Building lights on and off?

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Friends, I have a building with several lights in it. (3 GOW and 2 LED all on one power feed with resistors as needed)

Is there a way to turn the lights on to the whole building, say 1-2 min every 10 min or so.

Is this what a capacitor does?

thanks

doc steve

2

No, but a capacitor might be used in the circuit. A capacitor can be used for a couple things, one being a filter, passing an ac signal but blocking any dc voltage or vice versa dependant on how it’s wired, or to resist change to a dc signal. What you are looking for is a timing circuit. I have seen several variations on the internet to control different items. They can be made fairly inexpensively, but you need to make one that can supply enough power for your needs.

3

try this site http://home.cogeco.ca/~rpaisley4/CircuitIndex.html .

Look for the timing circuits

4

www.logicrailtech.com Call Chuck Stencil, the greatest RR electronics guy ever. If he doesn’t have one he can make one. Customer service is second to none!

5

I remember an article where a slowly turning disc had a variety of escutcheon pins in the surface in a very scattered patterns, each one being connected to a wire, so that as the disc slowly turned a various pins would touch a rod or arm and complete the circuit then break the circuit. Am I making myself clear? What I cannot seem to do is trace that article in the website’s magazine index.

Dave Nelson

6

Thanks guys, I’ll start looking at all your ideas. The last one seems intriguing.

steve