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Re: Circuit Breakers
Alex,
?? cost per amp for a system's booster is an interesting metric but when I did my cost comparison for the club my goal was a low total cost of the "whole" package at the time.? In our case the requirement to have spare parts as backups make Digikeijs, and if bought today, YaMoRC to be a better deal, because theses systems have a cheaper single unit command station and booster vs the Digitrax and NCE plus the extra cost of a circuit breaker.?? Also, I did not hunt around for suitable and cheaper power supplies for Digitrax/NCE/ESU gear.?? We only priced their off the shelf power supplies for their systems since we were new to DCC with no electrical engineers in our club to make the safe workable alternative choices. ? ? ?? The other reason we were drawn to Digikeijs and it applies to YaMoRC too is that we could spread the 3 amp boosters around the layout and have the power near where we needed it.? In our particular case because of the design of our layout, if we bought? big 16 amp or 8 amp booster to get low $/amp it is then offset by the extra cost of the power bus that has to be run to the far reaches of the layout from 7 circuit breakers.?? We would have at minimum 30 ft runs from each circuit breaker, not good to ensure no loss of signal or voltage drop.??? It was cheaper to run the flat 6 wire telephone cable for the loconet between 7 boosters then spend extra cash on 12 gauge power bus wire from 2 or 3 big booster....and you well know copper these days is not cheap. ? So there are plenty of other considerations when buying a system, but every customer has different requirements and a different layout and in our case I was just pointing out that in general a YaMoRC system is cost competitive for our specific requirements and circumstances. Andris |
Re: YD6016LN-RC inputs going to waste
Sorry about that. I edited my post to remove my comment about the booster as a viable reverse loop switch. I've got a Digitrax DR5013 on order to test it out with the DR5033 booster. There are still some Digikeijs products for sale if you look for them.
I've got one reverse loop on the lower deck that is rather complex since it's not connected by 1 turnout. Hopefully YaMoRC will have a solution when I need to wire up all the staging yard reverse loops on the top deck maybe next year. Meanwhile we have what we can get. Incidently I've been using Digitrax BDL168s but got around the problem by using their RD2 (remote diode) in series with the block. All blocks within a power district come back to a single board. The RD2 allows thinner cable back to a BDL168 (I use alarm cable). To be honest the price of the NCE BD20 was a bit high. As you can see I have a lot of wiring to rip out. I also hope that all these questions are of general interest. |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Karst, Ok, that makes more sense, probably why there are warnings that they are not for use by people under the age of 14. What is the incentive to sell as a "toy-ware" versus electronics for adults? This is the layout with?85A of boosters: It has an 800' double track mainline, and radio dispatching with signals controlled via JMRI. This layout has 280A of boosters: It can run up to 35 trains at once using TrainController, many with 3-5 units equipped with Soundtraxx and NCE decoders, as well as lighted coaches. It's located in an old grocery store. It uses NCE DCC for track control with two Lenz command stations?providing feedback via Lenz feedback modules connected to Chubb DCCODs. IIRC, it has 10AWG?bus wire and 300+ detected blocks. It is the only layout that I've ever seen that actually needs multiple 20A mains circuits (120V power in the US gives you a maximum of 2400W per 20A circuit or 1800W per 15A circuit) to handle the power consumed by the trains themselves. I've seen a lot of layouts that are comically over-boosted, but that one really isn't. My photos of the layout. I only had time for a brief visit for a few hours, I could have stayed there all day: Alex On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 5:06?PM karst.drenth <karst.drenth@...> wrote:
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Alexander Wood Hartford-New Haven, CT Modeling the modern era freelanced G&W Connecticut Northern in HO Digikeijs DR5000 - JMRI - ProtoThrottle - TCS UWT-100 - TCS UWT-50p - Digitrax Simplex |
Re: YD6016LN-RC inputs going to waste
