With all the Gizmos projects we put on our layout, starting with the 6V bulb lamps, some 12V Led lights, motors & different voltage things all around, and surely enough forgetting other possibilities too... Did anyone had found a simple way to connect all of those "Things" to some minimum end plugs? Because me, I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to all plug my gizmos on some part of my layout. So my question is, what would be the best solution? Like regrouping things of the same voltage together? Ben
Ben, I may not be the best opinion here, since I have a bad habit of designing custom electronics for my layouts, but I have a couple of suggestions I've used. If you're running a couple of voltages all over the layout, I'd use a multi-wire bus around the layout and connect up to a multi-voltage switching supply. The supplies are cheap, and a 5V/12V supply can generally be adjusted to provide your 6V/12V. If you need both AC & DC voltages, I'd suggest running each as a separate bus. I'm not a big fan of using multiple wall warts: too many connections to go wrong. If you are using predominately one voltage and need special voltages only at specific locations, I'd suggest using DC-to-DC converters at those locations from the dominate voltage. Of course, using the example you gave, nerd that I am, I'd change the electronics to match the voltage available. Mark
On our Z-Bend Track modules, there is a Accessory Bus pair (nominally agreed 12VDC). One can tap into that on each module as needed. 3-Terminal regulator if needed to drop to 9 or 6 or whatever.
