Witht he high cost of Tortoises, I’ve been looking into using servos, as in RC car/plane servos, to operate my turnouts. Over the weekend I noticed Tam Valley Depot was having a try-it special offer, get one Singlet decoder and servo for the price of the servo alone. So I ordered one. Saturday. It was waiting in my mail when I got home from work today. Fast service.
Naturally, I took it right upstairs so I could connect it to my Digitrax Zephyr and play. I was much impressed.
First, it came with a micro servo. My only real RC experience if with 1/8 scale RC cars some 20+ years ago. When they say ‘micro’ they mean micro - the longest dimension is about the diameter of a quarter. My old RC car servos look like an O scale loco next to a Z scale one. Yet it seems to have plenty of power, I think it can handle COde 83 all-rail (non-hinged points) HO turnouts. I don’t have a way to actually install the servo controlling a turnout at the moment so that test will have to wait.
Programming is super easy and well explained in the instructions. To set a DCC address, you hold both buttons until the LEDs flash alternately, then whatever switch address you sned a command to next will be stored as the decoder address.
By default, the servo doesn’t move very far when toggled between positions. But each endpoint is individually adustable with the buttons. THis means you don’t have to precisely align things when installing the servo under the turnout. You simpyl follow the directions and asjust both endpoints such that the point rail is firmly held against the stock rail. You want to be sure the spring wire or whatever you use for a linkage has enough give in it that the servo can complete its travel. They are not stall motors, and they do not like to be stalled part way through a cycle - then can overheat, or overheat the controller board. You can also adjust how fast the servo moves - f
