I’m looking for an electronic turnout control for Kato’s DC turnouts. The Digitrax DS64 would be exactly what I need, but I don’t have DCC. If anybody knows if the DS 64 will work on just DC OR if they know of something else that switches KATO DC turnouts, I sure would like to hear from you.
I think I might have found the the answer to my own question. :tb-biggrin: I was just reading the Digitrax DS64 manual and from what I get out of it is that I don’t need DCC. All I need is an Occupancy Detector to control it. I’m going to order one and even if I can’t use it, I'll have one for when I do go DCC. Thanks anyway
You keep this up and you will have to come back over for another learning session and I'm going to want my transformer back. Well...come on back for sure but about the transformer naw. Just kidding and there again...heeheehee. You can wire-up your Kato switches with a toogle switch, taking power from the constant DC port on your transformer, using reversing toggles, momentary DPDT's with center spring loaded to center off. No need for all the special stuff Kato provides. I believe Bob/Powersteamguy 1790 shows us how he did that on his control panel. Humm or was that someone else. It's sunday morning...what...I'm supposed to remember everything....GRIN!
Actually Tudor, it was your posts on the DS64 that inspired me to keep looking, because you mentioned that you’re running DC and DCC. I think I knew about the DS64 a couple of years ago and just forgot about it. It was on my wish list before I wanted DCC, but got replaced with the Circuitron Snapper because I was using Atlas remotes. And Rick, I can’t give up this transformer now, I moved it this new layout to operate my outside main line. I have it alongside my duel control transformer and I’m running 3 trains. I’m having a lot of fun with the inside main and the Loops. Only thing is that I need help controlling the turnouts because I have had quite a few train wrecks. Mainly because I’m not quick enough. I had to put up my good locos and use the not so good ones. Good thing I’m not doing this for real or I’d be fired.
I hear ya. I see threads pop up myself that remind me of stuff I forgot years ago. Thats why I love the forums. Lots of heads together keep bringing up stuff that sometimes gets burried with other stuff.. Kind alike flippin over the pancake before ya burn it, ahhah..
Oops, I discovered one problem with the DS64 and that is that I can’t program it without a DCC throttle. To enable route commands from local inputs I have to change OpSw 11. So guess it isn’t going to work until I buy a DCC system. frown:
I’m very disappointed because I’ve spent a lot of time searching for something electronic to activate those 2 Wire (Bi-Polar) Solenoids in the Kato turnouts and I can’t find anything. I was hoping that one of the electronic guys might know of something. I need something that will momentarily send a latching reverse polarity pulse to the switch. I’ll have to ask some of the electronic engineers at work to see if they can draw something up for me to build. I’m an electrician not an electronics guy. I did have a couple of semesters of electronics in collage, but that was 40 years ago. I can’t even remember those silly resistance value rhymes anymore.
I believe there is a guy on one of the Yahoo Groups (kato unitrack) who has a circuit design for doing this. The switches are connected to capacitors and they are hooked up to the DC outputs of a powerpack to operated the Kato turnouts. Papa
Thanks for replying. I was wondering about this, because I have a Circuitron Snapper™ which uses a capacitor for Atlas twin AC coils. I have it mounted in an old layout that I have stored in the rafters and it’s a little difficult to get to right now. But I wanted to try just that. Yesterday I searched and read so much stuff on it that I can’t remember where I read anything, but somewhere I read that the capacitor will not work on the DC switches. I do not know if that included using a DC converter before the turnout. In either case, I still have to flip flop the polarity each time I switch it or it will only work once. I'm going to check out the Yahoo Group and see what he did.
I found this while searching the yahoo group for an electronic turnout switch. I thought it was interesting, but still doesn’t help me. So just for information only check out the manual readymade push button panel.
Im not sure what exactly you are trying to do. Might be my own brain not connecting, lol.. But, if you are not using DCC, you are using analog DC right? What is wrong with a simple control panel similar to the one I built that is shown on another one of my thread ramblings? My panel is soon to be connected to the DS64 so I can control the turnouts with the laptop, but I am also able to use the switches too. Or, the switch panel can be used as straight analog without the DS64. All I had to do was just hard wire in a diode bridge to convert the AC from the analog cab controller into DC to work with the bi-polar Unitrack turnouts.. Im not sure what else you might need to do? Anyway. I feel your pain. I am also an "electrician", and some confuse that as being an electronic guy, but it isn't. I do have some electronic background too, but really just enough to get me into trouble and blow up stuff, hahhah.. But, my real background is electrical control/distribution, relay logic and stuff like that. So, yeah, sometimes my head smokes too trying to figure out what will work for me electronically, hahhah..
