On the Busses

[Ian J.]

3 hours ago, Andymsa said:

 

im definitely in the Dcc camp. Is a modular power district needed?. If I need to add something to a particular buss I just splice in new cables, but I am talking from from the system which I use which is Digitrax and the power requirements you need are different possibly. Although very clever the diagram you designed is it over complex for the end result. Fault finding looks a nightmare . Wire sizes to accessory boards don’t have to be particularly large only that they should be capable of dealing with what’s required of them.

 

The possibilities for expansion, though in the future, are something I wanted to think about now before I set anything 'in stone'. Initially probably only one power district is needed, but I will probably make two (one for scenic, one for fiddleyard). The third, if implemented, would probably divide the fiddleyard into left (PD1) and right (PD2) halves, leaving PD3 for whatever scenic section is inserted.

 

The wire colour scheme, and the fact that almost every type of 'thing' is on a different bus, should help fault finding. When put in place I plan to do twisted pair for pretty much every wire pairing, though much more loosely twisted for the power wires.

 

The wires aren't all the same thickness, though on this diagram they appear to be. I've modified my copy of the LibreOffice Draw diagram so that the key shows the sizes for each pairing. Essentially the power wires are 32/0.2, and the data wires are 7/0.2. I don't believe there's any reason why the power bus to accessory wires on the layout boards can't be 7/0.2 as well, seeing as any individual CBUS module wouldn't be taking the entire CBUS power at any time.