Oldngrey, The use of boosters as reversing devices is rather archaic, from the very early days of DCC, precisely because it usually ends up wasting most of the output of a booster. YaMoRC doesn't seem to have an autoreverser?yet, I wonder if the Digikeijs DR5013 Digireverse?or a PSXX-AR?would work with the YaMoRC YD7403, and if?the YD7403's short circuit trip timing can be adjusted to accommodate?an auto reverser or older PSX board downstream of it? This brings up another interesting topic. The European manufacturers seem to have gone to detectors where you run track current through the detector device, often with up to 16 detection sections requiring heavy gauge wire, while, with the notable exception?of Digitrax, US manufacturers use coil-based detectors that can be located at the block location, with thin gauge telephone wire going back to the sensor board that interfaces with LocoNet, C/MRI, LCC, cab bus, etc. I suspect this again has to do with American layouts tending to be more spread?out, with long runs, versus more compact European layouts with more dense block setups for passenger stations and automation. The thing is, you have to run track current through the detector in order to do Transponding or RailCom, requiring the heavy gauge wiring to the detection device. Alex On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 6:33?PM Oldngrey <steve_donald_@...> wrote: The circuit breaker topic went?in an unexpected direction, but I thought I needed some confirmation about another essential requirement - detection. Hence the new topic. --
Alexander Wood Hartford-New Haven, CT Modeling the modern era freelanced G&W Connecticut Northern in HO Digikeijs DR5000 - JMRI - ProtoThrottle - TCS UWT-100 - TCS UWT-50p - Digitrax Simplex |
YD6016LN-RC inputs going to waste
The circuit breaker topic went?in an unexpected direction, but I thought I needed some confirmation about another essential requirement - detection. Hence the new topic.
Adding in Railcom to a layout design does require at least 1 feedback module for each booster. In general the YD6016LN-RC looks like it will fit my requirements for a Loconet based detector that is both a 3mA current sensor and a Railcom reporter. If I read it correctly it has 16 inputs that would be tied to one booster. That's a lot of inputs that can go to waste. I would rarely use more than 8 of them and often less. For example in comparing it to the Digitrax BDL-168, it has 16 inputs that can be grouped into groups of 4 inputs that can each feed different boosters or circuit breakers if needed. Quite flexible. Also what is the YaMoRC solution for reversing loops? |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Karst, That's... fascinating. How are Zimo and Massoth boosters with 12A outputs being sold in the EU? Or Digitrax and NCE products with 8A and 10A boosters, respectively? And what about large scale? Are they into a different regulatory category requiring more testing or approvals? If you really want to blow your mind, I operated on an O scale layout with 85A of NCE boosters, 80A of track power at around 18V, and 5A for accessories. I visited another O scale layout that was computer controlled with TrainController and had 280A of NCE PB110 boosters at 16V. Alex On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 3:23?PM karst.drenth <karst.drenth@...> wrote:
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Alexander Wood Hartford-New Haven, CT Modeling the modern era freelanced G&W Connecticut Northern in HO Digikeijs DR5000 - JMRI - ProtoThrottle - TCS UWT-100 - TCS UWT-50p - Digitrax Simplex |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Andris, So first off, I don't think that the only metric for comparing products should be lowest cost, and it is an apples to oranges comparison, as the YaMoRC booster works with RailCom, while Digitrax boosters do not. Digitrax also has unusually inexpensive boosters,?especially the DB220 dual 8A booster. That being said, I don't think your cost comparison is fair. Most boosters in the industry cost US $30-$40 per amp, and the YaMoRC YD7403 falls within this range at? $36.43 per amp including RailCom. On a raw per-amp basis including a Meanwell power supply, the DB220 costs $14.44 per amp, when you add 4 PSXX circuit breakers (2 breakers?per booster output) the cost is $26.94 per amp, and if you go to 3 PSXX breakers per booster output, the cost is $33.19 per amp. So there's no perfect apples to apples comparison, but you should be able to get better utilization out of the DB220s. When you compare the YD7403 to ESU and Digikeijs, it compares?favorably cost wise. Any of those are cheaper than NCE's boosters,?which don't even have RailCom. The new TCS B-106 costs an astronomical $61.67 per amp, but it has Lenz-quality power output, LCC tie-in, current limiting on startup, and a global RailCom reader, so it's more of a high end product. The only thing that can even come close to the DB220 on a cost basis is the Tam Valley booster at $25 per amp, plus it has a peak capacity of 5A, which would put it at $12 per amp, since boosters are often sized for peak startup loads. Neither support RailCom in any way. So my conclusion is that the YD7403 is competitively priced and appears to have a great featureset making it attractive at that price point, but it's not as cheap on a per-amp basis as Digitrax and Tam Valley boosters. Alex On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 12:11?AM Andris Cuksts <andriscuksts@...> wrote: Alex, --
