[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (TonyDaly @ 28 Aug 2008, 18:36) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Maybe Richard will come in here at some stage & explain all ?

***

Ebaykal... thanks for the kind words! Its nice to see one up and running in Turkey!

Tony.... There is indeed a resistor built in to the MS LED circuit... so no need to add one. Was that your question?

Expat - your turn now

Gordon... MS originally was quite simple - as you noted allowing a low current to be passed via a standard SPDT switch to control a large current device.

The thing we aimed for with MS V2 was to make it very easy to connect (lower users soldering need dramatically) and both lower any turn on surge compared to the original, and add memory and better control, so each has a small EPROM which makes this a little easier.

The MS Plus (another product) is similar to MS V2 but also has two DPDT relays on it, so can control multiple frogs and also create a solution for easy signalling, automation and similar.

Any MS can be controlled by anything that can create a contact or any form of command - we also do an opto isolation device to make its input control totaly universally safe for any form or polarity of hi/low voltage switching or control (inspired by a destructive DCC accessory decoder)

regards

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (Expat @ 28 Aug 2008, 03:19) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hi Ebaykal,

You beat me to it !!

I received a number of V2s this week and my planned project for this weekend is to do exactly as you have done i.e. put a dummy point motor assembly together. You seem to suggest that there is no soldering to do but the tags for attaching the feeds to the LEDs are on the bottom of the V2 and do have to be soldered.

One question though. Have you managed to fathom out how to identify which way round to wire the LED for either red or green ?? I am going to have 2 bicolour LEDs for each point (Red for Route Closed and Green for Route Open) but can't see any identification marks on the LED so guess it's a case of trial and error.

Well done.

Expat.

Expat

The leads of the LED are 3 different lengths - note which goes to which pad and just test one and you have the answer for all of them

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (upnick @ 29 Aug 2008, 03:35) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Slight problem with the solonoids on the motor, i have Seep PM2 ones and am using a laptop power supply wired as below ...... i have the power supply set to 18v with a SPDT sprung centre switch, the solonoids get very hot after a short while, i cant write in paint the letters on the pm2 but they are wired A .... red C .... green B ... black. is this wrongly wired for the PM2 motors ? suggestion has been made that maybe it needed a higher voltage going in to the V2.

***Upnick the schematic is basically correct but I cant say whether the actual wiring you've done is. There should be no heat generated at the coil if wired correctly and everything else OK .

If you recheck and it continues to get hot it is possible something is wrong, and we offer a fully goof proof warranty so no matter how that happened I am quite happy to send to you a new one no charge - just let me know off list if help is needed.

Regards

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (RAFHAAA96 @ 29 Aug 2008, 20:27) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>The leads of the LED are 3 different lengths - note which goes to which pad and just test one and you have the answer for all of them

Expat
Go on to Maplins or similar web-site and look up the spec sheet for 3 leg bi-colour LEDs and it will ident by shap and length which leg is which. Also some 3 leg LEDs are DCC friendly by having a common anode - others are common cathode and fiddlier to wire for DCC.
Rob

***All the bi-colour LED I have made for me and supply to my clients are common positive/common anode.

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (Expat @ 30 Aug 2008, 02:00) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hi guys,

Any comment on that Richard ??.

Expat.

***Yes, two different answers. One simple and the really practical one, the other the reason why one looks brighter than the other.

(1) When in a panel, you will be looking at the end of the LED only. LED's are lensed and throw most light out the front... it will look different then, and it will be quite bright enough to do its job as an indicator light.

(2) When I make a product I have to assume several things

a/ that most modellers hate soldering so it needs to be minimised and ....inevitably many will connect things up and then read the instructions. So I have to keep it simple and build a resistor into the product!

b/ The resistor has to work with any customer LED type or colour choice, as sometimes customers want to use separated LEDs rather than the bicolours, and they can be any colour they choose.

Not all LED have the same voltage or current requirements - Various colours and "standard led types" depending on brand and type can vary from 2 milliamp to 20 milliamps and much much more.

c/ Ideally each should have its own resistor but I have to choose ONE value that will allow them all to be used safely, and so to some degree, the overall level of output will vary colour by colour and brand by brand.

Red is always the brightest LED colour anyway as its so easily transmitted as a colour. Green is a little less eficient and so is less intense.

Ideally a separated value per LED would be the way to go, but then it would mean that a fixed colour always has to go to a fixed place - you couldn't easily swap red for green or yellow or white or blue..... and that would really annoy users as they want either setting to be either colour depending on the points on the layout, not the needs of the LED colour!

regards

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (Expat @ 30 Aug 2008, 02:00) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>One thing that is bugging me though. Why do my photos always get reduced in size??

They are 640 x 480 as recommended.

Expat.

**I have to say that with photo intensive posts, I really very, very much prefer the thumbnails.

When there are many images embedded full size, it becomes really annoying when all you want to do is scan to the last post and the page keeps moving about as it accommodates the download of all the images.... that seems inevitable as a problem with wireless as its a tad slow compared to the cable connection on my other PC.

Too many images especially of irrelevant or narrow subject is enough to put me off even looking at many threads twice.

I think that frequent image intensive posters should use gallery, attached images as thumbnails or start a blog.... referring readers to the blogs rather than cluttering up the bandwidth.

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (ebaykal @ 30 Aug 2008, 16:03) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Ok , now that we all got our masterswitch's working, time to search other possibilities that we can do with it.
One that comes to my mind are my Viessmann semaphores.

Need your help on this one Richard. Basically its as below:

Now;

The 2 Blues; one is "proceed" the other is "stop"
The 2 Yellows;one is Common pole for the drive coils and the other which has a resistor is the light.
The 1 Brown is light (+diode for LED lighting) (ground )
The 2 Reds are contacts for train control.

