Hello I plan to use tortoise switch machines and I am not sure what type of controllers are needed. I need any help or information on wiring them. I am modeling in HO Scale , What will be needed capicitors, power supply AC,DC etc ??. please help [:)] thanks Ron B there will be a total of 30 of them …
You need a DC power supply. 12V or less. It doesn’t have to be super powerful though, 30 Tortoises will draw less than half an amp. You can use a wall-plug power supply from Radio Shack. Cat #273-1776 will be perfect.
To wire them up, you need Double-Pole Double-Throw (DPDT) switches. Preferably WITHOUT center-off. Such switches will have 6 terminals. If you were looking at the back of such a switch, such that you see 2 rows of 3 terminals (the handle would move left to right), you put one short piece of wire going from the top left to the lower right. Another short piece of wire from the top right to lower left. A wire runs from the top center terminal to pin 1 on the Tortoise. Another wire runs from the bottom center to pin 8 on the Tortoise (1 and 8 are the extreme edges). Top right and lower right connect to your power supply. If the throw is the wrong way baseson switch position, just reverse the wires on pins 1 and 8 of the Tortoise.
–Randy
i use whatever I can find around the house and/or on rummage sales, old answer machine power supples, old tyco transformers, etc. as long as u can get dc and 12v or less it works.
I use a 9v 500ma AC Adapter – Radio Shack 273-1651D to supply power for my home made Torty and LED power supplies. I drive my LEDs at just short of 4v DC and the Torties at about 7v. This produces a great slow motion and I have never had any problems with either the LEDs or the Torties. I have currently 8 Torties in operation with 4 more to go. The advantage of the power supply other than control over the voltage? The source is isolated from the usage.
Leaving switches to on won’t harm the tortoise? Or are they designed for that?
I just ordered a bunch of on-off-on momentary switches, but would rather just an on-on for that 'flip & forget" on the control panel.
Tortys are designed to have power to them all of the time. Momentary switches is not what you want.
Yup, they are designed to have power at all times. That’s what helps keep the points locked in position - there is constant (but gentle) pressure pushing them to whichever side you select. The gentle motion also helps protect the switches themselves, instead of the slam bang from a solenoid machine.
–Randy
Excellent. I’m gonna call up and see if I can get my order changed to the on-on switches.
Thanks for the quick reply.
If you’re using DCC on your layout, you can also automate the Tortoises via the DCC system. In addition to the power supply and other items mentioned, you would need a stationary decoder, like the Digitrax DS44 or DS54. There’s also a new product out called “Hare” that contains the decoder and provisions for pb’s and LEDs for a control panel.
http://tonystrains.com/technews/hare.htm
Doug
hello and thanks for the quick reply, I would like to know then it is normal for the motor to have a slight hum to them when activated ? also Randy could you please send a drawing of the connections on the spdt switches ? Also does any one know anything about the tortoise machines , made by Right -of -way Industries I have several of them also they seeem to be the same as tortoise ? thanks again
Never saw the Right-of-Way version excepton Ebay, and it appears just a relabelling of the Circuitron product. So, I’d say they are exactly the same.
Let’s try a little ASCII art here:
–1–2–3-
-----—/—
-------/----
------X-----
-----/–-—
----/-----–
–4–5–6-
Ok that’s horrible, and the numbers are arbitrary - most toggles don;t have numbers on the bottom. 1 and 6 connected together. 4 and 4 connected together. Tortoise Pin 1 to 2. Tortoise Pin 8 to 5. Power supply + to pin 3. Power supply - to pin 6.
BTW you want DPDT toggles WITHOUT center off, not SPDT.
There is also a diagram in the Tortoise instruction sheet.
–Randy
Can someone tell me how a “wall wart” power supply from Radio Shack is hooked up so it is wired to the switch machines.
Maybe I was looking at the wrong item in radio shack but wehn I looked at these Wall warts I could not envision how to use them with switch machines.
Specifically how to wire the things.
The radio shack ones all come with that ‘adaptaplug’ thing, since most devices that use those kind of power supplies have some sort of plug in for the power. You cut that off and you are left with two wires coming out of the power supply. In my silly picture there, you would hook one wire from the power supply to the pin I marked #3, and the other wire to pin #6.
–Randy
Randy:
So to chain several toggle switches together you just run a wire from the “4” on one switch to a “4” on another one and so on?
To turn the power on and off to the whole group you just unplug the wall-wart from the outlet?
YOUCH! $40.00 for curved turnouts $10.00 for tortoise and $30+ for Hare
That’s an $80 turnout * 40 (on my layout) = $3200+!
Excuse me while I catch my cowering wallet ,while dodging my angry wife! [:D]
~Don
Yup. Or plug everything into a power strip and turn that off, or have a master switch wired in tot he outlets used by the railroad -preferably a switch witha pilot light, put next to the light switch for the room. Thus you can always be assured that you turned EVERYTHING off before leaving the area - including potentially dangerous things like soldering irons.
–Randy
thanks Randy for all the help I got it now and thanks for all the help I can now get started also thanks guys for the links to electronic suppliers Ron B
I use the 12V power supply from an old CPU and activate the Tortise with a SPDT miniature toggle switch. Run the plus side to one leg of the toggle and the negative side to the other leg. The center then goes to either the #1 (or #8) position of the switch machine. Then run the ground wire from the CPU to the #8 (or #1) position of the switch machine. Yes, I run a three wire bus. I only use DPDT to activate a Tortise from two different locations. I also pull a 5 V source from the old CPU and run a bus to activate building lights using the ground wire already mentioned for the other leg.
An excellent power source is an old transformer. Use the variable terminals (same as track power) and you can control the speed of the turnout with the throttle. Find the speed you like by adjusting the throttle then let it be.
That sort of works, if it’s an old rheostat power pack. An old transistor pack will work fine. The problem with the rheostat ones, at least an HO model, is that the resistance of the Tortoise switch motors is very low relative tot he rheostat, so there is very little reduction in voltage that occurs. I was using an old pack for that purpose until I rebuilt an old computer power supply, and at the minimum setting where it actually provided power, it was already over 12V with just the Tortoise load. Same thing while trying to run my Stewart DS4-4-1000 before installing a DCC decoder - that unit has a precision Canon can motor in it (stock!) that is such low impedance that with an HO rheostat pack is is pretty much uncontrollable. An N scale rheostat pack would probably work for the loco, maybe Tortoises too. A transistor power pack does not have that same problem.
Or if you had hundreds of Tortoises - that might put enough load on a power pack to produce a controllable voltage. [:D]
–Randy