Techie question on lighting voltage.....?
- Thread starter Zerogee
- Start date
Arthur,
That would be from posts
#1 "it shouldn't matter whether 24v track power or 14.8v battery power and,
#36 "I'd never be running at anything like the top speed that 24 volts could deliver"
Maybe talking on deliverable voltage and not nominal voltages could clear up some confusion.
I think we are looking at 2 different things here, 1 is altering outputs and the other is making all inputs the same.
Instead of mucking around with regulators etc why not go down the LED path seeing as the issue is light brightness they don't care about voltage only the current they get,
probably much less wiring than regulators and a simpler install.
That is if the Massoth board is sophisticated enough to handle an LED output.
For crying out loud its lights that we are talking about and nothing more
Its more than likely they will not be seen in daylight anyway and nobody will notice.
From now on I will not offer anymore suggestions regarding my electrical experience, I will refer all enquiries to the font of all electrical knowledge on this forum, your good self.
D
Deleted member 1986
Guest
Come on chaps, please play nice.... everyone has provided some useful input to this discussion, and it's all welcome!
I mentioned 24 volts as being the nominal maximum output quoted for a Massoth setup - it's by no means an important or precise figure, and will, as you say, most likely be less at the actual track.
I would rather stick with the incandescent bulbs that are already installed in the loco, as changing to LEDs would entail a LOT more work; besides, I don't really like LEDs very much for loco lamps, I find them too bright and stark.
I think we have arrived at a workable solution to the questions I posed, without requiring too much additional fiddling about.
Jon.
I mentioned 24 volts as being the nominal maximum output quoted for a Massoth setup - it's by no means an important or precise figure, and will, as you say, most likely be less at the actual track.
I would rather stick with the incandescent bulbs that are already installed in the loco, as changing to LEDs would entail a LOT more work; besides, I don't really like LEDs very much for loco lamps, I find them too bright and stark.
I think we have arrived at a workable solution to the questions I posed, without requiring too much additional fiddling about.
Jon.
Just a brief addendum to this thread, the two Chinese 5v stabiliser boards are now installed in the loco (complete with the Schottky diodes as recommended by Arthur, to protect the decoder outputs) and initial tests are looking promising - same lamp brightness on both 14.8v battery and 24(ish)v track power, and (so far at least) nothing has gone "pop" and there is no smell of frying electronics...... so looks like it's good!
If anyone is interested in following the rest of the build, it's here:
https://www.gscalecentral.net/threads/building-the-multi-power-loco.309298/#post-481969
Jon.
If anyone is interested in following the rest of the build, it's here:
https://www.gscalecentral.net/threads/building-the-multi-power-loco.309298/#post-481969
Jon.
OK, I'm reviving this thread because I need to bounce another idea off the collective GSC ListMind...... the 2095 Whizzy Cranks is up and running very well, it's now been to two local GSS open days over the last couple of weeks and has performed faultlessly (including the lights!) - so much so that I'm now well into building my second DRS (Dead Rail System) project, which is an LGB Saxon Meyer IVk that I purchased at a very reasonable price a couple of years ago at Llanfair. It is a 2000-built model (early MTS days) and was bought as an analogue loco, with the main board having space to plug-fit two 55020/55021 decoders. I'd been planning to sound-decoder it for a while, but have now decided that it will become Multi-Power Loco No.2.
Now, while the overall plan is for the IVk to follow the successful parts of the 2095 install, there will be a few differences; there is well under half the usable space inside the boiler/tanks shell of the Meyer than there is in the boxy BoBo body, so some things have needed a rethink. First is using a smaller battery pack - still an Ansmann 14.8volt Lith-ion with the protection board built in, but this pack is half the capacity at 2.6Ah - it is a "flat" 4S1P pack as opposed to the 4S2P 5.2Ah "block" in the 2095. Given that a twin-motor LGB loco with motors in good condition still pulls well under an amp under normal running, I should still easily get 2-3 hours of running time when on battery power, which I think is adequate. Control will be the same combination of Tam Valley DRS receiver feeding a standard Massoth XLS. Like the 2095, the loco will be switchable between track power (DC or DCC) and battery.
I'll start a separate thread soon on the actual build of the IVk, but I wanted to carry on this thread about the question of lighting control and voltage.... the two 5v regulator boards that I put in the 2095 have, as I mentioned, proved to work just fine, but they are quite bulky items - fine in the roof of the BoBo but in the Meyer the space is a lot tighter - so this time I've gone for a pair of very compact 5v regulator boards from PhilP in his guise as RC Trains.
