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R8014 - R8216 Colours?

Hi

A real newbie question, so apologies, but we all started sometime: I need to connect some Hornby R8014 solenoid point motors to the R8216 Hornby Points Decoder, which in turn is connected to a R8213 Select controller.

Absolutely nowhere can I find any instructions for which colour wires from the point motor go to which connectors on the decoder.

The motor wires are green, red and black. The decoder connectors are labelled +, C and -

Intuitively one would put red to +ve, black to -ve and by process of elimination green to C - but then I do live in the real world.

I've tried various combinations but each time the motor will only move in one direction via the Select controller and won't move back again unless I push it manually - which is pretty useless really.

Is something broken or just not set up right?

Why does Hornby not think we need to know about wire colours?

Any advice?

Thanks TJ

Reply to
Triple Jumper
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Using my colour code black = the common line and red or green are operating lines. So put Black to C and then choose between the others for the direction you wish to have.

Regards

Reply to
Peter Abraham

Thanks - but I think that's one of the combinations that doesn't work. Time for a Hornby customer support call I guess...

TJ

Reply to
Triple Jumper

C would be the common or black and + and - the other two wires see

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for Hornbys vague advice. Note that both coils need a positive to operate and have one negative return hence the black wire for common. Similar rules apply to operate these motors with an AC supply. See the crude ASCII art below, the square brackets represent the coils:

| --[ ]+[ ]--

Hope this helps

Chris

Reply to
Chris

Agree they could explain this one a bit better, you have to work out that Black is common from the point motor instructions. Then realise that c on the points decoder means common.

I can assure that wiring black as common and the red and green as +ve and -ve works.

Cheers, Simon

Reply to
simon

They could have colour coded the terminals the same as the wires on the point motors and it would then be intuitive which wires go where.

Chris

Reply to
Chris

Chris wrote: [...]

Oh, good grief, Chris, you're expecting engineers to think like ordinary people.

:-)

Reply to
Wolf K.

Just to be consistent as they gone to the trouble of colour coding cables from the point motor. Apple manage to pull it off for a lot of their products. As they are aiming at newbies its that much more important they get the design right I would think :) As opposed to engineering something that is semi-compliant to a standard ;) Notice its the designers who got the terminal markings wrong not the engineers as opposed to the designers getting the hardware looking nice and engineers botching the engineering.

Chris

Reply to
Chris

Quick follow-up in case anyone cares. Hornby support unimpressive - worked it out myself. Turned out I was pushing one of the wires too far into the connector on the decoder. This could easily have been resolved by leaving a little more of the wire bare (i.e. more insulator removed) so that non-engineers could get it right first time.

cheers TJ

Triple Jumper wrote:

Reply to
Triple Jumper

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