I have a set of IHC smooth side passenger cars that i installed interior seating and added battery powered led strips for lighting. The problem came from the fact that batteries loose power over time whether you use the lights or not. I have decided to power them from the tracks and have ordered some metal trucks to bring the power. I plan to still use the strips but by pass the batteries. However, I have read that I need an anti-flicker capcitor for consistent lighting. Likewise, I will eventually be converting to DCC sometime in the future. Does anyone make a device that does not take an electrical degree to install. “Like one device does it all just attach wires” at a reasonable price. Am I dreaming or is there such a protect out there? Lou
I use rechargeable batteries for my passenger cars and charge them off track power. The thing I like the best over and above anti flickering is I can leave the lights on for hours without track power.
https://melvineperry.blogspot.com/2016/04/april-15-2016-more-car-lighting.html
https://melvineperry.blogspot.com/2016/06/june-26-2016-caboose-lighting.html
Battery powered cars for me is the only way to go. For my 72’ Athearn passenger cars I use a single battery in the baggage car and run pig tails between cars. I installed a DCC function decoder in the baggage car to turn on and off the interior lighting. A 3000mah 3.7 volt cell will run 11 cars for almost 80 hours without charging. Since I went to charging the batteries from track power I haven’t need to do anything to my lighting for over a year.
Mel
i only recently saw that there are inexpensived 5.5V 1F super caps.
wonder if a 5V regulator with a current limiting resistor used to charge the cap would be adequate to drive an LED and 20 ma current limiters tied directly to the cap.
This is not an answer to your question, but just what I have experienced.
I have an Kato N Scale City of Los Angeles, 11 passenger cars with factory-installed lighting. I use DCC.
I have noticed that only one car has ever occasionally flickered, and it is at the same spot. I have to say that it really doesn’t bother me.
I have never tried cleaning the passenger car wheels – that might even clear it up.
On another note, Lou Showers, I looked at the pictures of your layout. Very nice! I really like the buildings with interiors. Impressive! If you haven’t checked out Mel’s website, do so. It will inspire you.
SHould work. Might need a resistor for inrush protection to keep the regulator from shutting down if the cap is fully discharged.
Just saw a circuit from Geoff Bunza where he used one of those cheap DC-DC converter modules from eBay, plus a 1000uF cap (which is plenty of you just want to stop flicker). That’s pretty simple, and those modules are less than $1 each. These are the same chip (at that price, likely Chnese fakes, but they do work, just not to the extremes they are advertised for) as the ones I use, but a much smaller circuit. I don;t trust the larger ones I use to run all the way up to 3 amps, there’s zero chance these even smaller ones with pretty much no copper area under the IC for the slightest bit of heat sinking to get anywhere near 3 amps. But we don’t need anywhere near 3 amps for a few LEDs in a passenger car anyway.
None of this though is really want the OP wants, he wants a commercial product with 4 wires, two to the pickups, 2 to the lights. There are several on eBay, I happend to see one that is 10 circuits for $25, including the LEDs. All pre-wired, just hook the input up to the truck contacts. Not much detail on that one. There’s another that is a little more, $3.99 for one but the price goes down if you order 2, 5, or more, which explicitely says DC and DCC - these also include the LEDs.
–Randy
can you provide a link?
Here’s one that says DC and DCC
Related items shows others, including the 10 for $25 one that doesn’t say DCC in the description. Looks like they are all the most very basic circuit of this type, and they use LED strips, so probably run everythign at 12V
–Randy
They do look very basic, but I don’t think I can get the components for what he’s charging. Decided to be the blind fool that tries them, so I ordered 4.
Says they’ll be here around Aug 12th. Seems like a long shipping time from US, but I’ll report back after I have them and put one in a car.
Don
I have considered pig tails between the cars and using a 9 volt battery. That way I would only have to take one car a part to change out batteries. You talk of a rechargable battery but not familiar with what size and apparatus I would need to make that happen.
I will have to check out Mel’s site. I just recently gotten into adding LEDs and interiors to my buildings and have enjoyed the end results. Now if I can get consistant power to my passenger cars I will be a “happy camper”
Randy, that looks exactly what I have been trying to find. It will allow me to use the LED strips I already have and the power from the tracks should get me around having to replace batteries. Thanks for the link. Lou
Lou, I saw the picture of your interior-lighted factory in the September issue of Model Railroader. Great work!