Question is how can I operate the semaphore with the masterswitch+Points ?

Baykal

Hi Ebaykal

Are they are solenoids that need a momentary pulse? If so, you could just connect them the same as a point motor to the same outputs you'd connect the point motor to.... they will be low current tyes. LEDs on the signal could be connected to to same solder pads the control panel LEDs are connected to as there is enough power there... again, just try it.

Its possible you could just connect both to one MS, but I am not certain - try it and see!

It MAY happen that if you connect both to one, because one is solenoid efficient (the signal) and the other is inneficient (the point motor) both may not throw.

if that is the case, you could use a MS on each and just connect both MS to one switch to throw them...

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (john woodall @ 31 Aug 2008, 06:10) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hi Richard,

If they are the signals I think they are they just need a momentary pulse. The movement of the signal arm is done by a damping method. It really is a neat piece of engineering.

How many momentary power devices can you units power at one time?

Cheers

John

I don't really know the impedance of their mech, but you could measure the impedance of one coil and calculate with ohms law.

Peco is a very inneficient low impedance/very high current coil so a couple at best unless the power supply is exceptional, however with a good power supply MS can deliver better than 6 amps in a pulse, so if they are say 50 ohm coils and you have 15 volts, thats 300mA so it will do more many comfortably - again, its a wee bit dependent on your power supply more than the MS.

The proviso is that they are all the same - as I mentioned previously, if the coils are significantly different the less efficient ones will not get a fair share of power.

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (zmil @ 31 Aug 2008, 12:33) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hi All
This is a great thread and very informative

The MASTERswitch V2 looks to be a very useful device

I'm sure Richard has mentioned this before , but I'll ask the question anyway

Is it possible to connect the MASTERswitch up to a DCC stationary decoder like the Lenz LS-150 or similar
to allow both manual and DCC switching and still use the LED's as route indicators.

The Manual for the LS-150 shows wiring to momentary contact switches (powered from the LS_150's AC input)

Regards Zmil

***Yes you can do as you wish with the LS150. Order them specified for DCC use and I supply an interface + buttons instead of the standard DPDT switches - The interface is an opto-isolation board so when that is used you can use any form of triggering from any decoder of any brand - the Opto board also has bridge recitifers built in so whether the ouput of the decoder is common +, common - or ac the MASTERswitch doesn't care.

(The opto board was added after we found issues with some accessory decoders, so isn't mentioned in the manual....)

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

***If its a solenoid and won't fire when the peco motor does when connected, its definately the wiring that is an issue.

Try just adding the signal solenoid connections to the MS first... yellow to centre and one blue each to left and right, connected to the same 3 terminals that you would connect the peco point motor to.

Once that is sorted, we can look at the others.

You definately cannot use the solenoid contacts for the lights, and if the lighting wires on the signal already have a resistor, you will definately either have to take it off the signal or use a separate power supply for them.

I do not have a veismann here to test with... but there is no reason at all that it will not work perfectly with MS.

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (Gordon H @ 3 Sep 2008, 07:14) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Can I ask why you chose to use an additional bridge rectifier instead of adopting a simple AC input optocoupler to achieve the same effect?
Can't say what the price might be in Australia, but the KB814 AC input opto is only 14p from Rapid Electronics.

***Why we made circuit design decisions is not really the sort of discussion for a forum. However, to clarify a little for you. In fact there are 2x bridge rectifiers on the opto board, not one.

The opto board is an added project we really didn't originally intend however we produced it as it was clear that there were some possible applications that might compromise reliability and that was completely unacceptabe to us, so it is made perhaps heavier than needed but it is bulletproof.

Cost isn't an issue: Our component pricing is nothing even similar to retailers such as Rapid. Durability is.

The Opto boards are now provided totally free of charge where clients specify at the time of purchase that they will DCC control the MS.

In those cases the accessory pack provided also changes totally, from DPDT switches+ LEDs, to a pair of opto's plus specially designed PB switches (with 3x optional colour caps) so parallel manual control can be maintained with DCC conncetions.

This same accessory pack is also available separately for purchase at a very low cost, to aid the transition to DCC for existing MS owners.

The evolution of MS is continuous and positive - the next step sometime in 2009 will allow digital control of the current MS series with no changes to either MS V2 or Plus, but will eliminate the need to buy multiple conventional accessory decoders.

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

QUOTE (ebaykal @ 4 Sep 2008, 03:34) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>MISSION ACCOMPLISHED !

Finally I have done it without burning up anything.

By just throwing a switch, I can control the point motor ( without worrying of frying it )+ Control panel LED + Viessmann Semaphore. Only the light of the semaphore being controled by a different power source.

..now time to experiment and explore any other possibilities that this amazing gadget can do.

Baykal

*** Thats really great news Erkut - You've made my day! I was confident you'd get there as MS hasn't let us down yet and the pictures of it all in action are a nice motivating bonus for me!

Keep experimenting and do it without worry - if you do manage to let the smoke out, I will of course cover you with the goof proof warranty!

I really will have to look closer at those Veissmann damped solenoids - they look excellent.

I'm not ready to consider stocking them until I take a good close look, but I really should get several to play with so I can know about them in detail before I decide to sell them...

Who is the best EU retailer/source for them price wise?

Re MS - I was really pleasantly surprised to see that Iain Rice has given MASTERswitch a lot of kind words in his excellent new book "Railway modelling the realistic way" - in two places... (one is on page 159, can't recall the other). A positive endorsement from Iain is a great thing!

Richard

 

[Richard Johnson]

*** if the coils are getting hot, then the processor has been damaged. it could be caused by a couple of reasons.

The goof proof warranty is good though - I am happy to replace any units that exhibit this problem. PM me or even better email me directly please and I can arrange it.

regards

Richard