This product is versatile in terms of direction of the placement of the board and mounting in various configurations. It can easily replace a QSI board, a Dual Mode decoder board or be mounted directly on the electric motor or frame with Kapton tape. (It is recommended that a piece of Kapton tape be placed on the bottom of the mother board to assure electrical isolation from the electric motor or frame.)
- This mother board does not include a 21 Pin Decoder.
- This mother board and connector board require soldering.
- These printed circuit boards are NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN A DC SYSTEM.
- The on board resistors are sized for LEDs. (2.2K)
V5 (old) vs V5B (current)
The V5 has the capability of easily adding a two wire stay alive. The U+ and the GND pads are positioned close together and work well. The three wire stay alive or Power Pack has a third wire that could be connected to pin-1 on the base of the 21-pin connector. Pin -1 is associated with Aux 10 on a Loksound 5 decoder and used to turn the Power Pack off and on. It is used frequently but not as easy to solder to as a pad. I have a video on my Facebook page of the procedure.
The V5B has a dedicated pad for the white control wire of the Power Pack and is labeled "W". Now there are six pads in the row of soldering pads on the bottom of the board just under the small light connector board in the picture on the right. They are, right to left; W, U+, GND, A12, A11 and U+. The other difference is that the "W" pad is connected to pin-2 of the 21-pin connector and the Aux 7 function controls the Power Pack on this board. It is the default function assigned to the LokSound 5 decoders.
Package Includes:
- 1x Mother Board
- 1x Connector Board
Dimensions: 0.67" x 2.20" x 0.35" (17 mm x 56 mm x 0.9 mm)
The mother board includes;
- One 21 Pin Decoder receptacle,
- Two pairs of track input pads,
- One pair of motor input pads,
- One pair of stay alive pads (U+ and GND),
- Pads for two Aux functions (Version 5 Feature)
- Two pairs of speaker pads wired in parallel,
- Resistors for use with LED lighting. (on board 2.2K)
The connector board contains pads for twelve pairs of lighting function connections. U+ or the blue wire has twelve connected pads for the common power source. The negative (-) discrete function pads are all labeled to indicate their connection to the functions available in the decoder.
The lighting connector was designed so that the shell of the diesel locomotive can be easily separated from the frame without un-soldering wires. This does require that the headlight and rear lights be mounted in the shell of the locomotive and that the diesel has a removable dynamic brake shell.
Incandescent lamps or bulbs are not well suited for the Decoder Buddys or associated decoders. It can be done but it will require more electronics to achieve a result. Our recommendation is to go with LEDs.
