Manual control of DCC points

[70b]

I may be missing something simple here, so please bear with me, I can do dcc points, controlled from in my case a powercab or through usb and jmri/panelpro

 

But there are times I just want to shunt a bit using a lever on the layout because I don't want to have a computer on, and using the accessory bit of the powercab is a faff

 

I like the look of the cobalt-s, and think they are something that could provide a sort of pseudo-groundframe on the layout board, but still with the option of doing the usb bit when it suits, but as far as I can see the endless wiring examples in the cobalt site don't seem to give what I'm looking for

 

I have some digitrax ds52's and ds64's but they don't appear to provide a route towards this, something like the train-tech PC200 appears to be what I am looking for, but there is no installation pdf of their site for it yet so I'm not sure, would that work with a cobalt-s, has anybody used such a pairing, or any other pairing that effectively uses a switch to provide another way to move the point but without having it switching off normal dcc control methods, also I don't want a separate dc power bus, so the solution requires everything off the dcc power, and also I'd prefer to make the choice of accessory decoder independent of the type of point motor, as I'd want to play around with various types of those from a single system

 

any thoughts, thanks

 

Ian

[70b]

sorry I should have noted the pc200 is here

http://www.train-tech.com/index.php/points-control/pc200-quad-point-controller

 

and the cobalt-s is here

https://www.dccconcepts.com/product-category/the-cobalt-collection/cobalt-signal-levers-and-accessories/

 

thanks

[tender]

If your thinking of using the Cobalt S Levers just wire them up to a Cobalt Alpha Unit (DCP-AEU) which will plug directly into the Cab Bus of your NCE system and you will have manual control (as well as DCC) of up to 12 DCC accessory decoders. If you want more another Coblat Alpha unit (or more) can just be daisy changed to the first unit.

 

https://www.dccconcepts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/M-Owners-Manual-Cobalt-Alpha-Unit-2015.pdf

 

 

Edit: forgot to add, your digitrax DS64 and DS52 will be quite happy, just connect them to the DCC Bus and set the accessory address.

[newbryford]

If your thinking of using the Cobalt S Levers just wire them up to a Cobalt Alpha Unit (DCP-AEU) which will plug directly into the Cab Bus of your NCE system and you will have manual control (as well as DCC) of up to 12 DCC accessory decoders. If you want more another Coblat Alpha unit (or more) can just be daisy changed to the first unit.

 

https://www.dccconcepts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/M-Owners-Manual-Cobalt-Alpha-Unit-2015.pdf

 

 

Edit: forgot to add, your digitrax DS64 and DS52 will be quite happy, just connect them to the DCC Bus and set the accessory address.

 

Having just built a three panels with the Alpha encoder, two with Alpha switch-D inputs, the other with Cobalt S levers - all to Alpha encoders, I can confirm that they are easy to build and the extra expense over conventional soldered panels is more than compensated for in build time and knowing that I saved a good couple of hundred soldered joints.

 

There are four soldered joints. Two wires in for power supply and two wires out for DCC accessory bus.

 

Not quite fully finished as it still needed the bezels around the buttons.

 

If I was using an NCE, it would be power supply in and curly cord out to plug into the NCE panel. No need for the Alpha sniffer in the bottom left corner.

 

Cheers,

Mick

[70b]

thank you both, I'll certainly give an alpha a whirl

Ian