# Quantum Titan and G Wire



## Plum Creek (Sep 16, 2012)

Installed a new Quantum Titan and G Wire Receiver in an Aristo Mallet. I have not been successful in activating the G wire circuit using a reed switch per factory instructions. Suggestions appreciated from anyone who has solved similar problems.


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

There's someone who has really gone through it, there's a trick. Email or call Tony at Tony's Trains, I think this person wrote up the procedure, seems to require a CV turned on or something. 

I'll eventually have this on my site... spent the weekend experimenting with sound files and other settings. 

Regards, Greg


----------



## Plum Creek (Sep 16, 2012)

Greg - Thanks for the info. I am in communication with Tony from American Hobby Distributors. I understand he may be a software engineer for QSI. I spoke with my local dealer, Mike Kidman at Reindeer Pass yesterday. He had the same problem and as yet has not found a solution. He was concerned that QSI may have released the new Titan before all the bugs were fixed. He agreed the Titan documentation needs a lot of work. I saw the new Titan demonstrated at the National show in Chicago. It is an impressive piece of work if they can get the bugs out.


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Tony Parisi owns Tony's Train Exchange, as well as QSI Solutions. 

QSI Solutions drove the specifications for the G scale decoders and contracts the manufacture, BUT the base hardware and chip set and firmware is made by QSI Industries, a different company, which is in Oregon. 

Tony is not the software engineer, he has people working for him on recording sounds, mixing sound files and testing and debugging, as well as several volunteers like me. 

The software engineering is done by QSI Industries. 

Yes, this was a double edged sword, releasing the hardware before all else was jelled, but Tony felt it was important to get the unit out there as soon as the hardware was checked out, and they had confidence everything else was in firmware. 

Whenever you load a sound file, you are also loading firmware, so please feel comfortable that any bugs can be worked out with a simple firmware update. I can say this with confidence not only having been in the original beta testing of the Quantum Revolution, but also the Titan AND because over the years, QSI did bring out firmware updates, fixed bugs, added new functions. 

Did Tony say he would get the information to you? 

I'll look on my end also. 

It does work, just a few settings that need to be made. Please remember, and this is no negative to the AirWire people, but they have changed a few things and, let's say, were not real happy when NCE released a throttle that at the time was cheaper than theirs. Whether some compatibility issues were accidental or on purpose one can only speculate, but there were changes on the AirWire side that caused issues for the NCE throttle. 

It's just business. 

Greg


----------



## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

Jim did't pass this along but, he installed the old QSI, connected to GWire and has been quite happy with it. He has been with many others waiting for the new release. We are just hoping that the new version can be started up easily with an update.


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Since Jim went back to the old QSI, I'll guess that he is not pursuing the settings for the Titan. 

I'll get the answer and post here for everyone's use. I know the information is out there. 

Regards, Greg


----------



## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

He still needs a solution for the new decoder in the second loco. I was speaking of an old installation.


----------



## Plum Creek (Sep 16, 2012)

Mike is correct - I have an older QSI installed in an Aristo Pacific and it works fine. The only problem I have with the older model is the decoder gets hot running in summer temps. It automatically shuts down at 92 degrees centigrade - that is what the audio says. I will be venting the tender and/or installing a fan. 

The new Titan I referred to in prior blogs is to be installed in a new Aristo Mallet. 

As of today I have not heard back directly from QSI regarding a recommended solution. 

Thanks for everyones' help 

Jim


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Will keep you in mind, just finishing some fine tuning on the smoke unit controls. 

There will be a new Q2Manager coming out, there were some restrictions in the "cut and paste sounds" section, actually in the garage testing the new version now. 

I'll try to remember to get the AirWire info for you tomorrow. 

Greg


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

OK, some new information. Due to customer confusion, the Gwire/AirWire interface does not come on automatically whenever you plug the AirWire receiver receiver in. 

There's 2 ways to "turn on" the AirWire setup... one is with a CV, and the other is with the reed switch. Both are supposed to be outlined in the manual. 

I'll take a look at the manual, but I understand that you hook up the reed switch... put the magnet near it, and turn on power. 

You get a slow blinking headlinght... if you wait a while you get a faster blinking light, should be at about 6 seconds, then remove the magnet... that should put you in AirWire mode... if you wait longer, the headlight will blink faster and you will get a decoder reset. 

Basically this is the way you can configure the unit without DCC or a programmer. 

Did you do this procedure yet? (by the way the slow blinking is DC/DCC mode) 

Greg


----------



## Plum Creek (Sep 16, 2012)

Those are the instructions I followed except for the sequence of placing the magnet on the reed switch first and then turning on the power. I will try it in that order. I did place the magnet on the reed switch after the power was on and the whistle blew in regular intervals. Holding one pole of the magnet caused the whistle volume to increase to 'max'. Holding it on the other pole cause the volume to decrease. No blinking lights using this sequence and no G wire connection to my NCE controller. 

Jim


----------



## Plum Creek (Sep 16, 2012)

Progress. By holding the magnet on the reed switch and then powering up, the G-wire circuit activation works as described in the manual. Lights flash once slowly then twice more rapidly then remove the magnet. If you hold the magnet on for about 8-10 seconds you get a vocal reset message. Now the next step is to get the NCE G-wire talking to the decoder. 

Thanks 

Jim


----------



## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

Sounds like you may be making progress. Did you say if you are going to make the trip to Marty's?


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Yes, putting the magnet to the switch closes it. Powering up with the switch closed invokes the setup modes. 

After power is on, the magnet lets you do volume. 

No offense, but when in doubt, read the manual ha ha! 

To talk to the decoder, of course you ensured that the Gwire and the NCE were on the same freq, right? 