Alexander Wood Hartford-New Haven, CT Modeling the modern era freelanced G&W Connecticut Northern in HO Digikeijs DR5000 - JMRI - ProtoThrottle - TCS UWT-100 - TCS UWT-50p - Digitrax Simplex |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Wow Guys :D? THANKS ! What a simple question can do :O? It's clear to me now, and indeed a completely different vision between US and EU, not only with modelers, but also with regulation. European Union rules forbid equipment that can deliver more than 3.5 Amps. That's why we limited it to 3000mA I get the "American" way of thinking though. And then CB's make sense.? ? Greets, Karst |
Forums
Karst,
A suggestion, if I may. Since this forum belongs to YaMoRC could you use it as your main English language forum (and/or other language) to make announcements concerning YaMoRC products? For example I have been told that there will be a new release of the YD9401 firmware rendering functional the WiThrottle but I don't know where to look for the announcement update, nor have I been able to find previous warnings. This forum could include such things as: Firmware updates availabilities/announcements, New firmware functionalities/release notes, New product manuals and their versions, or any other thing that you would feel helpful to the YaMoRC community If you so decide it would be helpful if you would indicate the forum address on your Web site. Cordialement et à bient?t Richard Edited on Thursday, 23 March 2023 at 12:11 (GMT + 1) à Paris, France; sent later. |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Alex,
?? I thought your comment about cost comparison between YaMoRC? and Digitrax was interesting A number of years ago our club converted to DCC and we choose Digikeijs at the time.? Mostly due to cost ? We decided we need 7 - 3 amp boosters plus a spare and 1 command station plus a spare.? We looked at Digitrax, NCE and ESU and compared apples to apple prices to buy a total of 20 amps of booster power and included 7 PSXX circuit breakers and 1 command stations plus 1 spare, booster, command station and circuit breker..? It was clear that Digikeijs was the winner. ?? ? So I did some quick calculations to see what YaMoRC gear would cost compared to Digitrax, if we were to buy today for the club.? I used prices from Iron Planet Hobbies. Prices for Digitrax gear is cheaper now than what I used for my original pricing in 2019 and YaMoRC parts are more expensive than Digikeijs.??? Its $1,105 for Digitrax with 7 circuit breakers, 3 - 8amp boosters and 1 command station and $1,172 for YaMoRC for 1 command station and 7 - 3.5amp boosters..?? If you include the spares the club required for backup in case of a part failure, its 1,714 for Digitrax vs $1,579 for YaMoRC.??? So for a club sized layout I would say the cost is about even, but if you include the requirement for spares YaMoRC is marginally cheaper. |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Oldngrey, Just about anything will be a lot more expensive than an 8 amp Digitrax system. So it really depends on what features are important to you. RailCom could add a lot to automating your layout. You'll also have to figure out how much you really need all six power districts. Generally, more power districts are better, but it could cost a lot with individual boosters for each power district. Another option would be to add a RailCom cutout device and keep the DCS240 either as the command station or a booster. I believe the way Digitrax creates the DCC signal, there aren't enough preamble bits to do full RailCom, but you could get locomotive IDs. Alex On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 6:34?PM Oldngrey <steve_donald_@...> wrote: Alex, --
Alexander Wood Hartford-New Haven, CT Modeling the modern era freelanced G&W Connecticut Northern in HO Digikeijs DR5000 - JMRI - ProtoThrottle - TCS UWT-100 - TCS UWT-50p - Digitrax Simplex |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Alex,
