A simple decoder tester.

Discussion in 'Other Electronic Interfaces' started by Keith M, Jul 16, 2016.

  1. Keith M

    Keith M Staff Member Moderator

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    Since I'd got a few odds and ends of electronic bits around, I thought I'd knock up a quick decoder tester for 8 pin decoders. Left over from surgery on a loco that had to be hardwired due to lack of space, the 8 pin decoder socket was removed to give more room, so the socket was re-used by cutting a rectangle out of a piece of Veroboard, and soldering it into the space so as to connect to the copper strips. It's then a simple matter of providing a couple of Croc clips with red and black supply leads, orange and grey wires into any spare 12 volt motor you happen to have (in my case, a spare Heljan motor bought cheaply on Ebay), then wiring white, yellow and green LED's via 1k resistors onto the board. I just put the croc clips onto the supply bars of my rolling road with a decoder plugged into the board, put my Lenz handset into 'Program' mode and can then check out (and reprogram if necessary) the decoder without need to dismantle a loco to plug the decoder into. The white LED lights in forward, yellow in reverse and the green on F1, and most functions can be tested and set without need of a loco, so if you have a few spare decoders (as I do after upgrading a loco to DCC sound) they can be easily set up before you've even bought a loco to fit them into! It can also be adapted to 6 pin decoders by wiring an 8 pin plug to a 6 pin socket, although I don't normally use 6 pin decoders so haven't bothered with this. Tester shown below with decoder omitted for clarity.
    Keith.

    Attached files [​IMG]
     
  2. Gary

    Gary Wants more time for modelling.... Staff Member Administrator

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    Very clever Keith, good job. :thumbs: Certainly makes testing a decoder a lot easier.

    Cheers, Gary.
     
  3. Sparky

    Sparky Full Member

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    Cool Keith . well done.
     
  4. paul_l

    paul_l Staff Member Administrator

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    And the speaker connection ? :avatar:

    Nice one Keith
     
  5. Toto

    Toto I'm best ignored Staff Member Founder Administrator

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    I must say ........ so much neater than Paul ....... :avatar:
    well done Keith
     

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