Then you select the loco number, which should be 3 (default for virtually all DCC decoders) 

Let us know. 

Greg


----------



## Plum Creek (Sep 16, 2012)

Greg - You are right, the information on the sequence to activate the G wire was in the brief instructions that came with the G-wire, however it waswn not specific as to the sequence nor did it explain what was happening. I overlooked the fine print in the instructions in the Titan manual that state the proceedure more clearly. I know clear documentation is hard to do but the G-wire and QSI documentation is particularly dense. It is almost like it has been translated from Chinese into English without editing. Perhaps its just getting engineer-speak into English for the rest of us. Will let you know what luck I have getting the Decoder and the NCE cab to talk to each other. 

Mike - I am going to pass on Marty's. I hate to do so but need to be home this weekend. I am really glad we were able to run there last summer. What a great experiance with great pictures of the Mallet pulling the UP heavyweights. It's too bad Marty is not going to continue but I am sure it takes a lot of time and is a lot of work to put on each year. Please tell Marty thanks for us.


----------



## Plum Creek (Sep 16, 2012)

We are finally running. The G-wire socket on the Titan decoder is mounted backwards from the earlier models. The corrected instructions are as follows: 

On the receiver, the black side of the cable is towards the PCB (Down) and the side with the contacts is away from the PCB (Up). On the quantum board, the black side of the cable is towards the outside of the board, and the side with the contacts is toward the middle of the board. 

If you carefully look for the contacts on the board you will see how to align the cable to make contact. 

The headlight, marker lights and reverse light will have to be hard wired to the Quantum connection block. The cab and firebox also need to be hard wired.

Preliminarily the sound is impressive. 

I will communicate with QSI regarding the error in the Q-wire instructions and hopefully the word will get out. 

Jim


----------



## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

You may be able to get a second job helping to write better instructions.


----------



## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

QSI's documentation, as I've posted before, is astonshingly bad. I use the product and like it, but I've wasted a lot of time trying to make sense of their documentation.


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

OK, but why don't you (Mike and Mike) read the Titan manual before you take more shots. It *clearly *states the sequence. 

I have not read the Gwire doc, but the Titan doc that comes with the board in the bag says magnet first and power second. Magnet after power is volume. 

Download it yourself and see, or pick up yours Mike and Mike, I know you have them if bought or owned one.

Greg


----------



## Plum Creek (Sep 16, 2012)

I don't want to get hung up on documentation, but if we expect to grow the hobby, everyone in the chain (manufacturers, dealers and self help forums) need to make it easy to get started. Good clear, step-by-step documentation can make the difference between a new person starting and growing a hobby or giving up in frustration. 

Jim


----------



## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

I didn't really mean to take a shot at the Titans. I looked at them as a product that would sell to most any G scale customer. Analog DC for sound only, DCC, or battery control. They have so many features that they can get complicated. Some of us thrive on the challenge of setting it up as they see fit, others want to drop one in and get good results right out of the box. They are considered plug and play. I do see them as some what of a challenge to set up at this point in time. The time and effort put into these to get them built assures me that it will get better as more folks work on them. People like Greg spend a lot of time working thru issues and documenting information for others to learn from.


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

And I do agree the documentation could be better, but I compared the "small" manual from the Titan with the small manual from the original QSI Revolution... it is vastly improved side by side. 

Could it be better? Obviously. The best thing is feedback to QSI... email them with your suggestions, not just criticism, i.e. where the manual was difficult or unclear. 

I know the guy who wrote the manuals, he's a great guy and very busy, but he will improve the documents. Nothing will help like pointing out where you had difficulty. 

What I will take from this is to get them to send me the Gwire document, that is where Paul has indicated it was unclear. 

I re-read the "default" small manual, and it does give you the step by step. 

I did also find out that locos with "special" headlight circuitry, like an Aristo E8, won't blink the headlight to let you know what step you are in configuring for DC / AirWire... I've added that tip to my site, but it needs to be in the manual for sure. 

Regards, Greg


----------



## Plum Creek (Sep 16, 2012)

We we are finally up and running with all systems on line and functioning as advertised. Just a couple of notes on things that I learned along the way that have not already been discussed. The QSI Titan decoder came with two of the connection block lables applied backwards. The schematic in the manual is correct. I used an xacto knife to carefully remove the incorrect labels and then applied them to the back side of each connection block so they lined up correctly. My Mallet came with an 8 pin plug between the engine and tender. A wiring diagram was not available. I used a voltage meter and by experimentation was able to determine pin functions. From right to left facing the tender - pins 1 and 2 are smoke; pins 3 and 4 are lights, pins 5 and 6 are motor. I think pins 7 and 8 are the track powere pick ups from the engine but am not certain of this. The speaker, backup light, headlight and marker lights are all wired directly into the decoder. There is enough wire under the PC board for the headlights that no splices were needed. Wire splices were needed for the backup light. I also did something that some may think is crazy. Rather than disassemble the tender to install the battery, I carefully removed the rear platform from the tender and cut a hole in the top of the tender large enough to install the battery. I left one platform mounting hole so the platform can be replaced. This way I can easily rotate batteries. The hole is not visible once the platform is replaced. The second reason for the hole is ventiliation. the QSI decoder in my Aristo Pacific long tender will get so hot that it shuts down. I may install a fan later if heating is still a problem. Thanks to everyone for their comments and help. 

Jim


----------



## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

The labels have been corrected, and your dealer should have supplied the corrected ones. 

As I said, the pins are documented on my site, under the Aristo Consolidation. 

One of the advantages of "moving" the socket back to the boiler is ventilation, in fact when you run the smoke it helps keep the temp down too. 

Glad you got yours working.

Greg


----------

