NCE’s Generation 3 Radio – Unrivalled Performance.
Note: This website is NOT the official Website for NCE upgrades. For NCE’s official information, visit NCE’s website
NCE has released Generation 3 radio, delivering improvements over the previous 2nd Generation radio (RB02 & repeaters release), that provides unrivalled performance with the following:
What has been modified? Only the Throttle/Cab radio boards. There are no changes or modifications to the Command Station, RB01, RB02 or RPT1 Repeaters.
Do I need the 1.5 Radio Upgrade? Many users of NCE radio have had perfect performance with their system. Any future upgrades to the “system”, will not require version 1.5 radio to be installed, for the radio to work. These users, if they choose, don’t have to have their throttles upgraded. The variations in operating requirements and whether sound locos are used, (continually selecting sounds e.g. the horn, bell etc) determines on how much “radio traffic” there is. Each individual’s “mileage” will vary from the 1.5 Radio Upgrade.
Do I need to upgrade the Command Station software to the latest version? No. The version of software you have now will continue to work.
Is there any benefit to upgrading the Command Station software for radio? Yes. Although it is not related to the V1.5 upgrade, NCE has a "Radio Fix" option to address potential "train runaway" issues with radio in the 2004 or newer NCE Command Station software.
How to upgrade to 3rd Generation radio. The throttles will have to be sent to NCE for the upgrade. Contact NCE to co-ordinate your throttle upgrades. Version 1.5 radio throttles started to be shipped from NCE from late Oct 07. How tell what version of the radio you have, click here.
Are there any other issues to be aware of? – NO.
FAQs about NCE radio including the new 3rd Generation Radio.
How do you turn the radio cabs on? There is no “external” power switch on any of the radio cabs. To turn on:
· Procabs – Press the EMERGENCY STOP button, momentarily. The slight difficulty with turning on the Procab, can be fixed by a small modification to the main circuit board, that can be fixed, if the complete Procab is sent to NCE, or by modifying the Procab’s circuit board.
· Cab04/05 Engineer Cabs – A momentary press of the HORN button, then wait 5 to 10 seconds till the polling (top) LED starts blinking. No need to hold down the HORN button.
All cabs turn off automatically after a period of cab inactivity. The default is 10 minutes that was changed in the version 1.4. The timeout period can be adjusted, see below.
Radio Cab Addresses. Just as each loco needs a different address, so do the cabs. When you purchase a second or subsequent cab, change the cab address accordingly:
· Procab: 2 to 17 – default 2. There are runaway problems with Cab Address 8 (as of Feb 08), so don’t use this address.
· Engineer Cabs – Cab04 etc. 19 to 48 - default 5. Don’t use #49. See below.
Note 1: Cab Addresses 0, 1 and 18 have been reserved.
Note 2: The display update information is included in addresses 2 to 17. Procabs operated out of this range, will not have a display update. Engineer cabs can be operated in “2 to 17” range, but are taking the place of a Procab. Not a problem if you have only a few Procabs.
Has Cab04/05 Address 49 been fixed? – NO. Using cab address 49 locks up the radio system.
Do users of the original RB01 have improved performance with 1.5 cabs? - YES. All base stations will operate with version 1.5 radio.
Can the Older radio throttles and the new V1.5 throttles work together? – YES. Both will work together. However, much of the benefit that the 1.5 Radio Upgrade brings to the layout will be reduced by any active V1.4 or less throttles. The more V1.4 or older throttles that are active, the further reduction in overall radio responsiveness can occur. However, it will not be any worse than before this upgrade was offered.
The maximum benefit of a V1.5 Radio Upgrade is only achieved when EVERY radio throttle used, is a V1.5 version.
Does the old recommended “deliberate” button pressing, still apply? - NO. Operate all the buttons just as you were plugged in.
Does the Horn/Whistle stay on anymore? - NO. Once operated, there is no delay in the sounding of the Horn/Whistle and it will stop sounding as soon as the Horn/Whistle button is released. No more horn/whistle still blowing un-commanded.
Can I “positively” SELECT A LOCO, with the Cab04s? - YES. Acquiring a loco with Cab04s is the same as being plugged in. The practice of plugging by some Cab04 operators is no longer required. A beta test of a Cab04PR, 30 feet from the RB02, using a 2 inch antenna, selecting 5 locos 40 times each and blowing the horn with the horn stopping after the button was released, a total of acquiring a loco 200 times (1400 button presses) for just a couple of misses to acquire a loco.
