I added a wye to my layout and finished the track work today. I wired the wye with a PSX-AR to handle the polarity issue. I add a Digikey audio alarm to all my PSX circuit breakers so I also added one to the PSX-AR.
The PSX-AR works as advertised. As soon as the locomotive crossed over the track insulators the polarity revered and the loconomtive kept going without pausing. However, the audio alarm briefly sounded. I am accustomed to this alarm sounding when there is a short, but I was surprised it goes off when polarity is reveresed.Is there some option for disabling the alarm when polarity is reversed? I see nothing about this in the manual.Any assistance would be appreciated.
I did some more testing and it is NOT the PSX-AR that is sounding an alarm, but rather the PSX for the main line tracks. The locomotive leaves the branch line which is the tail of the wye, crosses the track unsulators, enters the main line track, and the alarm sounds.
I was going to say, that's exactly what an autoreverser does. The train cuases a short, but an autoreverser, unlike a circuit breaker, first tries to fix the short by flipping the polarity (really phase with the square wave DCC signal). If that doesn't work, thent he PSX-AR will open the circuit. But there is ALWAYS a short.
Now, how do you have them wired> Does the output of the PSX feed the PSX-AR? You shouldn;t do that, the PSX-AR shoudl be fed by the main power bus just like the PSX. If you do already have it wired that way, if this is the new rev of the PSX and PSX-AR, you can adjust the response time, to make the PSX-AR react faster than the PSX.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I wired the PSX-AR as shown on p. 5 of the manual, that is, it is daisy chained to the four PSXs and is the last in the chain.After more reading of the manual and watching a Youtube video, I think I have to adjust CV55 on the adjacent PSX and enable the delay. After I finish soldering about ten drops today, I hope to give this a try. I will report back if it works.
OK, I set CV55 to 1 and that fixed the problem. Remembering how to get into Programming on the Main was the only thing I had to struggle with. I first tried it with my SPROG, but it apparently did not work. I rigged up my old Zephyr DCS50 and used OPS. It was simple after that.