IS HYBRID POWER THE FUTURE FOR LOCOMOTIVE CONTROL?

[davetheroad]

IS HYBRID POWER THE FUTURE FOR LOCOMOTIVE CONTROL?

 

I have just started evaluating the Bluerail Bluehorse board and it has an intriguing feature. It can take power either from the track or a battery and there are separate inputs for both. The track power can be either plain DC or DCC. The battery power is of course DC. The interesting bit is you can have both power sources attached at the same time and normally the board will take its power from the track. If the track power is interrupted it immediately takes power from the battery. If the track power is restored it switches back to that. Of course you can miss out the track connection and run deadrail.

 

In essence the battery is a substitute for the 'stay alive' capacitors that a DCC decoder can use to deal with power interruptions. The differences are the battery does not recharge after use but can provide power for a much greater length of poor track.....as I lost the finished version of this text the following is abridged - grrh!

 

One of my standard configurations uses a 400mAh battery to give about 1 hour of deadrail running. If 1% of a layout had bad track my battery would last 100 hours as a stay alive

.

How about hybrid running? If all the turnouts, turntables, reversing loops etc, all the complicated bits of a DC or DCC layout were deadrail the rest could be simple power feeds. If 20% of the track was deadrail my 1 hour battery life would become 5 hours. Actually it will be more as that 5 hours is what you would get if a single axle on the loco was picking up current. Multiple axles could shorten the deadrail to an apparent 4% so I can now get 20 hours running out of my battery.

 

This hybrid system could please deadrailers, DC people and DCC fans.

 

Problems - The Bluerail Bluehorse board has the magic switch to handle the switching but so far seems to have no way to monitor the battery voltage including with use of a battery booster. My Deltang Rx boards have the battery monitoring feature but no magic switch.

Are these 'magic' switches available?

 

I have emailed a question to Bluerail.

ps - don't intend to convert my 30 Deltang locos back to track power as they work well.

[BG John]

As someone who is considering radio control for the future, but hasn't tried it yet, one of the big attractions is not having to wire a layout at all. Radio control only powered from the track seems pointless. I also don't want to have to remember to plug locos into an external power supply for charging if I can avoid it. I was thinking that a charging point in the fiddle yard, where a loco can stand and be charged, would be a reasonable solution. However, on a layout with a decent length of plain track that locos run on regularly, I think powering that would be good, as it would only need two wires. I can't be bothered with the halfway house of DCC, as that seems to need fairly complex layout wiring, as well as complex control, so would have no interest in battery charging from DCC track.

[davetheroad]

DCC power is apparently smoothed DC with the DCC carrier wave on top. The Bluerail board turns this into smooth DC as it does with 'dirty' DC from the track. The battery supply should be pure Dc from the start.

[davetheroad]

This is not a new feature: it has been available for some time for those using battery power, if they so wish and of course by adding capacitors to DCC decoders, then a lower capacity version has also been in operation.

 

In the larger scales, where there is room for a battery of significant capacity, this is less of an issue, but in the smaller scales, a system using batteries with lower storage capacity, but enough for maybe a few minutes, means simplified layout wiring, whether for DCC or wireless control. No section switches, just rails wired to power/signal (for DCC), but without any need to wire up crossing vees: they can be left dead, by simply gapping the rails either side of the vee and not wiring them up.

 

Well I have not come across it before, have you any links?

[BG John]

It can be as simple or as complicated as you wish, and just because there are extra facilities, you don't have to use them.

Well, fine, that's your choice, but other than telling us that you aren't interested in this thread, I am not sure what your post was intended to say?

It was intended to say that I'm interested in the idea of charging batteries from a part of the layout that's easy to just stick a couple of wires on, but if I change to RC I'd want to do away with the need for any layout wiring at all, apart from that. Otherwise I might just as well wire the layout as normal and keep the cost down. My comment about DCC was just to say that I've no intention to use it, but go straight from DC to RC one day.

[davetheroad]

Well, there is this from MRH.

I came across it in a thread on Freerails.

You commented in that thread, by the way.

 

The only difference here is that BlueRails are actively pushing the technology, and highlighting the possibilities, but the idea has been floating around out there for a while.

 

Did I, must be getting old and forgetful.

[Mike Storey]

I am not sure I see the point of hybrid operation, as capacitors cope with dead points and track quite adequately now? This proposal over-complicates the issue. If so much of your track is that dirty, one should perhaps have a better cleaning regime. I would wait until full battery operation is possible throughout in 00, with onboard charging possible through the track at certain points, or, better still, via a non-contact system as that used by toothbrushes etc. All will depend on ease of installation and cost. This is where ProtoCab are having sales problems in 00 but seem to be doing well in O, but they do not allow for DCC control chips.

