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Experience with Peco Smartswitch


kirtleypete
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Since March I have been working on wiring a large 0 gauge layout based on Welshpool for a customer. The baseboards and track had already been completed and I was to wire it and install the control panel. The layout was DCC so I used my favourite Lenz 100 system. 

 

The owner wanted a contol panel for the points rather than using the handheld controller; these pictures give an idea of the trackwork involved: 

 

14571672177_f16229aeb2_o.jpg

 

 

14754947751_aaed41aee3_o.jpg

 

The panel is conventional, in Aluminium with DPDT switches and red and green LED indicator lights. 

 

At the time I was beginning work the Peco Smartswitch servo system had just been introduced, and as I am probably still one of the few to have used it on a large complex layout I think my experience might be of value to others. 

 

I bought enough of the servos to operate 40 points as they come in packs of four. In the pack you get four servo motors, a circuit board which will operate those four motors, and a programming unit which clips into the board. If you want live frogs (and who on earth doesn't these days?), you need an additional four boards, one for each frog. That puts up the cost considerably. 

 

Being a fixed layout, I was faced with working under the boards on a concrete floor for extended periods so I made up ten of these panels so that I could work standing up!

 

14755769674_83e8c949e4_o.jpg

 

On the left is the main circuit board, on the right are the four units required simply to change the polarity of the frog. Just look at all those connections! The LED's on the panel had to be connected into these boards making it impossible to keep them on a separate circuit. 

 

Making up ten of these panels took a considerable time.

 

The servo motors have to be assembled and can then be positioned under the points; they are connected to the circuit board with cables with push in plugs, very neat but not all that long on a layout such as this as I wanted to keep the circuit boards where I could see them. They can be surface mounted like this and they work really well but how many of us can surface mount all our point motors?

 

14755770164_42f93deef1_o.jpg

 

I found that surface mounting worked well, but mounted under the board the operating wires weren't stiff enough for 0 gauge.

 

Peco will sell more connecting cables, but at £5 a time I decided to hard wire the longer runs. 

 

The system worked, but it was fiendishly complicated and I had the following issues:

 

1. The servo motors have a rotating motion, so that in the centre the wire to the tie bar is high, and it drops as the crank on the servo turns. This means that it can drop out of the hole in the tie bar, and it's a pain in the neck trying to get it back when you're upside down in the dark on a concrete floor and the temperature is around 30 degrees! So, make the wire a little longer. The loco's catch it, so it has to be shortened. Then it drops out of the hole when the crank turns....you get the picture. I had forty of these to get perfectly adjusted.

 

2. You adjust the setting of the servo motors using a little plug in unit which you hold in one hand. You press various buttons to turn the servo, set the start and stop positions and so on. However, you need to be able to see the point blades, and the crank on the servo motor. One is on top of the baseboard, the other is underneath. I was on my own. It was almost impossible. Next time I switched on the layout some of the servos had reverted to the original setting so I had to do it all again. 

 

3. The unit that changes the frog polarity has to be wired into the master board, and also has the connections for the switches and LED's on the panel. This means that these cannot be kept as a separeate circuit which makes fault finding a nightmare. The switches should be kept as 16v AC and the LED's as 12v DC, totally separate so that one part can be isolated. 

 

I persevered for as long as I could but in the end I gave up and took out three months work and put it in the bin:

 

14754946221_e53ae3aa6c_o.jpg

 

 

i have now redone the contol panel so that the LED's and switches are on separate circuits so that any faults can be traced easily. I have installed Conrad point motors which work well, take about 15 minutes to attach and are simple, robust, quiet and once in place can be left alone in the knowledge that next time I switch on they won't have changed. 

 

14571671587_beb240efc9_o.jpg

 

Two wires to the busbar, one to the frog to change the polarity, two to the switch and the last one to the 16v supply - job done! 

 

I'm sorry to say that the Peco system has been a nightmare from start to finish and I wouldn't touch it again with a bargepole. It's too complicated, too difficult to set up and doesn't allow for easy fault finding, three glaring deficiencies as far as I'm concerned. It might be OK on a small portable layout, but for a fixed layout forget it. 

 

If anyone else has used the system on a large layout I'd be very interested to hear what you thought of it. In future, though, I'll be sticking with the tried and tested, it's been a very expensive mistake.

 

Peter

Edited by kirtleypete
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Interesting view on the Peco set up. I bought a kit with the optional DCC control unit to see what its like.

 

Now you have brought up the issues you have had I suspect I will have to have a play and see how I get on. I intended to use mine for 7mm semaphore signals.

 

I also have the ESU Switch Pilot Servo unit to play with. Good comparison to see which works out the best, easiest.

 

Its the institute aspect that interests me as I will want to install everything and then tune it all.

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Given the issues that you have had I can quite understand why you gave up in the end. I have managed to get the smart switch partially working. I found that the wire was not strong enough for under board use so ditched it and used my own. As some of my point work is in very space restricted locations I have avoided the issue of the wire falling out by building a slider attachment that the Smart Switch then moves (Given the space that I have I would need to do this with any mechanism). 

There does seem to be a very fine point between the servo reaching the correct point and it trying to push further. 

 

I still need to play further to see if I can get around the problems that I am facing, but hopefully I will manage. 

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That's a shame. My own experience, albeit using the Smartswitches to operate a set of level crossing gates, was very positive, and I could easily operate semaphores using the same setup. I must admit, though, given that there are so many simple and proven ways to operate turnouts, why servos would hold any advantages for that application?

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Hi Pete, All,

Oh dear, oh dear, I wish this thread had been written a week ago as I've just bought two sets! Fortunately not the full four sets that I need!

