During the process of researching DCC options, it became clear to me that most decent DCC systems have far more power output than necessary for my layout (which is relatively small). Couple that with the fact that I want a number of different power districts for isolation and fault protection. So, what are my options for "splitting" the output from a single booster to create many districts? I know Digitrax offers a quad power manager, but are there any others? It just doesn't make sense to buy more than one booster for my layout.
"Thomas M. Sasala" wrote in message news:YLgce.211$RV5.45@lakeread08...
I have used 12 volt tail light bulbs to provide protection to separate power districts. IIRC, the 1156 bulb works fine with single engines (HO) and glows slightly with two units pulling a long train. It glows brightly when a switch gets overrun or a short happens on the track - and doesn't appear to trip the overload on the booster.
A side benefit is that you can identify which district has the short.
If you don't want to go the PM42 route, build the electrical system as if you were going to use one (that is, each "district" gets a double-gap with insulating joiners). Each of those will have a pair of bus wires. Install a fuse or circuit breaker (3 amp, fast blow) and a toggle switch for each one. Note that in general, circuit breakers or fuses are not as fast as the PM42, but by selecting 3 amps or less, the booster short detection shouldn't kick in first).
So for each district, you get circuit protection from shorts, and a switch to just run it off. If you would rather rely on the booster short protection and still save money, don't put the circuit breakers in, but do put in the toggles. When you have a booster shut down, just start turning the districts off one by one until the booster resets to find the problem.
For me, given the overall cost of a layout with track, benchwork, loco's, rolling stock, etc., the price of a couple of PM42s was lost in the noise. If you need all 4 circuits in a PM42, it works out to $16 per district.
See all the wiring for DCC web site noted in my sig.
Ed
in article YLgce.211$RV5.45@lakeread08, Thomas M. Sasala at CyberReefGuru**Spam**Guard**@hotmail.com wrote on 4/28/05 7:14 PM:
The light bulb idea is a very good one as it allows the booster to not trip on an overload. Bulbs can be paralleled to the point where the booster can supply them, thus with a 4 amp output of a booster, you can put 4 1156 bulbs (they draw 1 amp at 12V) in parallel on the booster without any real problems if you have the need for that much power although you may occcasionally get glitches when the short occurs due to the inrush current of the light bulbs. FWIW, I once worked on a telephone system that used light bulbs at the outputs of the power supplies to insure that when a particular switching card went bad, the whole system didn't go down. The light bulbs were labeled with the card slot that they fed.
-- Why isn't there an Ozone Hole at the NORTH Pole?
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.