I am having a problem with the wiring on one of my Tortouse switches. Here is the problem. The switch will only throw in on direction. Same for the LED.
Wired as of the drawing above.
When the switch is in one position reading across 1-2 3-4 5-6 all are at 9.45 DCV
When switch is thrown here are the reading
1-2 9.45DCV 3-40 DCV 5-6 9.45 DCV
I can not find any broken wires and solder joints are good.
Your LED’s are wired incoreectly. You must turn one of them around because the polarity going to them is reversed when the switch is thrown. The short leg is Negative, the long leg is positive. When you throw the switch your reverse the polarity to leds. Since they are in series with the machine when you reverse the current, none flows to the machine because of the reversed polarity of the LED.
This is how the LION does it:
LION uses a common ground, and only a single wire from the control to the turnout.
Him does not put them in seres with the switch motor.
No need to do that - and also to do that you MUST add resistors.
The way he has it is fine, just one of the LEDs is backwards. Reverse the wires on either the red or green LED - just one of them - and it will work fine. It’s shown in the diagram correctly - long lead of one LED to short lead of the other, or lead on the flat side to the lead on the round side of the other. But not all LEDs are marked the same way, and if the leads have been cut to fit a panel, you can’t use that as an indicator.
That seem simple enough. I slip a piece of colored insulation from wires over the leeds to remined me the long and short of it. That way I just solder Red to Black I might have put them on the wrong leed.
OR, what I use are bi-polar LEDs and simply insert it in one side of the circuit going to 1 & 8 on the tortoise. I just make a quick test before I solder and heat shrink to be sure the red/green orientation is what I want for that turnout.
Out of maybe 100 bi-color LEDs I only had one fail and what happens is what you are experiencing, current only flows one way.
Some people are ok with on LED, others want an LED in each leg on the schematic - that’s why I used TWO bicolor LEDs LOL. That way, the selected route was lit green, and the blocked route was lit red.
Actually, it IS a bit easier, one less thing to wire. What you are doing by taking an individual red and green LED and wiring them to each other in reverse parallel is creating a 2 lead bi-color LED. What’s electrically inside a 2-lead bi-color LED is exactly the same as the individual red and green LEDs wired anti-parallel.
If the LEDs are clear instead of diffused, the other way to tell which end is which is to hold them up tot he light, and you cna see the innards. One lead will attach to a chunk of metal, the other will have a tiny whiscker of a wire that contacts the top middle of the big chunk - that fine wire might not be visible unless the case is truly clear, not see-through red or green. But you can definitely see which lead is the big chunk - in this case just connect that lead to the one that is NOT the big chunk of the other LED, and you’ll have it right for this application.
harold I think you have the circuit correct you may have a bad led if it works in one dir and the led lights when you try the oposite dir does the led light if not try to jumper across that led and see if the tortoise moves that circuit you are using is posted on tonys train exchange and it does work I just think you have a bad led
I was thinking. I had installed several other turnout but I don’t think that was one. I had a problem with the throw of the point. I think this one was already working. I was also wondering if an LED was bad would that break the curcuit. Got an answer. It will be tomorrow before I can go check.
I like to use two LEDs onthe layout I think it looks great. It also looks good on the control panel.
If you want to work on something ,try this. I have a double crossover controled by two Tottouse switch machines. Each machine controls two turnouts. Show me the wiring for a Bi Color LEDs (2) to show me the position of each turnout.
As a quick fault isolation test, you can simply jumper a wire across the LEDs so that they are not part of the circuit. If it works when you do that, the LEDs are the problem, either the wiring or a faulty LED. If it doesn’t work with the LEDs bypassed, then there’s a problem with the Tortoise.
I, too, plan to use bi-color LEDs. A single green or red indicator on a panel is fine for you, but it’s not obvious to the casual observer or other operator which is the green path and which is red. My current project is a yard throat, so a pair of red-green LEDs on the panel will give an unambiguous indication.
Harold, how do you control each Tortoise? Do you have a pair of DPDT switches on the control panel?
If so, solder a resistor onto one leg, either leg, of a bi-polar LED and connect the two legs to #3 and #4 terminals on the DPDT. If the wrong color appears, reverse the two legs. Do that on each DPDT with each bi-polar LED. And, don’t forget to add one resistor to each bi-polar LED.
