I've been trying to set up a rotary beacon FX on my snow plow using a SDH164D decoder. It had no lights on it when I bought it, so I installed a micro LED in the dummy head light and a flat top LED on top for the beacon. The head light is on the white wire and beacon is on the yellow wire. I'm trying to separate the two functions. Right now both lights are on when the loco is selected and they both stay on no matter which direction the loco is going. So far so good. I should be able to apply the FX to the beacon using CV50 (the yellow wire) value 038/x26 to get it working - but no joy. What am I doing wrong? My master on / off light switch (F0) isn't working either. Anyone out there ever get the beacon FX working?
Try CV 50 to 46 will give rotary beacon function to yellow wire. The beacon should be on when the headlight is on (forward only). If you want it to be on in forward or reverse try CV50 to 26 or 36. Hope this helps. -Art
It didn't work, so I started looking around for another solution. Schmidt-Teknik makes a nifty kit with 2 rotary beacons and control board. It operates at max 6 - 7.2 volt DC. - which is going to be a problem for the SDH164D decoder. I doubt any of the output fx wires can support anything close to that much voltage. One of his Danish costumers is using an LM7806 power regulator to drop his 12 volt power source down to 6 volts. I guess he's running DC and not DCC. It's hard to know. I don't speak Danish. Anyway, that only solves half the problem, I still need to set up some kind of switch to turn the beacon on and off with my SDH164D decoder. What's the best way to get around this? I'm thinking maybe some sort of micro relay? Can anyone tell me what the maximum voltages coming out of the decoder FX wires are?