 

On my 16mm garden layout, not wired, I use battery power alone (other than for the live steamers) quite happily. Whilst the batteries are bigger, so are the loads, and the batteries usually last a good 30 to 40 hours. I grant that it is much easier to remove the batteries and install charged ones, in that scale. The next step for me there is to use a DCC system to control sounds on battery locos, which are pretty basic at present, and S-Cab seem to be nearest to achieving this, once their higher-rated version comes out.

[CME and Bottlewasher]

I am not sure I see the point of hybrid operation, as capacitors cope with dead points and track quite adequately now? This proposal over-complicates the issue. If so much of your track is that dirty, one should perhaps have a better cleaning regime. I would wait until full battery operation is possible throughout in 00, with onboard charging possible through the track at certain points, or, better still, via a non-contact system as that used by toothbrushes etc. All will depend on ease of installation and cost. This is where ProtoCab are having sales problems in 00 but seem to be doing well in O, but they do not allow for DCC control chips.

 

On my 16mm garden layout, not wired, I use battery power alone (other than for the live steamers) quite happily. Whilst the batteries are bigger, so are the loads, and the batteries usually last a good 30 to 40 hours. I grant that it is much easier to remove the batteries and install charged ones, in that scale. The next step for me there is to use a DCC system to control sounds on battery locos, which are pretty basic at present, and S-Cab seem to be nearest to achieving this, once their higher-rated version comes out.

Hi Mike,

 

In the smaller scales, especially 7mm, the fitment of batteries is often problematic size/power/weight wise, so that is the big challenge IMHO, with RC. Many will say Lithium Ion is the way to go, yet heat - ie on a garden line in the summer - is a no, no for Lithium batteries. Track cleaning, for a garden-line? Is a huge chore! Everytime I have scratched beneath the surface when asking questions of PC, they have clammed up - even for 7mm/O gauge. One reliable system is Red Arrow/Micromotive yet due to using NiMH batteries highly efficient motors/gears are required.

 

On our SM32 line we have batteries that last and last too, some are also still in use - charged on-board - since 2002, yet the space is greater to house/mount such.

 

When looking at other modelling disciplines and miniaturisation of RC I really dont know why model-railway manufacturers have pushed on with ever more complex track-powered systems, when RC was obviously (if the battery tech can be mastered) the better solution.

 

ATVB

 

CME

[Robin2]

You will need to make sure that crossing vees are electrically isolated so that you don't create a short across the battery.

 

If you feed the battery through a full wave rectifier (4 small diodes) it won't matter which polarity the track has. I did this with my NGauge loco so that the battery could get some charge from some sections of track.

 

...R

[Junctionmad]

DCC power is apparently smoothed DC with the DCC carrier wave on top. The Bluerail board turns this into smooth DC as it does with 'dirty' DC from the track. The battery supply should be pure Dc from the start.

No DCC is an AC waveform. The dcc signal switches from supply rail to supply rail.

[CME and Bottlewasher]

Because we are not the same as other modelling disciplines. We don't run one train per controller. We usually have many engines, with fewer controllers, but (as a generalisation) need to be able to assign any train to any controller, so something is required to prevent anarchy breaking out. One way to do this is via Protocab's concept of a "concentrator", but if I understand correctly the market request for a simpler device has delayed the production of this.

 

But as you say, it is the battery technology which will drive this: that and more energy-efficient sound decoders!

(I can buy plenty of good batteries to fit in the boiler of an S scale model, but they would be too big for 4mm scale, and the demands of a sound decoder would exhaust the battery a lot more quickly than the motor!)

 

Personally, I am looking for some form of aerial/system that will work well within a metal body, or failing that, maybe a ceramic aerial buried in the coal bunker?

Hi Simon,

 

Battery tech will indeed, drive this, (pun intended on my part   ) and yet I have to say that battery quality, like lamps (bulbs), computer adapter/chargers and anything else out-of-China, despite what the outsourcing manufacturers will tell you is pretty awful at the moment and many batteries (made in China) I wouldnt want to put in a £2.50 toy let alone a £500 loco - that's why, in industry, certain critical components/assets are being taken away from China for manufacturing elsewhere, even being brought back to blighty. Sadly we are in the era whereby China is the factory of the world and it's very often a downward spiral, so instead of VFM. we just keep getting cheap cr@p - I wont go into the whys and wherefores/cultural issues and politics etc.

