Piko 35040 R/C Loco Receiver with Pocket Remote

[miniboB]

Gentlemen; My wife Denice bought me 35040 for Christmas. I installed it in a CVP 44 ton GE diesel this afternoon. Is a very simple install and works very slick. I have installed CVP units in several steam locomotives but have been wanting something simpler. I'm using two lithium ion on batteries in series. for about 16 volts when fully charged. The CVP are great but i'm very hard of hearing and it is difficult to program for me as you have to hear higher pitched beeps to confirm your programing. I plan to installe more of these as they are also very $ econmical.

 

[Moonraker]

These units are certainly low cost and work well if you are okay with using buttons to control your loco. We have tested these units with MyLocoSound soundcards and the wiring diagram is attached. There are two triggers available which can be used for whistle/horn, bell, guard, fireman shovelling, etc. There is one minor oddity. When you power up you have to press the forward or reverse button once to start the soundcard.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MyLocoSound

 

[dunnyrail]

These units are certainly low cost and work well if you are okay with using buttons to control your loco. We have tested these units with MyLocoSound soundcards and the wiring diagram is attached. There are two triggers available which can be used for whistle/horn, bell, guard, fireman shovelling, etc. There is one minor oddity. When you power up you have to press the forward or reverse button once to start the soundcard.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MyLocoSound

That is very interesting, thanks for posting.

Just thinking these through, is it possible to have say 2 sets of these independently controlling 2 different locomotives. I suspect this feature if available will be deeply buried in the full instruction manual.

Ah yes there is a rotating switch, page 15 of the manual explains. There is a rotating dip switch in the Tx and Rx that gives 7 options.

https://www.piko-shop.de/is.php?id=23147

 

[Greg Elmassian]

8 options, 0 through 7, or 7 ADDITIONAL address options... 8 total

english: https://www.onlytrains.com/Merchant5/graphics/manuals/1035040.pdf

 

[dunnyrail]

Well after Peter‘s post above I decided to indulge in a couple of sets of the Piko Rc units. At around £60 each from Topslots they looked a pretty good deal. Though usual disclaimer, I find their service as always top notch though I did not search any harder for a lower price being happy to support this excellent Coy. The delivery was good too being just 5 days from order to a ring at my doorbell.

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I followed the wiring as shown in Peter’s diagram just substituting a Fosworks wiring loom for the on/off and using my test chassis. It all went together very well and works as expected. I have not tried it out on the line as yet so cannot comment on range, but as I tend to walk around the line with my trains so long as I get at least 20 or so feet that will not be a problem.

Here is my test setup On the bench today. Note I have taken out the Piko on/off switch from the circuit feeding power in where the grey and black wires were disconnected from the Rx.

Red U1 and Black U2 are power feed doubled out of the MLS to the battery via the Fosworks switch loom (right) and U1 U2 on the Piko Rx.

Yellow M1 and Green M2 are motor connections doubled out of the Rx to the MLS and Chassis.

Brown wires are the 2 sound functions from b to MLS whistle (button I on the Tx) and r to another MLS Sound(button II on the Tx), I have gone for the bell.

2 Black wires to the speaker.

The only thing I have found is that there is no sound till you do start moving using the Tx, this is a bit disconcerting at first particularly when setting up! But once the sound is up and running it stays on unless you have set up for the sound to go off after the preset on the MLS.

 

[dunnyrail]

I tested the setup outside today brrrr b cold! I am happy to report that I got 42 feet at least out of the range so may in fact do quite a bit more. Too cold and blockage on the line to test out further.

Below my jury rig of LGB open with all the electrical gubbins inside coupled to my test chassis. Not line blockage by birds excavating moss for munchies. After my rat invasion last year I have decided to stop feeding the birds but do tolerate this. Winter 2020-21 was my first for many years feeding them so they are unlikely to have got reliant on my mere offerings.

This pic gives a view of the range with the test rig in the far distance just to the left of the second left leg of the pergola. Tx seen on the BBQ.

