# DCS51 Issues with "Button Board"



## SSBN743 (Dec 30, 2013)

Hey everyone – I just have a quick question that I’m hoping someone can help with.
I have the Digitrax Zephr DCS51 command station and it has been working fine. I recently bought a NCE switch machine to control 6 switches. I bought the Switch-8 MK2 and optional button board as well.

The switch machine works fine and correctly controls all my switches. Now, according to the NCE manual, I need to set CV548 to 1 instead of the default 0 to enable the button board to control switches via external push buttons. And I would like to make a button board since the operation of the cab with switches and all is somewhat cumbersome. OK, no problem right? Wrong!

The DCS51 will not let me select CV 548. I don’t know what the highest number it allows is, but it sure seems to be less than 548. What do I do? Is there a hack or something? I’ve been all over the Google machine and haven’t found anything.

Thanks for any help.


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## DonR (Oct 18, 2012)

If no member comes to your rescue, by all means go to the
Digitrax web site and SUPPORT. Send them a message thru
their site explaining your problem completely. Tell them
your device and the device you are trying to set and what actions you
have taken. Likely they will email you back in little time.

They are, however, sometimes, 'testy' when a customer
is trying to use a competitor's product with a Digitrax
product.

You may have to go to the NCE site for answers.

Don


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## SSBN743 (Dec 30, 2013)

DonR said:


> If no member comes to your rescue, by all means go to the
> Digitrax web site and SUPPORT. Send them a message thru
> their site explaining your problem completely. Tell them
> your device and the device you are trying to set and what actions you
> ...


Yeah, I got that feeling already. They can complain all they want but the NCE switch machine was the only one I could find that would do more than 4 switches – maybe I didn’t look hard enough but it seems Digitrax might want to compete in that area or realize that customers are going to use their competitors stuff.

Anyway, I just got it figured out – there was one sentence in the manual that I read but didn’t really read at the same time.

“If your command station doesn’t support accessory ops programing, switch the positive and negative leads that plug into the button board and the polarity will be revered”

Meaning that all CV’s with 0’s become 1’s. I only need CV548 as a 1, but I’m forced to set them all to 1’s – it does work though and I haven’t noticed any negative impacts. So, yeah – that seems to be the hack I was looking for; kind of a good note to remember for future situations too - binary CV's are simply polarity based.

Josh


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## johnfl68 (Feb 1, 2015)

I apologize in advance if I am stating obvious, not familiar with NCE Switch machine.

Are you trying to program CV once?
Is the NCE switch machine connected to the Program Track output when you are trying change the CV?

I haven't done Digitrax programming in a while, but as I recall, you need to be on the Programming output to be able to change CV's that are not part of normal ops.

Maybe this will be of some help.

John


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## JerryH (Nov 18, 2012)

The Digitrax SE8c can run 8 tortoise machine as well as signals.


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## SSBN743 (Dec 30, 2013)

johnfl68 said:


> I apologize in advance if I am stating obvious, not familiar with NCE Switch machine.
> 
> Are you trying to program CV once?
> 
> ...


No, the switch machine is on the ops side – I suppose I could connect it to the programming track side easy enough but I’d still have the same problem – the DCS51 won’t go to CV548.

I even tried to use JMRI and program a single CV (JMRI will do CV 548) but, it apparently, needs the command station to do the same thing because that failed too – but I can ops program any other CV from JMRI or the station itself.

I need a command station that will address the higher CV’s, which is apparently something the Super Chief – if I had known that when I started, I would have just bought that one – I don’t think it was all that much more expensive – but I didn’t know. Anyway…got a workaround in place for now, at least until I figure out that I want one of the other 500 series CV’s set to 0.


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