*sigh* you are right. I was too hasty in comparing the PSXX to a 3 Amp booster in terms of price. The PSXX-3's I have cost around the same price as a single YD7403. So 3 times as much per protected area. At the moment I have a DCS240 with an 8 Amp power supply feeding the lower level and that is divided into 6 circuit breaker zones using a couple of PSXX-3's. I've been buying or going on wait lists to covert to the YaMoRC / Digikeijs universe and trying to figure out what gets removed or replaced on the layout. That's why I was asking about circuit breakers. It's a fairly steep price to pay to use start using Railcom but that's my decision - cost being secondary to functionality and fun. Do I need Railcom? Of course not, but do I want it? Yes :) I don't use Keep Alives or PowerPacks so that's not a factor in my case. It was the main reason the PSX was replaced by the PSXX if I read the blogs correctly. What I am seeing here though is an answer to my initial question. It has become a discussion about the number of boosters needed to do the job. However, I do intend to have a lot of trains running at one time with iTrain. My UWT-100 will keep me busy running the 'local', switchers and manifests while the unit trains keep the mainlines busy. A visitor can use a phone or my DT602d. When product from YaMoRC becomes available I believe I will be completing the transition without PSXXs or EB-1s. I will try to limit my use of boosters, but I will be using them to isolate areas of the layout irrespective of how many Amps are needed. |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Oldngrey, It's true that 3A boosters require significantly more booster than 5A or 8A boosters in order to ensure that enough power is available to any given power district. At least if you're using the boosters as your power districts, then you're getting something out of the additional cost of excess boosters, whereas a layout that is using PSX/PSXX breakers off of 5-8A boosters gets nothing out of excess boosters. More smaller boosters may have some technical advantages, and it does simplify wiring, but they are going to cost significantly more than fewer larger boosters with circuit breakers on an amp for amp basis. The cost is NOT comparable. A YaMoRC YD7403 is US$127.50, whereas a PSXX-1 is US $50. Meanwhile, in the US you can get an 8A Digitrax booster for about the same as the YaMoRC YD7403, you do need to add a power supply, but you can get a $20 laptop brick off of eBay. Digitrax also has the DB220 dual 8A booster, which is significantly cheaper on a per-amp basis than just about anything else on the market. There are certainly advantages to more smaller boosters managing their own power districts, but cost is not one of them. The only thing that comes close cost wise is the Tam Valley booster at $60. There used to be a lot of really cheap used Digitrax boosters, but post-COVID the prices of everything train related on eBay seems to have gone way up. There are also some key differences between European and American boosters. A lot of European boosters don't use a booster common, almost all American boosters do. Most European boosters are opto-isolated, some American boosters are, and some aren't. A booster common is required for proper operation if a booster common isn't present, although there has been discussion about the DR5033, as it doesn't use a booster common, and appears not to be opto-isolated, which makes the LocoNet the return current path. Another issue that comes into play is that most American boosters do not support the RailCom cutout, whereas many European boosters do. If RailCom is something that you want, then at least for now, you're better off with more smaller European boosters. The reality is that the vast majority of home layouts would be fine with a single 5-8A system feeding the entire layout. Even layouts with a dozen operators usually aren't drawing more than a couple of amps at most in HO scale. And a lot of home layouts that only have a couple of operators would be fine with a single 3A system feeding the entire layout. Alex On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 12:03?AM Oldngrey <steve_donald_@...> wrote: Alex and karst, --
Alexander Wood Hartford-New Haven, CT Modeling the modern era freelanced G&W Connecticut Northern in HO Digikeijs DR5000 - JMRI - ProtoThrottle - TCS UWT-100 - TCS UWT-50p - Digitrax Simplex |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Alex and karst,