These are the boards I'm using, they arrived today and are very small indeed:
http://rctrains.co.uk/Accessories.htm#Voltage_reg (second item up from bottom of page)
Now, the planned use of these raises two questions that relate back to the earlier posts in this thread....
1) As far as I can see, these particular boards do not appear to have any capacitive elements on them - certainly no big electrolytic caps like the regulators I used in the BoBo. So, will it be safe to connect these regulators direct to the lighting outputs of the Massoth XLS (+24v common, negatives to LI-V and LI-H functions) ? Or should I still use the inverse pair of Schottky diodes anyway, just to be 100% safe and protect the decoder outputs from any possible chance of harm?
2) The BoBo had quite a simple lighting setup, in that it has no internal cab lighting - just 3 directional headlight bulbs at each end - so I simply had one voltage reg board for the front lights and one for the rear. The Meyer IVk similarly has three directional lamps at each end, but it also has a cab light which would normally be connected to the LI-I output and "on" whenever the lighting is on, regardless of running direction. So, I've been wondering whether I actually want/need the cab light at all - but if I did, how should I control it? The idea I came up with, after a few very roughly scribbled circuit diagrams, was to feed the cab light from BOTH of the voltage regulators, so that it illuminates whichever of the two regulators is "on" - but with one of the Schottky diodes in the +ve feed from each regulator to ensure that no voltage can flow back into the output of the regulator which is "off" from the one that is "on". Will this work, or am I missing something both obvious and potentially (pun intended) destructive?
I hope the above makes some sort of sense - if it doesn't, I'll try to draw a slightly better circuit sketch and upload a scan of it......
Jon.
Now, while the overall plan is for the IVk to follow the successful parts of the 2095 install, there will be a few differences; there is well under half the usable space inside the boiler/tanks shell of the Meyer than there is in the boxy BoBo body, so some things have needed a rethink. First is using a smaller battery pack - still an Ansmann 14.8volt Lith-ion with the protection board built in, but this pack is half the capacity at 2.6Ah - it is a "flat" 4S1P pack as opposed to the 4S2P 5.2Ah "block" in the 2095. Given that a twin-motor LGB loco with motors in good condition still pulls well under an amp under normal running, I should still easily get 2-3 hours of running time when on battery power, which I think is adequate. Control will be the same combination of Tam Valley DRS receiver feeding a standard Massoth XLS. Like the 2095, the loco will be switchable between track power (DC or DCC) and battery.
I'll start a separate thread soon on the actual build of the IVk, but I wanted to carry on this thread about the question of lighting control and voltage.... the two 5v regulator boards that I put in the 2095 have, as I mentioned, proved to work just fine, but they are quite bulky items - fine in the roof of the BoBo but in the Meyer the space is a lot tighter - so this time I've gone for a pair of very compact 5v regulator boards from PhilP in his guise as RC Trains.
These are the boards I'm using, they arrived today and are very small indeed:
http://rctrains.co.uk/Accessories.htm#Voltage_reg (second item up from bottom of page)
Now, the planned use of these raises two questions that relate back to the earlier posts in this thread....
1) As far as I can see, these particular boards do not appear to have any capacitive elements on them - certainly no big electrolytic caps like the regulators I used in the BoBo. So, will it be safe to connect these regulators direct to the lighting outputs of the Massoth XLS (+24v common, negatives to LI-V and LI-H functions) ? Or should I still use the inverse pair of Schottky diodes anyway, just to be 100% safe and protect the decoder outputs from any possible chance of harm?
2) The BoBo had quite a simple lighting setup, in that it has no internal cab lighting - just 3 directional headlight bulbs at each end - so I simply had one voltage reg board for the front lights and one for the rear. The Meyer IVk similarly has three directional lamps at each end, but it also has a cab light which would normally be connected to the LI-I output and "on" whenever the lighting is on, regardless of running direction. So, I've been wondering whether I actually want/need the cab light at all - but if I did, how should I control it? The idea I came up with, after a few very roughly scribbled circuit diagrams, was to feed the cab light from BOTH of the voltage regulators, so that it illuminates whichever of the two regulators is "on" - but with one of the Schottky diodes in the +ve feed from each regulator to ensure that no voltage can flow back into the output of the regulator which is "off" from the one that is "on". Will this work, or am I missing something both obvious and potentially (pun intended) destructive?
I hope the above makes some sort of sense - if it doesn't, I'll try to draw a slightly better circuit sketch and upload a scan of it......
Jon.