# Installing a Digitrax DG383AR In Aristo-Craft PCC Trolley



## mapper65 (Feb 15, 2009)

Hello everyone. Thought I'd share my experience with installing a Digitarx DG383AR in one of the new Aristo-Craft PCC Trolleys. I'm sure many people have read some information on the web about the jumpers sticking up in the DCC compartment so I'll start there and get that out of the way. There is a 5 pin jumper in the DCC compartment that will probably keep you from getting this plug in style decoder seated far enough into the decoder socket. Some people have trimmed down the pins, some have cut the pins out altogether but I chose to do as other have and that was to take a small pair of pliers and bend each of the pins away from the 12 pin connector about 45 degrees or more but not quite 90 degrees with respect to the circuit board.

I had read a few posts online that contradict each other when it comes to removing the two pin jumper when installing DCC. The manual tells you to remove the two pin brake light jumper if you are going to use DCC. Some people have said that the break lights work without the jumper and some people said that the break lights do not work without the jumper. 

My experience was that with the jumper removed, the break lights no longer work. WIth the jumper in place the lights work. It appears as though with the jumper in place, once you apply a little throttle, the onboard chip starts to count down and the lights stay lit for about 4 or 5 seconds longer then the lights will then go out and stay out until you slow down. Once you slow down the break lights will come on and stay on until you apply the throttle again and the process starts all over. 

I'm using this on a Digitrax Super Chief system and ran into a snag when trying to read or write to the decoder. The first thing that I wanted to change was the decoders address. No matter what I did, I was unable to read or write to the decoder. I thought that maybe this was quite possibly where removing the brake light jumper came into play. That actually would not have made sense to me but I figured that I would play by the rules of the manual. I pulled the decoder out, removed the jumper for the break lights, reinstalled the board and was still unable to read or write to the decoder. Next I installed a PTB-100 Programming Track booster between my Digitrax Command Station and my programming track. I thought maybe this was going to be the one time that a Digitrax decoder needed a little boost like the Soundtraxx decoders. Still no luck. For the heck of it I tried with and without the break light jumper. Neither option worked.

I noticed that the red warning light on the PTB-100 was on. That usually means that there is a short or wiring problem with the decoder. Being that this is a drop-in decoder and I had insulated between the decoder at the factory board, I doubted that I had a short. Next, I threw the motor switch on the trolley and still had the red light on the PTB-100. I turned the motor switch back on and turn the light switch off. My red led on the PTB-100 went out. Interesting....I could now read and write to the decoder. This still has me scratching my head but the only thing that I can think of is that maybe with the light switch on, there is some sort of ground loop. Again, I tested this with the break light jumper on and off. I was still able to communicate with and without the jumper so I left the jumper on. So far, no bad side effects.

After a little testing, I set my kick start to 2 and the acel & decel both to 2. It runs great! The trolley is just a slight bit noisier than I expected but it may tone itself down after it gets a few miles on it. 

Who knows, Digitrax isn't always know for flawless decoders so maybe what I've experienced is just something with this particular decoder. After I found that the light switch in the off position allowed me to read and write to the decoder, I decided to take the PTB-100 our of the picture. When I did, I was no longer able to read and write the the decoder. In my situation, the DG383AR in this trolley is the first and only time I needed to use a PTB-100 with a Digitrax decoder. 

I thought maybe I could save someone the time that I spent to come to this conclusion. It will be interesting to hear other people's experiences.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Too much load with the light switch on... the leds inside run from a regulator and from the track... way too much load for the programming track. Standard procedure with Aristo is to turn off all the switches you can when programming (except motor)... 

I'm guessing that it's possible that the light switch is on the output of the regulator, most likely there are other loads across the rails besides the decoder. 

Regards, Greg


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## George Schreyer (Jan 16, 2009)

Trying to program with the lights on gave me an entirely new error message on my Digitrax system, NoAk. Never seen that one before. 

The problem is the static load of the lights as they are NOT wired through the F0 function and the decoder cannot turn them off.


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## George Schreyer (Jan 16, 2009)

As far as the brake lights go, I put the jumper back in and the behavior changed. 

The lights are on whenever the car is stopped. As the speed in either direction picks up, they go out and stay out until the cars slows again, when they come back on again and do not go out until the car is moving again. 

Note that I do not have the white or yellow wires even hooked up to the lights. I may connect them again and put in a decoder that has a good F0 function and try it again. While probing on the board with an ohmmeter, I could find no conductor that was hooked up to either headlight pin.


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## mapper65 (Feb 15, 2009)

That's how my break lights work and that's as good as it gets without seperating the circuits and hard wiring to the decoder. No need to hook up the white or yellow wires, the lighting circuit is not wired to the decoder socket so you'll really need to re-engineer each of the separate lighting functions to cut them over to DCC. Probably not too big of deal but I'm going to leave mine how it is. It's running great, the brake lights work and I can program it. I believe that the power for the lighting circuit is direct from the track with the circuit for the break light controller also coming from the track. I'm sure this thing can be dissected and the individual circuits broken down to be controlled by the decoder but I think this is one member of my fleet that I'm just going to leave the way it is. It's not real important for me to control the LEDs via the decoder on this one. They look nice when they are on and hey, their LEDs, they'll last awhile. As long as I can control the speed and direction via DCC, I'm happy. The last few items that I put motor decoders and or sound decodes in, I really tricked them out for lack of better terms. This one I opted for the drop in solution of the DG383AR. You can be up and running in less than ten minutes and it's a very clean installation. Everybody has their own thing but I went for quick and easy on this one. Who knows, maybe someday I'll be looking for something to do so I'll gut it and wire everything to the decoder but for now, I'm just having fun running it.


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## George Schreyer (Jan 16, 2009)

The PCC lighting circuits all run from the 5 volt regulator attached to the car floor inside. 

The headlight runs from 5 volts direct through a current limiting resistor. The front sign board and rear running lights are the same. The interior lighting runs from +5 volts BUT there are voltage up-converters on the lighting strips to drive LED strings at about 15 volts. It would be a pain to separate them from their grounds and then run those back to the decoder. This is not worth the hassle IMHO. Just turn off the light switch to do decoder programming and you are good to go.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

George, do you know if the switch disconnects the output or the input of the regulator IC? 

Thanks, Greg


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## George Schreyer (Jan 16, 2009)

I don't know.


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## George Schreyer (Jan 16, 2009)

After playing with the brake light some more I have observed that when the trolly is running at speed, I can do a partial speed reduction and get the brake lights to come on for 5 sec or so. I can do this several times before I reach a stop. They still stay on at a stop and don't go out again until I reach 7% throttle.


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