hi i need some help wiring leds to tortoise sw machines for direction controll .on the no 4 figure on the instructions .it does not give which leads goes on which terminal of a dpdt sw. i’am using 620 resisters . also i was told i could wire another way.by usiing a separate transformer by running the plus wire to the no 4 terminal of the turtle. and then the short two leads of the leds goes to term 2&3 of the sw machine. and two long ones goes to the neg side of trans . so the problem is since the internal connections are not connected how is this going work when switching the turnout. any ideas will work thanks
Get ‘bi-directional’ LED’s and just wire one in series with th Tortoise - It will turn either RED or Green depending which way the current is flowing. This dead simple, needs NO dropping resistors, and the LED’s are very inexpensive!
Jim
Terminals 2, 3, and 4 form a SPDT switch inside the tortoise. When the machine is one way, 2 and 4 are connected, and when it is the other way, 3 and 4 are connected. The power supply you should use should be 12 volts DC or less, if you are using 620 ohm resistors.
There is another way you can have indicator lights without using the contacts on the Tortoise. The current through the Tortoise is very low - safe for LEDs. So you can wire a pair of LEDs back to back - long lead of one to the short lead of the other, short lead of the first one to the long lead of the second. Remove the wire from pin 1 or pin 8 of the Tortoise and connect it to one side of the LED pair. Connect the other side of the LED pair to whichever Tortoise terminal you disconnected. Now one LED will light when the Tortoise movesone way, and the other will light up when it moves the other way.
–Randy
With a Tortise - which is always on - there is no need to use the internal contacts to power LEDs.
Attach the long lead of each LED to the short lead of the other, attach one side of the resistor to one side of the LED pair, the other side to your dpdt switch. One of the two wires going to your Tortise goes to the LED/resistor network, the other directly to dpdt switch. Wire the dpdt per instructions. With everything hooked up, one LED will light when the dpdt is thrown one way, and the other will light up when the dpdt is thrown the other way.
hi guys thanks for the information .now the problem is i have 20 turtles. 10 are on 9 volt transformer & and other 10 are another 9 volt tranny. if i put these in series with pin 1 or 8 of the turtles they say i will lose 2 volts each on leds . which means i would have get a much larger tranny .i would have to get a 20 -30 vt tranny just to keep up power needs ? or would the internal switches work with a 9 vt tranny to power 10 turtles with leds ?
Do not worry about the voltage drop. I have an old ‘wall wart’ power supply that puts out 12VAC with a 850 ma capacity. The only thing you will notice is that the Tortoise moves slower(sometimes a good thing). A Tortoise only draws about 15-18 ma at full stall, so my 850 ma unit should power up to about 50 Tortoises at full stall! They key is not the voltage, but the current capacity of the power supply. A 20-30 volt transformer will just make them move faster and maybe burn them out!. There are a lot of ‘wall wart’ power supplies available that should work just fine. As noted above, I use a AC power supply with a pair of diodes in a common ground configuration(the Tortoise instructions show a diagram of this). So I lose some voltage through the diodes and the LED - not a big deal.
Jim
thanks guys the i tried buth suggustions they worked then i thought.