Dear Mr.Don Crano and all:

I am a Digital Gauge1 enthusiast who lives in Japan.

I have across your web page today and enjoyed it very well. Congratulations for your great job!!!

Especially I am interested for Flicker free lighting system in your 'projects' section.Since I am trying to get same effect from another approach (back up condenser and LEDs), it seemed very 'fresh' for me that you uses ni-cd batteries and normal lamps. If you have enough time, please take a look at my web page: Jun's @Gauge 1 page: http://www5a.biglobe.ne.jp/~popi/gauge1/index.htm ->@wagons-> LED lighting

I have these questions for your system, please give me nice suggestions:

a) When I exhibit my flicker free lighting system, European digital users are accepted my concept and someone followed me. But, Japanese digital users says 'It is defective for DCC format!!!'. The reason Japanese users saying that is: the difference of wave form of rail power. European based DCC (such as comes from intellibox etc. mixed mode marklin/motorola and DCC) uses sinusoid curved AC power with square wave of data. On the other hand pure DCC uses square shape pulse wave AC both for powering and data transmission. Japanese users says, large capacity condenser might makes DCC pulse wave 'weaken' or 'unreadable' shape. I think if the condenser directly connected to rail in parallel, there's considerably bad effect. But, my system using full bridge diode rectifier before back up condenser. So I don't think there're not so bad effect for signal wave. Is Japanese user's opinion true??? Does someone tried to condenser back up flicker free system in (pure=non mixed) DCC system?

b) I want to try to build similar system to your ni-cd system in near future. I want to ask you how much the value of ni-cd batteries are appropriate(may be in mAh) for your example?

c) In your system, how long it takes for 'charge up'? It means I think if the batteries are empty, it requires chargement time before they can supply for back up purpose.

d) How about life span of ni-cd batteries?

e) Do you store the batteries with rolling stocks? or you put it on / off for every operation?

I am sorry for contributing such long question and my bad English. But I'm really so much interesting in your system !!!

Many thanks in advance.

Best regards.

Happy Digital railroading!

=========================================== Jun's @Gauge 1 page: http://www5a.biglobe.ne.jp/~popi/gauge1/index.htm

Jun Maeda KOBE JAPAN ===========================================

-- Jun Maeda (popi@mvd.biglobe.ne.jp), March 14, 2001

Answers

You are correct. There is a potential problem of the rectifier and storage capacitor causing a large current demand when powering up the DCC system. This may cause the booster to trip out on over-current. But you can easily overcome the problem by adding a 10 ohm resistor in series with either the track-rectifier ac leg or rectifier-cap dc leg of the circuit. This will limit initial current surge to about 1.5 ampere.

DonV

-- Don Vollrath (dvollrath@magnetek.com), March 15, 2001.

F

-- ELIRAN (A6262@NETVISION.NET.IL), January 12, 2002.