 

It hasn't been 'anarchy' with quite a few RC controllers (Transmitters, Receivers etc) for quite some time, Simon, 2.4 Ghz and the likes of Steve Leyland's Mircomotive systems have seen to that particular issue. In addition even before 2.4Ghz, if one were to go along to any model boating club ie who catered for RC models, electric and/or IC, and it wasn't a case of one boat 'in steam' so to speak, the lake would be filled with RC model boats using various systems/methods of/for separation.

 

I realize what you are saying and the new systems cater for such needs and yet in real life each loco has it's own set of controls which may be duplicated in the case of a mainline diesel loco - true the older methods of RC one does tend to end up with a fair few Transmitters, but no need for such these days.  

 

Kindest in haste,

 

CME

[Robin2]

I was thinking of a situation where a battery powered engine is set up to draw power via the wheels, and it runs against a turnout with conventional wiring of the frog, so both rails are at the same voltage/polarity.

On a DC layout, the engine stops.

On a DCC layout, the power section shuts down.

On the battery powered engine, unless there is an isolator in the circuit, the battery terminals are shorted and the battery may catch fire.

Without seeing a wiring diagram I can't be sure but I think a rectifier avoids those problems. I am assuming, of course, that the motor is powered from the battery side of the rectifier.

 

Certainly with my NGauge locos it did not matter which rail was positive and which negatve.

 

...R

[Robin2]

Not disagreeing with you, but that isn't the same situation as a model railway, nor of an exhibition.

The key need is for operator 1, on a large layout, to be able to release one engine/train, and acquire another, from a distance varying from a few inches (easy enough to pair) to a few yards. This also needs to account for the fact that someone else might be controlling that engine!

I may be misunderstanding but that seems to me to assume a system in which anyone (with a mobile phone, say) can control any loco just by knowing a password.

 

But a wired model railway system does not pretend to offer that sort of freedom and I see no reason why a wireless system should do so either.

 

It is not difficult to design a wireless system in which the operator can select from among several locos - but only from within the fleet that is part of that system. For example the nRF24L01+ transceivers transmit an "address" as part of a message. If each loco within a fleet has a different address then they can easily be controlled individually. The nRF24 can have millions of unique addresses.

 

...R

[davetheroad]

I may be misunderstanding but that seems to me to assume a system in which anyone (with a mobile phone, say) can control any loco just by knowing a password.

 

But a wired model railway system does not pretend to offer that sort of freedom and I see no reason why a wireless system should do so either.

 

It is not difficult to design a wireless system in which the operator can select from among several locos - but only from within the fleet that is part of that system. For example the nRF24L01+ transceivers transmit an "address" as part of a message. If each loco within a fleet has a different address then they can easily be controlled individually. The nRF24 can have millions of unique addresses.

 

...R

 

The way I see it using an App and Bluetoofh as BlueRail do means each device, the blueRail board and the device running the app, have unique identifiers. so it should be possible to set up a group of app devices and locos that restrict control of a loco to those users within the group. Through software it should be able to do stuff such as tell everyone in the group that you want to transfer control or request control of a loco already controlled by another group member. It should also be possible to transfer control whilst a loco is moving. This does not require a 'concentrator' or physical device, it is all handled within the app.

 

Frying the battery if you get a short while using track power is a killer so I presume BlueRail  have this covered. I must ask them!

 

Is hybrid power a solution looking for a problem. No if you want more run time out of your battery than it is physically possible to achieve and don't want to wait until all these new battery technologies actually deliver, if ever.

 

ps - did I read somewhere that BlueRail have said that it might be possible for anyone to write an app of their own?

[Robin2]

How do controllers and decoders get added to such a system?

Keep in mind that I like programming.

 

If I was creating a new module for an additional loco I would give it a new address while programming the module. If the only new feature for a loco is the changed address the process would require no programming knowledge.

 

I would then add that address to the PC program that controls the system (plus the name of the loco) and then it would appear on the list of options. Adding the address etc to the PC program probably just means adding a line a text file.

 

In the concept I have in mind the PC would be running a server program and any WiFi device with a browser (such as a phone or tablet or another PC) could become a controller. A RaspberryPi may be sufficient to run the server program - but it seems easier to use a laptop. The usual sort of web authentication system (i.e. a username and password) could be used to limit access to the system. But there may be sufficient "security" without passwords if the user needs to know the IP address and the port number for the server. I doubt if this sort of system will attract the attention of serious hackers.

 

...R