Piko sound systems in parallel with Aristo REVO?

[markoles]

Hi guys,

 

I keep hearing the new Piko american steam sound file and think it sounds great.  I see this added to a lot of the new mogul locomotives and am curious if anyone has attempted to run the sound card in parallel with Aristo's revolution TE.  I run my LGB mikado sound board in parallel with the REvo (used for controlling the motor and triggering the whistle and bell only).

 

Interested to hear experiences..

[Kevin Strong]

If you want to power the Piko sound board off of the motor output of the Revolution, you're going to need to convert the output from PWM to linear. The Piko decoder does not like PWM one little bit. I don't know if you can still get the Aristo PWM/Linear filter circuits or not. You'll want to connect the motor to the output of the Piko board, though. Otherwise, the Piko board won't even power up until it sees around 5 - 6 volts, but if the motor is being directly off of the Revolution output, the loco's long since got up and left. You can trigger the bell and whistle off of the revo triggers, but I'm almost positive there's no external chuff trigger, so you'll have to use the motor voltage to control the chuff rate.

 

Later,

 

K

[markoles]

Kevin,

 

Thanks!  I am just getting around to replying!  I have a couple of those PWC to linear boards hanging around, so it might be possible to use one if I do wind up with a Reading Camelback.  What I would possibly do is simply grab the incoming power and use the motor outputs to drive the Piko board.  I wonder if the new Crest will drop the PWC from their future offerings, if they get that far...