I am hardwiring aTsunami into another IHC (Hudson 4-6-4). This one has a smoke generator. I imagine I would connect one of the generator’s switch leads (smaller blue and red leads in the photo) to the Function 5 output (brown) or Function 6 output (green) of the decoder, and the other switch wire to the common blue wire of the decoder?
But what about power for the generator? Will the track pickups to the heater (larger brown and yellow in the photo) work as usual with DCC?
Thanks.
You are going to have to worry about the current draw of the smoke unit. It will probably be more than the decoder output can handle, and fry the decoder.
In a word, no. The smoke unit pulls too much power.
Yes, I’m sure that is right. I wasn’t “stuck” on this smoke idea anyway…it’s not very realistic but the kids liked it. It will have to remain disconnected.
Forget about smoke. The Tsunami cannot handle the current draw of a smoke generator and the smoke fluid leaves an oily goo all over everything. Model smoke never looks like real smoke, either.
I have seen this done. Use a z scale decoder. Hook the smoke generator to the motor outputs of the decoder. Program the decoder the 1 number off the loco decoder. The motor control outputs of the decoder will be able to handle the current draw of the smoke generator, check the units rating to be sure. Now when you to have smoke select the smoke unit decoder and control the amount of smoke just like you would control engine speed. The neat effect to this is you can have the engine putting out smoke while sitting still simply by turning up the smoke decoder’s speed.
The other way is to program the smoke decoder to the same number as the engine. Now set the speed table so that at low settings the voltage output is high and at high speed setting the voltage is low. Now when the engine runs it should put out a lot of smoke at start up like it was under a load and then it will cut back normal operating speeds.
jktrains
Oh Yea - make sure the smoke generator’s body tube is insulated from everything.
You seem to be asking two things. If (as the second question implies) you leave the smoke unit connected to the track pickups it will run on DCC just fine. I will just be ON FULL BLAST all the time. It would produce as much smoke as it possibly could all the time. By “all the time” I mean even while the locomotive was/is sitting idle. I presume this could rapidly burn it out, especailly if the smoke fluid ran low.
As the others have stated if (as the first part of the question implies) you disconnect the smoke unit from the track and connect it to the decoder the only thing you need to worry about is the current draw of the unit. Most smoke units take much more power than a decoder can safely deliver on a “function” output. The difference in the size of the wire is a pretty good clue.
Couldn’t he use a set of transistors (?) to build up the availble power by having the decoder power the leg of the transistor that decides if power is going through it or not?