auto whistle feature then you're in luck. If it's a feature you are looking for then you will have to request that programming when you order it.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Wonder why the auto whistle feature could not be tied to the jumper, then the customer has the choice easily, instead of have to have it reprogrammed one way or the other.

Greg


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## SRW (Jan 13, 2010)

Not sure Greg. Maybe adding a jumper requires changing the existing card and it's just easier to change the basic programming since so many operators are using controllers or keyfob transmitters or wireless door bell controllers, or reed switches and track mounted magnets to operate the whistle and folks like me who would actually like the auto whistle are a small minority. I would just add a keyfob controller like I did for the horn on my RS-3 but my HLW Big John has precious little on board space to hide the receiver and another battery. I don't switch with the Big John so the whistle wouldn't annoy me by blowing everytime it starts moving.

Changing their website to indicate that the auto whistle is now a 'by request' option would save people the cost of shipping it back to Australia. Just a suggestion to myloco.


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