A few comments to add to the mix... 1. Yes my layout design uses 8 unit trains each double heading ie 2 locos per train. They spend most of their time sitting in Layover Tracks (aka Shadow Stations, Fiddle Yards, or hidden sidings). When I did euro modelling the DB locos were individually more powerful than the US locos so maybe that's why that is less 'European' in flavour. 2, With YaMoRC boosters being rated at 3 Amps, it's a different design for power distribution than American systems. Since it's viable to put in a booster wherever I would have considered using a circuit breaker (cost is comparable), I am contemplating a design where each Feedback module is directly linked to its own booster ('comically' or not:). I could only have about 3 trains per booster anyway. iTrains makes it worse since many more trains can be on the move at one time. 3. A design inefficiency would lie in the fact that not all 16 feedback inputs would be used pairing one feedback module with each booster. In fact for a reversing loop only 1 input would be used. Your feedback modules only connect to one power/booster district.? Anyway, I hope there is enough information to make a recommendation - do I bother with circuit breakers when I would "comically" over supply my layout with boosters? Thanks Alex for making it obvious to me that my design is comically overboosted..... lol |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Karst, In the US we use circuit breakers extensively to make power districts. We also tend to be more operations-focused and have larger layouts. The challenge?in matching up European and US DCC equipment is that we typically use 5-8A boosters here with circuit breakers set in the 3-4A range. A lot of our boosters are also older designs that take 125ms to trip, versus more modern faster booster designs in Europe. Our circuit breakers take anywhere from about 30ms to <1ms to trip. We also tend to need more current in a given power district, due to extensive use of multiple unit lashups, often all with sound. Layouts in the US will often have anywhere from 2-6 circuit breakers per booster, sometimes more, and there are several examples of club or very large private layouts with 50+ circuit breakers installed. It's not always possible to design a layout in such a way, but ideally, we like to have no more than two operators in a circuit breaker district at one time, so that if one creates a short, it only affects one other operator, not several. Many layouts are comically over-boosted. I often see 3-6 5A boosters installed on HO layouts that need 1-2. Many booster designs don't handle the startup inrush currents well, some newer designs can handle it, or the PSXX breakers manage startup current, allowing more layout to run off of a single booster. There are also many modular layouts where the distances involved require several boosters, Free-Mo can push DCC power down ~50ft of modules over 14 gauge wire, a group up here can push DCC power through up to 100ft of modules with 12 gauge wire. Circuit breakers are used for short management via power districts the vast majority of the time, the new PSXX breakers handle inrush current management as well, but they can also be used for detecting track blocks and turning power on and off in staging or fiddle yards as a stationary DCC decoder in some specialized applications. Alex On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 4:18?AM karst.drenth <karst.drenth@...> wrote:
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Alexander Wood Hartford-New Haven, CT Modeling the modern era freelanced G&W Connecticut Northern in HO Digikeijs DR5000 - JMRI - ProtoThrottle - TCS UWT-100 - TCS UWT-50p - Digitrax Simplex |
Re: Circuit Breakers
Thanks for the resonse.
I suggest that others will have a better understanding of this topic. I am doing an American layout so most of what I read is based on their practices which are often NCE and Digitrax. However here are a few points: 1. A circuit breaker will isolate a smaller section of track. Several circuit breakers can be combined into one booster power district. This allows a short circuit to effect a smaller part of the layout than a booster. 2. LIke a booster it will protect against excess current but the PSXX can actually limit a configurable maximum current over time. They argue that it protects the booster because that current can be below the booster trip value. This is supposed to help with 'keep-alives' charging up (eg the ESU PowerPack). Tony's Train Exchange explains this:? https://tonystrains.com/news/new-psxx-current-limit-performance. 3. I think that some also protect against voltage spikes and act as a transient peak limiter. I have no reference to quote for this. I saw it on YouTube on a DCC Guy (Model Railroading) channel. However, since I am now getting into Railcom, its protocol apparently is not compatible with the PSXX. The PSXX sees Railcom switching off the track power rapidly and doesn't like it. But NCE EB-1 is not so effected. I have no idea if it's a better circuit breaker overall however. My counter counter question is: since your boosters are 'only' 3 amps as opposed to the 5 or 8 amps of something like Digitrax, perhaps this isn't as important any more since we would need twice as many of your boosters. My design scribbles show me actually using as many of your boosters as I currently have in PSXXs. |