No problem with the questions.
If you do it my way, you will be using two of the three existing wires to carry battery voltage from the tender to the loco.
The two extra wires (and new connector) will be joined to the White and Green wires of the three wires you removed from the LGB pcb. Simply do not connect the Brown wire to anything. Leaving it unconnected provides the necessary track pick up isolation.
I have everything wired up but I cant get the controler to work with the receiver. I have a blinking light on the receiver and the green light is on, on the EVO. Im getting power. The engine works because i hooked it to the critter control and it ran. The wiring is correct. How do I change channels. If I remember correctly I used channels 1-3 for the live steam forney. If were to use the other channels how would I change the channel on the controler? Im using a planet T5 2.4 GHz controler with the micro receiver planet R6M. The Evo has 3 switches 1,2,3 where should they be set at?
The wiring is hooked up like this:
battery wires go to the middle of my DPDT switch. The charging wire is on the left followed by the evo wire on right side. Red wire goes to +on the evo and the black goes to the -on the evo. The the red motor wire (green lgb) goes to the M on left side of evo and the black (white lgb) motor wire goes to the right M on evo. Receiver wires are hooked to the evo are brown is on - then the red wire on the 5v and last the orange is on the E. (this is how it came)
Hi Shawn.
Three things to try.
1). The RX must be bound to the TX. That it is blinking indicates should mean it is not bound correctly. Press the binding button the RX. The RX led should start flashing. Then switch on the TX and the RX led should go to solid ON.
2). Make sure the servo lead is plugged in the correct way round on the elevator channel on the RX. The orange signal wire goes to the front of the RX.
The elevator stick only is used for both speed and direction. That stick must be spring loaded to the middle idle position. You could use a sideways moving spring loaded stick if you wish. Just plug the servo lead into the appropriate channel on the RX.
Make sure the trimmer on the TX stick used is set to the middle position.
3). The three dip switches should all be OFF. They are only used to set different parameters. When all are OFF and the loco power is switched on, the LED should come on and stay ON indicating it is set for forward direction/speed. The LED goes out when in reverse direction.
If any of the dip switches have been turned ON you will have changed a setting in the IC. Refer to the chart on the programming page. The EJS program has two modes. One flash of the led on the EVO repeated three times means it is set to manual operation, two flashes x three times means it is in automatic mode. Make sure the three dip switches are turned OFF and then switch the loco OFF and then ON again to embed the changes.
I got everything working now. Just took a few times to get it right. My only question is what does each of the numbers on the receiver do when the evo is hooked to each, Like B,1,2,3, etc…? I noticed the evo gets warm to hot is that normal?
Thanks Tony and Kevin for all your help. It gave me more confidence in the RC dept.
Hi Shawn.
The various RX channels all work more or less exactly the same. So, in theory you could plug the EVO into any of the channels with a spring loaded middle idle position. The elevator channel is used because a backwards and forwards motion of the stick is more logical than a left to right motion.
You cannot use the throttle stick because it is not spring loaded. However, if you put the spring mechanism back into the stick you could easily have two locos controlled independently at the same time from one TX. One on the Elevator the other on the throttle. With extra parts it is possible to trigger sound systems with either of the sideways moving sticks.
The EVO is unlike any regular stick radio ESC in that with EVO the stick position does not determine the loco speed. Rather with EVO the speed is controlled by how long the stick is held one way or the other and uses a preset acceleration rates. It was done this way as a means of minimising “glitching” that was common with older AM radios before 2.4 GHz R/C became available.
Hot is a relative term. If you can leave your fingers on any components for a few seconds it is not too hot. If it is too hot to touch it is probably still OK. The voltage regulator may get hot but will shut down if it overheats. It is stepping down from 14 volts to 5 volts. If it worries you, you could always add a small fan to keep it cool.
Good luck running. Just remember that you must wait a second or two in neutral after stopping, before changing direction.