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I decided to take a systematic pass through the Digitrax decoder info sheets and characterize their decoders, looking for the right families. From their info I find:

DH121 2 leads, independent function

DH142 4 leads, FX, BEMF, transponding

DH150 5 outputs, FX

DH163 6 outputs, FX3, BEMF, transponding, silent

DH380 8 outputs, FX

DH580 8 outputs, FX

DN121 2 leads, directional lights

DN141 4 leads, FX, BEMF, transponding

DN142 4 leads, FX, BEMF, transponding

DN144 4 leads, FX

DN145 4 leads, FX

DN146 4 leads, FX

DN147 4 leads, FX

DN148 4 leads, FX

DN149 4 leads, FX, BEMF, transponding

DN163 6 leads, FX3, BEMF, transponding

DZ121 2 leads, CS, BEMF, transponding

DZ143 4 leads, FX3, BEMF, transponding


I didn't have Digitrax sheets for these following, so took the info from Tony's Train Exchange table:

DN122 2 leads, directional lights (from TTX sheet)

DG380 8 outputs, FX

DG580 8 outputs, FX

DG583 8 outputs, FX3, BEMF, transponding, silent

DH083 ? outputs, FX


In the catalog they were handing out at the train show, Digitrax referred to several types of decoders:

Basic (e.g. DN121, DH121)

Basic-FX (e.g. DN144, DN148): Basic plus FX lighting

Premium (e.g. DN141, DN149): Basic-FX plus BEMF and transponding

Series 3 (e.g. DH163): Premium plus silent, ops mode read, etc.

I think you'd have to add a category for the CS decoders, which I think is just the DZ121. And you'd have to distinguish the "STD" lighting basic decoders (DH121) from the "STD*" ones (DN121). That would give a total of six families.

Does this sound right? What should we use for the family names?

Does anybody have CV7 values for any of these?

Bob




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Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)

First off, I want to thank everyone who has been working on developing this
program - it looks like it will be a fantastic help to me.

I'm new to this so maybe (probably) I'm missing something (or maybe it's
already been discussed), but I'm not sure of the real intent of the family
names. If it is just to group the decoders to make them easier to find in
the listings, why not use the Digitrax designations as the groups. i.e. DHxxx
as a group DNxxx as another, etc.

If further grouping is required, it could be done on the numeric portion of
the designation. I think this would be easiest because the designation is
what is known - any other classification requires interpretation. As an
example, when Digitrax lists the CVs used by decoders (p27 in the Mobile
Decoder Users Manual) they classify them as FX, LX and Gen4+, but when I look
at my decoder sheet for a DN142K2, it doesn't actually say what type it is in
these terms; I have to try and figure it out from the features. (in this
case, since it supports CV61 and CV05, it must be a Gen 4+ right?)

From a user's point of view, my intent is to find the decoder in the list as
quickly as possible - something that can be done easily when grouped by
designation, since I know the designation. When grouped by another
classification system it is actually _harder_ to find, since I now have to
find a way to figure out where my decoder fits in the classification system.

One possible reason I could see for trying to do families is if someone has a
decoder that isn't listed, so they could try a similar decoder (and similar
numbers don't mean similar decoders, witness the DN121 and DZ121). In this
case, rather than trying to determine an alternate classification system, I
would put the effort into getting as many of the decoders in the list as
possible.

Dennis

Bob Jacobsen wrote:

At 9:48 PM -0600 8/2/02, millerdl wrote:

I'm not sure of the real intent of the family
names. If it is just to group the decoders to make them easier to find in
the listings, why not use the Digitrax designations as the groups. i.e. DHxxx
as a group DNxxx as another, etc.

...

From a user's point of view, my intent is to find the decoder in the list as
quickly as possible - something that can be done easily when grouped by
designation, since I know the designation. When grouped by another
classification system it is actually _harder_ to find, since I now have to
find a way to figure out where my decoder fits in the classification system.

One possible reason I could see for trying to do families is if someone has a
decoder that isn't listed, so they could try a similar decoder (and similar
numbers don't mean similar decoders, witness the DN121 and DZ121).

The "families" originally grew out of noticing that a manufacturer would have the same CVs in a lot of different models. Sometimes the models were just different in wiring harness, e.g. DH142AT vs DH142, but other times you couldn't really tell from the number that they were related. To save costs, manufacturers often put the exact same processor chip & code in different decoder models which vary only in the shape of the PC board, size and number of output drivers, etc.

So the idea of the family was that if you knew you had a "FX" decoder, you wouldn't have to worry so much _which_ decoder it was, you could just select the family as a whole. This also helped with the problem of automatic identification, which can't tell all those models apart based on the CV values they contain (because the processor is saying the same thing).

We went through several different approaches to manually selecting decoders before getting to the tree method you see now. The original single list made each one quite visible, but was _really_ long (there are over 80 individual names on the list now, and it has a ways to go).

But you raise an important point: The tree makes it hard to find a DH142 unless you know it's a Digitrax FX decoder. And we don't want to make that hard/confusing for people.

Can anybody suggest a solution that allows us to keep the tree?

Bob
--
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Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)
At CERN until August 10, replies may be slow.

But you raise an important point: The tree makes it hard to find a
DH142 unless you know it's a Digitrax FX decoder. And we don't want
to make that hard/confusing for people.

Can anybody suggest a solution that allows us to keep the tree?

Maybe the first/last top level item is called "All" and just list every
specific decoder you know about/can detect alphabetically. That is of course
if it doesn't do this already.

Alex

Comments below

Bob Jacobsen wrote:

<snip>

The "families" originally grew out of noticing that a manufacturer
would have the same CVs in a lot of different models. Sometimes the
models were just different in wiring harness, e.g. DH142AT vs DH142,
but other times you couldn't really tell from the number that they
were related. To save costs, manufacturers often put the exact
same processor chip & code in different decoder models which vary
only in the shape of the PC board, size and number of output drivers,
etc.

So the idea of the family was that if you knew you had a "FX"
decoder, you wouldn't have to worry so much _which_ decoder it was,
you could just select the family as a whole. This also helped with
the problem of automatic identification, which can't tell all those
models apart based on the CV values they contain (because the
processor is saying the same thing).

We went through several different approaches to manually selecting
decoders before getting to the tree method you see now. The original
single list made each one quite visible, but was _really_ long (there
are over 80 individual names on the list now, and it has a ways to
go).

But you raise an important point: The tree makes it hard to find a
DH142 unless you know it's a Digitrax FX decoder. And we don't want
to make that hard/confusing for people.

Can anybody suggest a solution that allows us to keep the tree?

Bob

I would definitely keep the tree structure - it works great. What I would suggest
is to separate the two approaches to finding an appropriate decoder into two
branches: specifically-named decoders and family/generic decoders (and maybe a
third for other devices). That way the tree would become something like (use
fixed pitch font to keep readable):

Digitrax
|__ Decoders by Number
|__ DHxxx
|__ DH121
|__ etc.
|__ DNxxx
|__ DN121
|__ etc.
|__ Other
|__ DGxx
|__ etc.
|__ Decoders by Family (I just used these designations arbitrarily)
|__ Basic
|__ Basic-FX
|__ etc.
|__ Other Devices
|__ DS54
|__ etc.

I haven't delved into the details of the decoder configuration xml files, but I
would assume this structure would call for a generic sheet for a family type and
specific sheets for the individual decoders and may require some changes to the
current xml files. I'm also assuming that the tree structure is created
on-the-fly based on the decoder xml files that are present rather than being hard
coded in the program.

Dennis