I want to install lighting in my passenger cars but not sure the best way to do it with DCC.
Do I need a 4 diode bridge rectifier to convert the rail pick up to straight DC for the lights?
Are there any commercial products available or specific parts from some place like R/S?
-G-
Radio Shack is the last place on earth to look for usable items.
The only "constant" passenger car lighting will need to be battery instead of track powered. No amount of diodes, capacitors, etc. are going to solve the problems of light flickering from dirty track, dirty wheels, or dirty electrical pickup wipers.
Rapido's "Easy Peasy" lighting is battery powered, but eats batteries like mad and they are not easily replaced.
Realistic passenger car lighting should be very dim -- so dim that you can't even tell there is interior lighting unless you're operating in total darkness.
cacole Radio Shack is the last place on earth to look for usable items. The only "constant" passenger car lighting will need to be battery instead of track powered. No amount of diodes, capacitors, etc. are going to solve the problems of light flickering from dirty track, dirty wheels, or dirty electrical pickup wipers. Rapido's "Easy Peasy" lighting is battery powered, but eats batteries like mad and they are not easily replaced. Realistic passenger car lighting should be very dim -- so dim that you can't even tell there is interior lighting unless you're operating in total darkness.
Based on what?
This statement is not true; for proof checkout the new MTH cars that remain lit ONE MINUTE after you remove them from the track. It is because the circuit has a very large capacitor; the lighting is LED which is low current when stacking the LEDs in series clusters.
Carl in Florida - - - - - - - - - - We need an HO Amtrak SDP40F and GE U36B oh wait- We GOT THEM!
I installed Walthers lighting kits in 4 Rivarossi cars. They worked quite well at first, with hardly any flicker. The kits are designed for DC, but work OK with DCC without any electrical modifications.
But, as time went on, the contacts became less and less reliable. This particular model uses plates on the floor of the car to make contact with a screws on the truck frames. One of these days, I'll take the cars apart and just run wires directly to the trucks. At this point, all 4 cars are dark 99% of the time.
As for Radio $hack, you can go there and buy a diode bridge rectifier for a dollar or two. If you only need one, it's cheaper than ordering on line and paying shipping. For any significant quantity, though, they are very high-priced.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
MisterBeasley I installed Walthers lighting kits in 4 Rivarossi cars. They worked quite well at first, with hardly any flicker. The kits are designed for DC, but work OK with DCC without any electrical modifications. But, as time went on, the contacts became less and less reliable. This particular model uses plates on the floor of the car to make contact with a screws on the truck frames. One of these days, I'll take the cars apart and just run wires directly to the trucks. At this point, all 4 cars are dark 99% of the time. As for Radio $hack, you can go there and buy a diode bridge rectifier for a dollar or two. If you only need one, it's cheaper than ordering on line and paying shipping. For any significant quantity, though, they are very high-priced.
A couple of things might help here; I belong to a club where 30% of the members have Walthers cars with lighting kits. The lighting success rate is fairly high; we run DCC only with an occasional flicker at crossovers or track irregularities, but not constantly.
In many cases the contact between the screw heads on the trucks and the contact plates is poor due to the burrs found on the screw heads. Filing the heads smooth helps; cleaning the contacts and applying CRC 2-26 by spraying some on a Q-Tip and giving the contact a single swipe.
Sometimes placing a flat blade screwdriver under the contact and bending it ever so slightly away from the car will improve the electrical contact. Be careful not to bend it too far.
Hopefully Walthers will modifiy the lighting kits by converting the lamps to LEDs and add capacitance to improve the flicker issue and to reduce the current draw per car.
Thanks for the replies.
I found a car lighting kit from Miniatronics and will give that a try. It looks like it will work for what I want to do.
WRT to RS cacole, I've managed to find quite a few useful electronic parts there over the years. But you seem to have a very strong opinion so I won't try to persuade you differently. As for your other comments, well, that tells me a lot too.
This topic has come up before, so I'll pass on the same link:http://www.dccconcepts.com/index_files/DCCflickerfree.htm
This above link is for FlickerFree Lights for model railroads using super capacitors. According to their website, it states that a single FlickerFree circuit with a full load of LED's after 1 minute of charging will stay lit for approx. 1 hour after it's removed from external track power.
The only trick is that they are in Australia...
Paul A. Cutler III
Paul3 This topic has come up before, so I'll pass on the same link:http://www.dccconcepts.com/index_files/DCCflickerfree.htm This above link is for FlickerFree Lights for model railroads using super capacitors. According to their website, it states that a single FlickerFree circuit with a full load of LED's after 1 minute of charging will stay lit for approx. 1 hour after it's removed from external track power. The only trick is that they are in Australia... Paul A. Cutler III
Good post, Paul; a good option.
They are using a high value cap; the type used to maintain settings after the power is removed, similar to the backup capacitors in AM/FM/Stereo Receivers. I would guess a value greater than 0.5 Farad or 500,000 Microfarads!
If you have the chance, take a look at the ebay store for Streamlined Backshop Services He is developing some clever products for lighting cars. I especially like his pickups for freight cars & cabeese. He has a pickup in development for some passenger cars as well. I have a set of his pickups for a caboose and they are quite reliable in my circuit for 1.5 volt marker light bulbs.
Got my miniatronics car light sets. They worked great. I used the wheel pick-ups furnished with the BS passenger trucks. Installation took about an hour per car. No flickers or problems.
SHould be fairly easy to replicate the DCC FlickerFree circuit, looks like a bridge rectifier, super cap, diode and resistor to limit inrush, and probably a voltage regulator under there. Search a bit in a more general electronics way (ie, not looking for specific model railroad stuff) and you can probably find an example of the exact circuit and build them yourself. Maybe not as small as the commercial product, unless you have the capability to make small PC boards and solder surface mount components, but for an HO passenger car you can go bigger and still hide it.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
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