You and I have a lot in common because I do the same kind of work. I was a commercial electrician for 10 years before I got into power control systems. I don’t have DCC. I would like to have DCC and I plan on having it someday. It’s more than the $150 for a starter set, it’s the cost of converting all my locos over to DCC. Some of my stuff is DCC ready but other stuff is going to have to be machined or something. The problem is that I want a failsafe system to prevent me from forgetting to change polarity or forgetting to throw a switch. So I wanted to add some auto control and since this is what I do for a living, I’m a little more into the challenge. When running two trains, one on the main and the other in the loops, it gets a little exciting and I’ll slow one down to let the other pass and then forget to throw the switch. Someone else asked if there were damage caused by running a loco through a closed turnout, well from the last couple of days of operation, I should have totally destroyed my turnouts. And I don’t know what damage it may have caused by forgetting to change polarity. Well anyway, I’m getting tired of searching. I don’t know what to search for anymore, everything I’ve used so far either come up with manual switches or nothing at all. I guess everyone is content with manual switches. I did however notice that there sure are a lot of people who think the Kato switch is ugly. All I really need is a latching DPDT relay to change polarity and a momentary DC pause to activate the bi-polar turnouts. I already have a full wave bridge to provide DC power, but I’m thinking of using a separate 12v DC power supply for the turnouts because I notice that they don’t work when I forget to change polarity. So how hard could that be? I had to take a crash course in semiconductors and digital techniques about 10 or 15 years ago and I still have all the books. As much as I dread it, I think I’ll have better luck going through those books and designing something myself in solid state instead of a big relay. I am interested in your connection to your computer and would like to talkabout it with you.
Yep. We do have allot in common. I am retired now from the computer IT industry, but my background is aviation (aircraft mechanic with a specialty in aircraft electrical systems). When I left aviation, I went into commercial/industrial electrical field, but tired of that. That just didn't challenge me enough I felt. Then I went to work at Compaq computers as an manufacturing engineer designing, installing, and maintaining automated manufacturing equipment & systems. That was cool, and I loved it, because it got into robotics, more relay logic, and PLC control stuff, as well as pneumatics and pneumatic control stuff. That part was really cool when I found out you can do allot of the same stuff that you could with electricity, but using air pressures & signals. really cool when you combine the two worlds. I worked for them for many years. Anyway, I then went more into the computer control stuff, then ended up a systems engineer on servers & data centers etc.. Not sure how the heck I fell over the tracks on that, but I did, hahhah.. Anyway.. Ya might look into block detection, because it sounds like you need to detect that a train is approaching from a particular direction to send a signal to make the polarity flip.. Dunno, just thinking out loud.. I know what ya mean also about the challenge. I do things allot that are way overkill for my layout, but do it anyway, just to see if I can. I have always been one that wanted to make things do what they weren't designed to do, hahha.. The rebel in me I guess..
Oh, absolutely I’m looking at the Circuitron DT-4. It uses optical sensors which are ok as long as you have enough light. I hooked up a reverser to my Christmas trolley and as soon as I turned off the room lights the thing went haywire. Sounds like you had some pretty cool jobs. You mentioned pneumatics and it reminded of something. I also went to a six week school on pneumatics years ago and I was thinking that I would love to work at Disneyland. One of my coworkers was a retired pipefitter who had actually installed all the steam and pneumatic controls for “It’s a Small World” at Disneyland. He said that they played that music all daylong while they worked and that it was really funny to see all these big burly pipe fitters singing it’s a small world as left each day to go home.
hahah.. Yeah I bet.. I knew some pipe fitters, and iron workers. Two fields that have some pretty bad ombres, lol.. I bet that music would get old after a 10 hour shift though.. lol.. Pneumatics is really cool, and many aren't even aware what you can do with it. I didn't either until I got into it. I was certified using Festo controls, and it is really complex control system. Very fascinating really. I used to marry Festo and Allan Bradley technologies all the time, and it still amazes me what you can accomplish with the two different technologies. I could only imagine what they are doing with it now. Been allot of years since I done anything in that industry. Look into motion detectors, infrared, and even RF detection. It doesn't have to be for our hobby. I remember there were lots of options in those types of detection. I used to use that stuff too. But I bet now much of that is ALLOT smaller than the ones I used to play with. Motion detection doesn't care about light, and will work even in total darkness.
I’ve been thing about it and I really want to use the DS64 because of the programming possibilities. What would it take to use my computer to program the DS64?
Not so sure you can without DCC. But then again, that would motivate me to try.. lol.. But I have a USB module that plugs into my DCC box that allows me to connect and run trains, turnouts, and read/program decoders from the laptop. The DS64 has input connections, so I would start looking into those for potential "ins" to connect a laptop. That said, you would need a front end (software) to use or minipulate the data from it. If you do any code, you could probably write some simple code to do it. My USB modual came from MRC, and MRC has a fairly nice app to do it with. You can go to the MRC site and download that software for free. If you do any code at all, maybe you can go in the code and customize it to your need? That said, you should be able to also use other input devices connected to the input of the DS64 like motion sensors you can probably find in a hardware store. Dunno.. Just sayin.. Might be fun to play with. Those sensors can be had fairly inexpensive these days I think..
I’m not sure if it’s going to work, but I found a USB Loco Buffer for under $60 that connects the DS64 directly to my computer. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and I still don’t know if it can be used to program the DS64 or if I need special software. It’s still less then the whole DCC starter system and if it works that would be great. I need to do more research before I buy it. I'm starting to think maybe its not worth even trying.