Can I program a loco and build/break consists with the radio? - YES. Either form of programming, building/breaking consists etc, can be done successfully anywhere on the layout, without plugging in.
What is the range of the radio now? Tests have confirmed with just an RB02, throttle range can be greater than 100 feet with the 7 inch 1/2 wave antennas. With this improvement in range small 2 inch “loaded” antennas can be used providing the user with a much more “user friendly” throttle with marginal reduction in range.
Has the transmitter output power been affected? – NO, it is unchanged.
If too close to the RB02, what happens? Operating within 2 to 3 feet of the RB02, the RB02 gets overloaded and reception becomes flaky at best. Operating with smaller antennas allows closer operation.
Do people absorb the 916.5 MHz signal? People still absorb the 916.5 MHz signal, the impact of many operators will be much less and in a lot of cases the radio will work just the same as if only one person is operating the layout. Standing between the throttle and the RB02 does not create a problem up to about 70 feet. Operating with 5 people in a 25’ x 25’ layout room using 2 inch antennas and one RB02 provided trouble free radio operations.
Do I need to use repeaters? The need for repeaters is greatly reduced if all throttles have the 1.5 Upgrade.
When do I know when I need a repeater? As before, the layout area should be “mapped out” using the top LED of the throttle to locate dead spots and range limits. Any dead spots or the range becomes an issue, use a repeater.
What does “mapping/mapped” mean? Walk around your layout with a throttle, the top LED (adjacent to the antenna) should continuously flash. Anytime the LED is extinguished, this “location” has poor or no radio reception and is called a “dead spot”. Walking away from the RB01/02 until this LED extinguishes, determines the range of the radio.
Where should the RB01/02 be located? Experiments have found these can be located anywhere for successful operation. No more placing them on the roof etc. A central location is recommended, but experimenting with the location may eliminate any dead spots found during “mapping” of the layout.
What to do with “dead spots” with a RB01. The RB01 does not support repeaters, so if you have any dead spots, experiment with the location of the RB01, until they are at a minimum or eliminated. If operation of the radio cannot be improved by moving the RB01, then a RB02 and repeaters will be necessary.
Can shorter antennas be used on the cabs? – Yes. The 7 inch 1/2 wave antennas provide the advertised maximum range. With this increased performance, smaller antennas can be used providing a more “user friendly” throttle but there will be a marginal drop in range that can be offset by the use of a repeater. Suitable 1/4 wave antennas, available from Digi-key, are:
ANT-916-CW-QW A 3.125 inch antenna originally supplied by NCE on the first radio cabs.
ANT-916-CW-RH A 2 inch “loaded” antenna that NCE recommends in their RB02/RPT1 manual. I have fitted these to my cabs and have got over 50 feet of range.
As usual, “mapping” out of the layout will determine if any repeaters are required. Adding a repeater or two is certainly worth the benefit of operating with the small 2 inch antennas.
See Antennas for NCE throttles for installation details.
What size antenna should be used on the RB01/02/RPT1? Use the larger 7 inch 1/2 wave antenna.
Bad Antenna Connections. Many previously reported issues with the radio were indeed due to bad antenna connections to the radio board when modelers installed the previous separately available Radio Upgrade Kit to their existing “plug in” throttles. This is why the Upgrade Kits are no longer available. Now you have to return you cabs to NCE or a dealer to upgrade your existing throttles to convert them to radio, or purchase factory installed radio throttles.
Broken antenna connectors: A few users have reported breaking the antenna connection by dropping the throttles or by the excessive “whip” created by the 7 inch 1/2 wave antennas and the lack of antenna support in the original design. A suitable replacement connector is the CONREVSMA006.031 from Linx Technologies.
Should the Radio Fix be ON? - YES. Under the Command Station settings, ENABLE the Radio Fix. The default setting is “ENABLED”.
Does Layout I.D. work? Layout I.D. for the throttles works but the separations of the RB02s must be sufficient, at least 300 to 400 feet to eliminate any communications between the RB02s. With this arrangement, an operator on Layout 1 will not interfere with Layout 2, if the Layout I.D. is appropriately set in ALL the cabs and RB02 No system can be on the default “0” for this feature to work. Note: The separation distance could be marginally reduced, if the use of smaller antennas on the RB02s.
