I have hooked up an ARC on a simple loop with the ARC powered by a 1.8a transformer and the loop with a TPC 400/Powerhouse. I made a simple recording to only sound the whistle. However when I attempt to play it back nothing happens except that the lights blink. The engine responds fine to the Cab 1.

I have checked my wiring and the procedures for recording and playback and still no luck.

Is there a possibility that the TPC will not work with an ARC?

johne

The ARC needs a specbase unitial wire (3 cond)connected to the base unit. Perhaps this is the problem

The cable is a special one as stated above, and the ARC must be the first TMCC device. IE, SC's, BPC, ASC, etc must come after it. This is explained in the instruction manual.

Ralph

Note that the (transmitting or sending) TXA terminal on the ARC connects to the receiving DAT terminal on all the downstream devices.

Thanks for the input. I didn't realize that there was a special 3-wire cable (14192) and was using the command base cable (14191) instead by stripping back the cable covering to get to the black wire (which is probably ineffective). Anyway with the new cable I am able to get the train to play back the simple recording.

Now I am trying to use a sensor track in my recordings. I have created a sensor track by replacing the pin at one end of the inside rail with a plastic pin as well as doing the same for the rail section connecting to it. This seems to duplicate the example shown for tubular track in the ARC manual.

I have not been able to get this sensor track to work effectively, however. It's probably because I'm not interpreting the instructions in the manual correctly.

Do any of you have experience with using a sensor?

johne

I forgot to mention that I also removed the metal bar that connected the outside rails when attempting to make a sensor track.

If you're making an insulated control rail, beside using the insulating pins in each end of the rail you also need to insert paper insulators between the rail and each metal tie... remove the rail by prying up the clips on the tie that hold the rail and place the insulator in the clip on each track tie; re clamp the clip to the rail... I have used pieces of index card material cut to fit... If you do not insulate the rail from the tie your control rail will be shorted out... removing one tie will not help since the rail will be shorted by the remaining ties if they're not insulated...

quote:

Thanks for the input. I didn't realize that there was a special 3-wire cable (14192) and was using the command base cable (14191)

Actually both cables are the same. The only difference is that the third wire is soldered to one of the pins in the connector to the command base. I upgraded mine to allow the use of the ARC but can't remember which pin it is but maybe someone else on the board will reply. I'll send an e-mail to Jim Battaglia he might know.