DCC Concepts plug & play stay alives

[Ruston]

I have seen an advert in the latest BRM for these stay alives, which I have never heard of before. I am particularly interested as there are a couple of very small ones, which could be useful to me to fit into small industrial locomotives.

 

The ad doesn't mention them working with Zimo decoders, but is this because Zimo don't have a socket to plug them in, or is there some electronics/operating system reason for this and they simply won't work with Zimo?

 

The picture shows the smallest decoder as being plugged into something called a Zen Stay Alive Control Unit, which negates the size advantage of the small decoders as it is the same size as a sound decoder!

 

Do these stay alives need this Zen thing to operate, or can the plug be cut off and the wires be soldered to the same pads that any other stay alive wires are soldered to on a Zimo decoder?

[WIMorrison]

If you post a link to these devices then we may be able to help you - at the moment people that don’t buy BRM don’t know what you are referring to

[Mick Bonwick]

A quick search found this:

 

https://www.dccconcepts.com/product-category/decoders-and-installation/dccconcepts-zen-decoders/keep-things-on-the-move-with-a-zen-stay-alive/

[Ruston]

9 minutes ago, Mick Bonwick said:

A quick search found this:

 

https://www.dccconcepts.com/product-category/decoders-and-installation/dccconcepts-zen-decoders/keep-things-on-the-move-with-a-zen-stay-alive/

Thanks for that. Having read that I can see that it's completely useless to me.

[Nigelcliffe]

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

I have seen an advert in the latest BRM for these stay alives, which I have never heard of before. I am particularly interested as there are a couple of very small ones, which could be useful to me to fit into small industrial locomotives.

 

The ad doesn't mention them working with Zimo decoders, but is this because Zimo don't have a socket to plug them in, or is there some electronics/operating system reason for this and they simply won't work with Zimo?

 

 

For Zimo, there is a section in the manual about what is needed (resistor, diode, and optional choke) plus capacitor(s) of choice.  Surface mount components work fine, so the parts can be tiny, particularly if the optional choke is omitted.   For some capacitors its a sensible addition to put a zener across them to provide a voltage limiter;  that can also be surface mount and thus tiny.  

Or there are some pre-made boards with equivalent(ish) stuff on them, some branded by Zimo's UK importers.   They are a little bigger than a MX616.      

For the small Zimo's you'll need to solder to the decoder negative pad (one of the row of contacts on the decoder), plus use the decoder positive (blue wire).    I think the YouChoos site has possibly the simplest explanation.    https://youchoos.co.uk/Index-QuickHelps.php?L1=StayAlives

 

 

 

As for size, can be done into small N locos;  I had a N gauge Sentinel over my desk recently which had a Zimo MX616 and a stay alive added (a 470uF tantalum).  Loco was a resin 3D print, over a small Japanese 4-wheeled chassis with a tiny cylindrical low voltage motor.  Tiny little thing, even by N gauge standards.    With a few decoder CV changes, it was completely controllable, even with a motor rated at somewhere around 3 to 5volts.   

 

 

[RAF96]

Some decoders have the stay alive charging circuit components on the decoder board, hence a suitable capacitor can be connected direct, whereas others do not and the stay alive must incorporate a charging circuit. Some stay alives are two wire and some are three wire, the latter being a monitor of the charging rate.

[jamespetts]

I agree with Nigel - for Zimo decoders, the Zimo method of stay-alives is to be recommended, using the Zimo SACC16 charging circuit (for decoders without built-in charging circuits) and multiple 16v 470 micro-Farad tantalum capacitors for the small locomotives (N gauge and small tank engines in 00/EM/P4).

 

The DCC Concepts stay-alives are too large for N gauge and also some of the smallest 00 models; they use super capacitors, which have to be made in a bank because, individually, they are rated at only 2.5v. Super capacitors can give extremely high capacitance, but cannot be made as small as individual surface mount tantalum capacitors. The amount of capacitance in one of the smallest DCC Concepts plug and play stay alive units is enough for most 00 gauge models; only 1-2 seconds of run-on time is needed to maintain reliability.