How do I know if I have version 1.5 of the radio? For Procabs, you will have version 1.5 of the radio, when ”V1.5” shows briefly at the second “VX.X” when the cab is turned on, prior to the “normal” operating throttle display. The first VX.X shows the Procab’s software version.
With Cab04’s or Cab05’s you cannot externally identify the radio version, but a simple test will tell you if you have the upgraded version. Take your cab 50 ft away from your base station and look at the polling LED on top, if it is still flashing then it already has version 1.5.
When was Version 1.5 first released? Version 1.5 started to be shipped late Oct 07.
How to adjust the radio “Time Out Period”? The time the radio board remains powered after a period of “inactivity” can be programmed by selecting between “0 and 9” that gives “n X 2” minutes. This was changed in the version 1.4 radio, from 1 to 9 minutes to 2 to 18 minutes. Selecting “0”, the radio powered on all the time.
The default is “5” that will provide a “time out” period of 10 minutes for V1.5 and 5 minutes for V1.4 and earlier.
To adjust the time out period from the default time, do this:
· Procabs: Press “EXPN” then “2 = SETUP RADIO” and shows “AUTO POWER OFF TIMER (0 - 9). Enter a value that provides 2 times the value shown in minutes.
· Cab04s etc: This is a little harder. See Cab04 Time Out Period.
Note: If “0” is set in any of the cabs, the cab will NOT power off (even after a hour etc) during an operating session AND you will have to manually turn your radio cabs OFF, by plugging in to the Cab Bus for any cab or “EXPN + 1” for Procabs.
Suggestions for Time Out Period: Set all cabs to “5 to 9” (10 to 20 minutes) for normal day to day running and for an operating day, change to “0”. At the end of the operating day, set this setting back to “9”. This way all visitors will be happy as all throttles will be working ALL the time. This is easy to do for the Procabs, see above, but for the Cab04s, a little more difficult. See the above link.
How much current do the radio throttles draw?
· Procab – 18 mAs with the back light OFF. 58 mAs with the back light ON.
· Cab04 – 40 mAs
The reason Cab04s draw more current than a Procab under normal operation (back light off), is that Cab04s only use two batteries for a total of 2.4 to 3.0 volts and the Procab uses 4 batteries for a total of 4.8 to 6.0 volts. For both throttles, this is a “power requirement” of approximately 0.1 watt.
Can you use rechargeable batteries. Any AAA battery type can be used to power the radio board, due to the special “Sepic” regulator being used. So long as the batteries can supply the required current, the regulator supplies the correct voltage to the board. This allows the use of the lower 1.2 volt NiCd or NiMH rechargeable batteries, instead of the 1.5 volt dry cells. The Cab04 only use 2 cells and a voltage of 2.4 volts is ok.
NiMH batteries now are available in the 700 to 900 mAH, which makes them very suitable for use in our throttles.
Rechargeable batteries when compared to dry cells, have a lower “capacity” and a higher “self discharge” rate (throttle off), so these batteries will require charging more often, compared to the replacement of dry cells (alkalines).
Mark Gurries said about “Self Discharge: The current the battery consumes by itself just standing there not connected to anything. All rechargeable batteries have a very high self discharge rate compared to non-rechargeable batteries. Example. In a 3 YEAR period, a Alkaline will retain over 90%+ of it original capacity. A NiCd or NiMH will have about 60% of its original capacity in 3 MONTHS”.
New generation NiMH batteries can keep their charge for years. See: http://www.eneloop.info/ Google "Sanyo eneloop NiMH batteries" for a suitable vendor.
How long will rechargeable batteries last between “charges” Using 800 – 900 mAH NiMH batteries, basically a:
In each case, when the LED illuminates on a Cab04 or when the screen back light is illuminated on a Procab, there will be more current drawn (Cab04 – 10 mAs and Procab 40 mAs) that will effect the amount of time, but since these two modes of operation are only on for about 5 to 10% of the time, this will only reduce the time by approximately 1 – 2 hours.
Self Discharge (see above) will impact on battery life.
Can the “time” of illumination of the Procab’s Back Light be adjusted? NO. For purposes of conserving power, the backlight is turned off automatically after 5 seconds. Operating the “Shift” button at any time will illuminate the back light for another 10 seconds.
Fit an “On Board” Charger to the Throttles. Mark Schutzer describes how to fit an “on board” charger that charges the batteries as soon as the throttle is plugged into the Cab Bus. This eliminates the removal of the batteries to charge them. The components used, are “surface mount” parts that will require a steady hand and good soldering skills. Select the “NCE Articles” in the left hand column on Mark’s web site.
