Does anybody know how to program a ESU smoke unit 54679. I have a ESU programmer and I’ve been trying to load it into my ESU Loksound V4.0 sound card. I’ve been trying for 3 weeks?

So, I’m having a little trouble decoding your sentence.

Just to be sure I understand, you are not actually trying to load the smoke unit into your sound card, you are trying to hook it up, right?

So, start with basics,

1. Is your sound card operating properly?

2. is this steam or diesel?

3. if steam is it “chuffing” properly?

4. do you have the manual for the 54679?

5. do you have the cable and is it connected as per pages 5 & 6 of the manual?

Let’s start with these basics.

Greg

Yes to all. wired properly and I do have the instructions. It is steam. When I go with the basic unit sound card and no smoke unit everything works fine. When I attempt to program the unit and write the smoke unit into the program the locomotive becomes sluggish goes and then stops.

OK, so your terminology is still a bit strange. you say “program the unit”… are you programming the main decoder or the smoke unit.

You say “write the smoke unit into the program” makes absolutely no sense to me… there is no program you are modifying, all you can do is change CV’s

Please list EXACTLY the CV’s you are changing… I will have to look a bit further, but I think you can set CV’s in the smoke unit too… if this is true, how have you isolated these from each other, do you have different addresses for them?

Also are you programming on the main or in service mode (programming track)?

Greg

p.s. Steve, you are probably about 7 miles from me, I’m in Carlsbad… drop me an email and we can exchange phone numbers and talk if you want

When I attempt to program the unit and write the smoke unit into the program the locomotive becomes sluggish goes and then stops.

Sounds like the smoke unit is drawing enough current to either overload the power supply, or overload the decoder.

I doubt it, first of all the smoke unit does not draw power from the decoder, it communicates via SUSI (if it is connected correctly)

Second, they don’t really draw that much, and from the description it does not sound not like the power going out… you are thinking DCC not DC right?

Greg

Well, I was thinking of power. With the smoke unit on the locomotive runs slow then stops. Without the smoke unit on the locomotive runs fine. That suggests an excessive current draw to me. I don’t know that DCC would act any different if there was excessive current draw. I am only casually acquainted with DCC. I am no where near as familiar with DCC as I am with DC.

So, we’ll let the OP reply on the amperage of his system.

It’s unlikely that he has less than 5 amps available. Unlike DC, there are few large scale DCC systems at one amp.

DCC acts differently, and again you need to consider the amperage draw of the smoke unit, which in this case is much less than the DC smoke units you are familiar with.

Anyway, we’ll wait on the OP to check this off, and I will wait patiently to hear the answers to my debugging questions. I suspect there’s some misunderstanding in the programming.

Greg

Is the smoke unit and the sound unit on SUSI bus with CV’s in the 900’s so if you change the smoke unit values are the sound unit values being changed also?

This should not have affected the running of the engine so I would first question the power source, command station spec and power supply spec.

Something is indeed strange. But what does not make sense is that programming the smoke unit should make it draw a lot more current, unless this is a situation where it’s either not doing anything at all or running at an amp or more continuously.

My understanding is that the smoke unit draws under an amp.

Something still does not make sense…

Greg