Issue: Switches would only throw intermittently when controlled by a macro.

Just a quick note to let you know of an issue that I have become aware of and how to fix it.

I have a 12 road fiddleyard / staging for Phase 1 of my layout (see plans). Roads / routes are set through 12 macros.

The issue was that switches 19 and 20 would only throw intermittently when being controlled by a macro. There was no problem when thrown individually. The two swicthes were both controlled off of the same Digitrax DS52 accessory decoder.

I reporgrammed the accessory decoders, used a different Digitrax DS52 accessory decoder, reprogrammed the macros and all to no avail.

Because of the number of switches I need to throw on two of the roads, I needed to use nested macros. I even tried including the two switches on one simple macro with no other commands but was still getting the same problem.

I emailed NCE but NCE did not reply. Tut Tut.

Fix: I included one of the switches on the top level macro and the other switch on a nested macro.

 

Possible Non-Technical Explanation:

I cannot verify if this is true as NCE have not replied to my query. However, after posting the issue on the Yahoo NCE forum, I received a reply stating that NCE macros send commands to all accessory decoders at the same time.

There is a potential issue with some accessory decoders when a decoder is used to control two switches and both switches are included in the same macro.

They may become 'over-loaded' when commands for both accessories are sent at once to the same accessory decoder (in this case a Digitrax DS52 ) causing one set of commands may get lost.

The commands for each switch need to be separated so as they do not reach the (same) accessory decoder at the same time; this was achieved by programming one switch in the main macro and programming the other switch controlled from the same DS52 in a nested macro.

All macros now seem to work consistently without any trouble and have been doing so since the first week in Janury (2008). It should also be noted that I have not had similar issues in "overloading commands " with either the CML DAC10 or the Digitrax DS64.