Warning: As usual, with any modification to the throttles etc, your NCE warranty will MAY be voided.
With this modification, the charge rate has been set at 50 mAs. The Cab Bus will need to be powered for about 24 hours, for 800 mAs batteries, if you let them go flat.
A 12 Volt DC 1.0 Amp Wall Wart plugged in to the first UTP, provides power to the Cab Bus that can be powered independently of the DCC system. This allows charging overnight or longer, without the DCC system being on, thus no track power. All NCE UTPs come with the DC power receptacle and when connected as per the instruction manual, when the Wall Wart is connected, the Command Station no longer powers any throttle plugged into this UTP and other “downstream” UTPs.
NCE Radio power limitation and suggestions about the NCE One Way Throttle.
“Cab Power Limitation” conversation on the NCE Yahoo Group on 02Feb06.
Ron St.Laurent asked: Perhaps I'm missing something. I read that the power limitation is placed on the NCE cabs because they have two-way communication? What difference does it make whether it has one or two way communication?
The fact is that the unit is transmitting and that's where the power limitation is applied so that other radio controlled devices on that frequency are not affected. The "one-way" or "two-way" should have no bearing.
Mark’s G’s reply.
FCC does not define power as just pure Radio Signal (RF) Strength. They permit time averaging to be taken into account. It is the AVERAGE power that they limit.
Example: You can transmit twice the RF power if you only do it half the time.
Where the one-way versus two-way comes into play depends on the protocol needs of the cab which directly translates into the power rating of the radio transmitter. To understand this, let compare Digitrax's one-way radio with NCE's two-way radio.
Digitrax cab bus protocol is such that in most cases, seldom does the command station need to talk to the cab. In fact after selection of a Loco/train, the command station no longer needs to talk to the cab for basic train operation. But on the other hand, the cabs talk to the
command every time you push a button to control the train. Digitrax took a look at that low communication protocol overhead and said 'we could make one-way radio system work with that'.
First they made a rule. You must "plug in" the cab to select a train. With that done, that permitted one to unplug the cab and use radio from that point on. Then they looked at how often does the cab need to talk to the command station. That question got reduced to: How often do you push a button on a cab? Not much at all. So by looking at the FCC rules, they were able to design a one-way radio with a very powerful transmitter which only transmits a signal when you press a button (or a command that does not need the command station involvement). In other words, the radio puts out very short burst of RF. No button, no transmission. (I have not personally verified the radio portion "no button no transmission" of the above text is 100% true because I do not have a Digitrax radio system. But I am very confident this is how it works based on conversations with others and it makes perfect sense. Non-the-less, I think everyone gets the idea.)
NCE cab bus protocol requires two-way communication to work with any standard NCE cab that can plug directly into the cab bus. The command station polls (ask) every cab to see what buttons are being pressed and processes the button into a command and then optionally updates the cab’s LCD display as needed, if one exist on the cab. Even if the person never presses a button, the cab is still asks for the status. The protocol requires a very high overhead on behalf of the command station. The command station is constantly polling all the cabs all the time and expecting an answer from every cab every time.
Looking at that protocol, there is no way to make it one-way and still use standard NCE cabs. So NCE was forced to build a two-way system to make the radio transparent to the user. When NCE looked at the FCC rules, it became clear that the command station, working through the base station, will be transmitting ALL THE TIME. So NCE was forced to do the OPPOSITE of what Digitrax could do in terms of transmitting power to meet the same FCC rules. That had to go with the minimum power level.
(The following is my personal guess as to what is going to happen)
NCE plans to offer one way radio cabs some time in the future. This is well known. But looking at it technically, to do so would mean a new unique protocol between the new radio cab and its matching base station would be required. I suspect the new cabs will work just like Digitrax one-way cabs in that transmission only occurs when a button is pressed as opposed to being ask if a button has been pressed. Thus these new one-way radio cabs will be 100% radio only operation because they are not compatible with the cab bus directly. Likewise they will need a completely different base station than the RB02. The one-way radio base station will have to translate the one way cab button presses into compatible Cab bus protocol commands that the command station can work with.
Hope this clear things up.
Best Regards,
Mark Gurries
Linear Technology
Power Supply & Battery Charger Applications Engineer/Manager
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