Hi, thanks for another helpful video. I am afraid I do need to see things being done, printed instructions do not seem to work for me anymore. I am looking forward to part two and again many thanks. Your videos are making life easier for me to actually get started with my layout. - Chris
I do run mine on a separate power bus just to make it easier for trouble shooting, you don't have to if you hook into your DCC controller instead of using the sniffer
I haven't watched the video for quite a while, but the whole idea of the system is to use it separate from your normal DCC power bus, if you are using your controller then you wouldn't be using this system-as they are two separate systems. and you cannot run both a power DCC bus and a Sniffer bus into the DCC in ports of the motor. You could possibly wire an LED into the board from your motor but you would havde to look at the motor wiring manual or seek advice from others as i have not had to do this. Hope that helps Al
Hi. Please note that I have yet to watch Part 2; however, although this all looks great with the pretty looking circuitry, I wonder if this is all necessary. As I understand it, the Cobalt digital iP turnout motors have a built-in decoder and separate terminals for operation by manual (and computer-controlled?) switches. You would need longer wires to reach the switches from your control panel, and you would need to buy appropriate switches, but this would still be cheaper than all the DCCConcepts gubbins you bought (nice though they are). Am I missing something here?
The whole point was to remove the control of the point motors from the DCC controller (a 3 step process relying on my memory of switch address which still had to be set in the digital IP point motor in my controller(and DCC power bus) into its own bus system to simplify the control of the points via a lit up mimic board. In the end I have a simpler system where at a glance I know which points are thrown/open and simple push button operation, saving so much train derail, re routing and collisions. Watch the next two parts and you will hopefully see why and how it works.... and the small hiccup i faced
Hi very interesting I have solonoid Peco points do you know how I could use same setup as been told by dcc concepts not possible with solonoid points I too have a Digitrax dcs52 thanks hope you can help
to be honest, I wouldn't know unless you could somehow rig a decoder to the solenoid points? to take the digital address signal from the cobalt alpha encoder
They do a an accessory decoder but said it would use too much power so they said I would have to use a Alpha pier box and an Alpha box another £200 also said I couldn’t use their sniffer with my controller the same as yours confused.
I think you are missing a vital point here in that this system has nothing to do with your controller, so in a way they are right, as the sniffer uses separate bus wires (not the same ones as your controller.) to carry the digital system to your point motor (but it is a digital system so you need some way of decoding it at the point motor). If you have a DIGITAL accessory decoder attached to your solenoids then so long as you have enough power to operate it then i don't see why it wouldnt work. But for the cost and difficulty of worijng in accessory decoders you may just decide its not worth it and stick with your old system. For the cost of digital point motors I'd consider changing the solenoids out for digital motors of some kind. But that is a decision for you to make on how much you want to spend and how many you need. If all you want are LED indicators or switches then i know you could do that without the alpha system, but someone else would be better to show you how
The Digitrax Loconet cables are reversed wired like that. Team Digital also does the same for their system which is compatible to Loconet. So I'm guessing DCC Cobalt are following that standard. I'm not sure if this hardware is compatible. Is this DCC Concept system Loconet compatible ?
Hi John, You are quite right re: the cables. We would normally recommend our DCD-ACL cable to link AEU and Alpha Sniffer... Our ALPHA systems use the NCE Cab Bus protocol so they are not natively compatible with Loconet. However, you can use Alpha Box to interface with most other DCC systems - this is achieved by Alpha Box 'overlaying' the accessory command onto your existing system signal. I hope this helps! Richard Brighton DCCconcepts.