 

[JimmyB]

I see you are making good use of the BBQ

 

[SouthCerney]

Happy New Year all,
I have fitted Piko 35040 units from TopSlotsnTrains to all my Piko and Bachmann Thomas locos and very pleased with them. Rather than using battery power, apart from my two Roncalli GE25T diesels, I use DC track power using a standard Piko transformer connected directly to the track. As this is always full voltage to the locos, running is good even at low speeds, and I can have three or four locos running together from only 32VA at 22V.
Fitting a sound card looks interesting, I was waiting to see if Piko were going to release something suitable at a good price.
Cheers,
Richard

 

[dunnyrail]

Happy New Year all,
I have fitted Piko 35040 units from TopSlotsnTrains to all my Piko and Bachmann Thomas locos and very pleased with them. Rather than using battery power, apart from my two Roncalli GE25T diesels, I use DC track power using a standard Piko transformer connected directly to the track. As this is always full voltage to the locos, running is good even at low speeds, and I can have three or four locos running together from only 32VA at 22V.
Fitting a sound card looks interesting, I was waiting to see if Piko were going to release something suitable at a good price.
Cheers,
Richard

I doubt Piko will manage to do a cheeper option than the My Loco Sound cards (but you can always live in hope), though there are other options a bit cheeper than this but I have never tried them.

 

[Greg Elmassian]

If you want cheaper per loco cost you will have to stay track power and go DCC

A $200 decoder per loco will give you the absolute best sound, as the cost is leveraged by the common components between Z, N , HO, and O scale decoders... nothing like the economy of scale. With a small loco, you may get away with the $80 HO decoder... there is a key point... as the number of locos increases, the DCC system cost goes away.

What you have is the optimal solution using Piko, the matchup with the MLS card makes sense.

So what, here in the US it is $104 for the Piko unit, and $99 for the MLS card.

Numbers are pretty equivalent. No offense to our MLS friend is implied in the above.

Greg

 

[miniboB]

These units are certainly low cost and work well if you are okay with using buttons to control your loco. We have tested these units with MyLocoSound soundcards and the wiring diagram is attached. There are two triggers available which can be used for whistle/horn, bell, guard, fireman shovelling, etc. There is one minor oddity. When you power up you have to press the forward or reverse button once to start the soundcard.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MyLocoSound

Thanks to your feedback I am adding a 35040 and a my loco sound unit to a LGB 2019S that Denice got me for Christmas. I'm not far from putting it into service. Two questions. #1 the my loco shuts down after one minute of in activity. Is there a way to overcome this feature? #2 Is there a way to adapt the stock chuff unit to trip the my loco sound. No easy way to use magnets at the driver wheels do to the side movement of the engine axles. Can do the tender but prefer having it in sync to the drivers. The voltage sound sync is to say the least fast.

 

[Moonraker]

I think you can fix both problems easily. The soundcard can be set to track power or battery power. You have it set to track power (which is the default in the US) which makes the soundcard go to sleep after one minute without movement to preserve the support battery. You just need to change the soundcard to battery power as shown at the top of page 10 of the instructions. Then it will not go to sleep.

You slow down the chuff when the loco is running by pressing the channel down button of the TV remote. If you go to the steam products page of our web site at www.mylocosound.com there is a video link at the bottom of the page. This was done by one of our customers, Rik Bennett and is an excellent tutorial.. Page 12 of the instructions also tells you how to set the chuff rate.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MyLocoSound

 

[miniboB]

I think you can fix both problems easily. The soundcard can be set to track power or battery power. You have it set to track power (which is the default in the US) which makes the soundcard go to sleep after one minute without movement to preserve the support battery. You just need to change the soundcard to battery power as shown at the top of page 10 of the instructions. Then it will not go to sleep.

You slow down the chuff when the loco is running by pressing the channel down button of the TV remote. If you go to the steam products page of our web site at www.mylocosound.com there is a video link at the bottom of the page. This was done by one of our customers, Rik Bennett and is an excellent tutorial.. Page 12 of the instructions also tells you how to set the chuff rate.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MyLocoSound

thanks for all your help. made me feel a bit inept as it is all there in black and white. Works very well now and I have the chuf quartered very well. I have more engines to do and Piko/Myloco is the way to go. Has the chip shortage affected the myloco yet? Apparently it has some others. Again thanks for your help boB Thompson

 

[Moonraker]

Bob, good to hear it has gone well.

Regarding the worldwide chip shortage we are okay so far. The microprocessor chips we use are in very short supply and have taken a big leap up in price. However we were able to secure a substantial stock early on so we can keep going (with no price increase) for several months ahead.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MyLocoSound