Adding Airwire G3 DCC and Phoenix P8 sound to a C19

[Al H]

Can you give me the specs, voltage and current, for control of the smoke generator and all LEDs, and the output spec for the optical chuff sensor on the C19?  I will be running on-board battery power.  I want to connect the chuff sensor to the G3 trigger input.  Any app notes using these controllers would be very helpful.

[StanAmes]

Not an easy answer.  The simplest way is to use the electronics on the tender board and simply hook up the airwire to the existing electronics using either the adaptor board Airwire sells or hard wiring it.  If you use the extensions you can raise the board providing you ore room for the batteries.

If you do not want to use the board in the tender then I highly recommend you still use the wiring in the locomotive itself and use an ohm meter to figure out which wire is which on the connector wires.

You will need to supply both a + and - DC voltage to the locomotive.  The chuff sensor circuits are in the locomotive as well as the low current transistor that controls the smoke unit allowing you to use a low current output to control the smoke.

I do not have the specs for the LEDs used as I normally use the current limiting transistors.  Others who have done the conversion without using the board will have to provide that answer.

Hope that helps

Stan

[Al H]

Thanks Stan.  You may have a point regarding the LEDs, but I need to hook up the chuff sensor output to the trigger on the P8 sound card as this provides the speed input for proper chuff timing and other automatic sound generation.  Also, will need to know the voltage and current max for the smoke generator as I would like to control the off/on from the wireless controller.  No specs  or schematics are published from Bachmann.

[StanAmes]

The chuff output goes to ground when there is a chuff so you simply hook it to the chuff input wire on the Phoenix board.

The smoke function is a low current function (a few milliamps) that can be used by any decoder function output.

Both the smoke function and chuff circuit only work when you provide + and - DC power to the locomotive which is normally done when you plug a device into the socket.

Stan

[Al H]

Excellent!  I also confirmed the chuff interface.  The smoke had me puzzled but thanks to you, I think I'm ready to test it out.  Many thanks again Stan.