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In lugnet.trains, Mark Riley wrote:
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Digitrax is introducing a new low cost DCC decoder, the DZ123 (retail $20 US).
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[snip]
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I plan on picking up a couple of these. I’ll report back once they come in
and I get them installed.
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Hi All,
I’m following up on my earlier post (above).
I purchased some of these DZ123 decoders and finally got around to installing a
couple of them. Street price for me ended up being about $16 (US) each.
Installation went smoothly and I was also installing a TCS M1 decoder at the
same time so I had a little assembly line going.
When I went to test the DZ123, however, I noticed right away that the motion was
very jerky and top speed was only about 1/2 of what it should be. I checked my
other DZ123s and they all exhibited the same problem. After a *lot* of fiddling
with CVs, I finally found that the problem was caused by the PWM frequency
(CV09) being too high. The factory default is 0x00 which means maximum
frequency. I changed this to various numbers and using values like 0x80 to 0xFF
seems to fix the jerkiness and top speed issues. The only problem is that the
DZ123 is now no quieter than the DN121 - you get a buzzing sound when the train
starts off.
I’ve also installed Digitrax DZ143 and TCS M1 decoders and these both are very
quiet when the train is starting off. These decoders worked perfectly with the
default CVs, so I don’t know what is different with the DZ123. I will be
fiddling more with the CVs, but in the mean time, I just wanted folks here to
know that if quietness is an issue, you’ll be better off with the more expensive
DZ143 or M1. Other than the buzzing, the DZ123 seems to be a good decoder for
the money and it’s both cheaper and smaller than the older DN121 from Digitrax.
On the upside, since this decoder is so small and inexpensive, I decided to
install one in a brick (ala Dave
Koudys). Here’s a link to my Brickshelf folder with some pics of the DCC brick
during assembly and hooked to a motor, lights, and the RCX:
This has some potential robotics uses, so I’ve crossposted to
lugnet.robotics.rcx, too.
Cheers,
Mark
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Digitrax DZ123
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| Digitrax is introducing a new low cost DCC decoder, the DZ123 (retail $20 US). It has most of the same features as it's bigger cousin, the DZ143 ($35), the most notable differences being that it only supports two (instead of four) functions (or (...) (21 years ago, 19-Nov-03, to lugnet.trains)
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