Thanks, John. I was excited to get a picture published. Didn’t think it would ever happen. If you would like to get a better look at the picture check our the community forum or go to my website at http://gbcwashingtonin.com/Pastor’s-Hobby.html
I have a set of IHC smoothside passenger cars with IHC lighting. These cars only pick up power from two wheels on each rail. They do tend to flicker.
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I stopped the flickering by wiring all the cars in Parallel with jumper wires between each of the cars. Now on the 8 car train I have 16 wheels picking up power on each side of the rails.
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This solution will not work if you plan operations with the train. Mine just sat in staging until it went for a “trip”, then back into staging.
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-Kevin
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Well, I got my lighting kits in the mail yesterday.
I ordered four of these to install in a set of Bachmann heavyweights. They are equiped with lighting, but it is one bulb in the center, leaving a bright spot in the middle of the car and dark on the ends.
Each one came individually packaged . they include a circut board, two small cable ties and two pieces of velcro with a sticky back. the box had a one by three inch sheet telling how to connect the kit to the trucks - more on that in a bit.
The good:
The circuit board is a high quality piece of epoxy pc board with a very simple circuit on it.
The color of the supplied LEDs is a good balance, not too cool, not too warm.
The rest of the story:
The soldering on the circuit board is terrible. Before this could be relied on, it really needs to be resoldered.
The LED strip is attached with a connector. The connector is really large.
The wire is extremely stiff and much larger than it should be for this use.
The sheet included explains that you are to drill holes in the bottom of the cars, fish the wires through and wrap a length of wire braid around the axels to obtain power.
The circuit is a simple bridge with the largest 100uf 16V capacitor I’ve ever seen across the output. Yes, I said 16V - this capacitor should be at least a 25V for this use.
The car I was going to install this in is 11 inches long. The LED strip ( two sections of a strip designed to be cut at every three LEDs) is 4 inches long. If you made a perfect installation, you would still have a bright spot and dark ends.
Lastly, the assembly is large for this application. You would have a hard time installing it in an HO car in such a way that it wouldn’t be seen through the side windows.
Getting back to that 16V capacitor, I wasn’t going to trust it in a car until I tried it outside of the car. I cleaned up the soldering on the board and clipped the braids across the rails on my
Swap in a 25V cap, good to go.
“DCC” on that is probably an afterthought. DC, they are fine with a 16V capacitor, unless you use an MTH power pack, the voltage will never get that high. HO DCC should be 15V, which is too close for comfort but shouldn’t blow the cap.
I did get some DC-DC converters, they say 30V DC in max - with a 25V filter capacitorr. ANd one batch had the output filter backwards - glad I examined the circuit BEFORE applying power. They also claim 3 amps with no heat sink and no provisions to put one on the main chip - the specs for the circuit are simply the max ratings for the chip used - which is already suspect because I highly doubt ANY of them use the authentic chip.
The circuit in these flicker free things is probably correct, just the compnent values are wrong Now that you have an example, should be easy to make more but with proper value components, and use your own sets of LEDs cut from strips, using ones with the LEDs spaced out more so a single set of 3 LEDs is long enough for the car. Or just use 3 individual LEDs.
–Randy
Randy,
You’re absolutely right. After I posted, I rooted around in my spare components and sure enuf, I found both 100uf 25V caps smaller than the ones supplied and even a 1000Uf 25V smaller. I use an ECoS system and the train voltage measures out to a bit over 14 V.
You came to the same conclusion I did. Easy to make your own, thought this would be a quick and dirty shortcut. The connector and the PC board supplied actually makes it big enough to be a problem in HO.
Since it’s only two components, it can be wired up without the board. Probably recycle these bridges and strips and toss the rest. Have lots of LED strips to cut off to length. I use a lot of them in buildings. Have some fairly cool ones and some nice warm ones for different effects. My guess is about 4 groups of three spread out the length of the car to get more even light. Maybe add a resistor to dim them a bit. Have to see how bright they get when there’s 12 LEDs.
Don
With 12 LEDs you’ll probably want that 1000mfd cap.
–Randy
We get the picture though.
Imgur.com is cheap enough, as in free, and easy to use.
Did a little more digging in my spares box. Thought I remembered a bag of caps from a project a few years ago.
Found a nice quantity of 220uf 25V caps.
Went ahead and redid one kit with the new cap and hooked it up to the track. It’s been running more than an hour now, so I guess that’s going to work.
Next time I have some time to play train I’ll see about getting it into a car and give it a test run.
Don