My install is to be on some (H0) fiddle sidings that once fitted, will be hard to re-access and due to my being a bit of an electrical numpty, I felt they should be a godsend.

I thought they were very, very expensive and I knew there should be a much cheaper alternative but they looked like a complete solution at the time.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll report back later on how it went but I'm currently about two weeks away from actually needing them as I've really slowed down in this heat.

Cheers,

John E.

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Peter,

Have you made peco aware of your findings ?

I'm sure they'd be mortified to hear how it went

I don't think they would care that much,they had a demo set up at exeter mrs that did nothing!!

I along with many other people walked away thinking i wont be buying one of those.

If they can't get something as basic as a working demo right why would they be concerned about customer feedback.

Dave

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Interersting comments everyone.

 

I rang Peco while I was installing the system to tell them about another issue; I had the track live and the back of the main circuit board touched a rail, blowing the whole board; £65 gone up in smoke. I suggested that they have a piece of adhesive plastic or card covering the back of the board so this can't happen, or at least a note in the pack warning of the danger, but they simply weren't interested. The response was basically 'so what?'.

 

I think for signals and crossing gates the system is OK as you don't need those complicated polarity change modules which were the cause of most of my heartache. On the other hand Conrad motors will change signals too, at £3.99 each!

 

Talking about their display unit, I saw it at York and the first thing I noticed was that it didn't have the polarity change modules attached so there were far fewer wires. To me that gave a false impression.

Peter

Edited by kirtleypete
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The Signalist SC2 is an easy alternative if you want a DCC solution. It has the decoder and frog switches all integrated in to the controller module to make life a lot easier from a wiring, installation and trouble shooting perspective. Just wire two wires to the track, a wire to each frog and plug in the servos for a minimal installation.

 

Servos are good for this because they are cheap and reliable. There are a few alternative mounting arrangements available now for servos so you can probably find something a little better than Peco's PLS125 arrangement. Exact setting of the endpoints should not be too critical if you use an omega loop or springy wire in the linkage to take up a bit of slack. While you don't want to stall the servo you do want it to apply a bit of closing force to the switch rails and with any slow motion drive you need to remove the over-centre spring from the point.

 

Using servos should not be either difficult or unreliable when suitable equipment is used.

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Hmm...

 

Thanks to all for such an informative thread. Such a tale of woe.

 

 

Set up (in real(!) model layout situations) requires 'gear' that can be used.

It seems to me that the most important requirement, for the setup unit, was for it to be as cheap as possible. (An important factor though.)

Would it have been feasible to make up an "extender cable" to allow the all-important 'eye-balling' during setup to take place?

 

Another area of real concern, (for me), is the 'losing' of setup data...

 

As has been said, more user experiences ARE more than welcome here.

 

 

Kev.

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While you don't want to stall the servo you do want it to apply a bit of closing force to the switch rails and with any slow motion drive you need to remove the over-centre spring from the point.

You don't need to take the over centre spring out when using Servos, keeping the spring helps as it removes the need for the servo to apply the closing force making the setting less critical.

This one still has the over centre spring in.

http://youtu.be/zcKRknQ2Hew?list=UUWRbJ7me2ffZKQiA3L0mO7g

Keith

Edited by Grovenor
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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest Digital

There is a very useful article in the September edition of Railway Modeller about the PECO Smart Switch, showing how to instal/program and fit to points and signals.

I am currently fitting some to my layout and will post my experiences when all installed.

 

John

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So, would you say that the Conrad motors are simple to install (compared to a SEEP) and do they deal with polarity or would they be better with a Frog Juicer?

Shame about all your hard work going t*** up. That Control Panel looked good.

P

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I purchased a Peco set to learn how it is done, and had no problems. I incorporated an omega loop in the linkage to reduce the degree of precision required in the adjustments.  However all the separate circuit boards (Servo control board, 4 x frog juicer boards and one DCC board ) is a lot.

 

I then purchased a Signalist SC2 (see Suzie's post # 10) and sourced servo motors and mounting brackets and servo extension cables on E Bay at a fraction of the price of the Peco set up. Again no problems with this arrangement.

 

One of the problems that the OP had was working below the baseboard while trying to set up and adjust points that are mounted on top of the board. In my layout design I anticipated such access problems (from painful previous experience) and arranged for my pointwork to be on a separate piece of 18mm ply roadbed (slightly longer and wider than the pointwork). I worked on this board on the comfort of the workbench, then fixed the board in place when all was working and aligned adjacent track to it (rather like a baseboard join in a portable layout). 

Edited by Colin_McLeod
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  • 1 month later...

I have now had the Peco Smartswitch fitted for a month.

Have to say all works fine and fitting was very straight forward (mounted on top of baseboard).

 

 

 

I have mine operated via my DCC system using the PECO accesory  decoder. I used a Tam Valley Hex Frog juicer

instead of the PECO one.

 

John

Edited by Digital
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Servos can be complicated, because they have far more capabilities, than just moving point blades from left to right. That's not what they were designed for.  OTOH, they can move to any position, and at any speed, and those functions can be dynamically controlled and/or altered at any instant. But they won't do that (or anything else) by default, or from a simple 2 position switch. So at least their start and stop positions have to be programmed into their controller during installation and set up.

 

A simple stall point motor with a springy wire does that without any electronics, or having to make any initial setup programming. They just aren't "cool" and expensive.

 

The other benefit of a stall motor is that you can automatically switch the frog power polarity ("juicing" if you must) from the switch you are running the stall motor from. New, also "cool", Frog juicers are a completely redundant, total waste of money, in any (just about every) stall point motor set up.

Edited by Andy Reichert
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I think Andy prefers stall motors to servos. 

No problem.

I happen to prefer servos.

 

Since both types of control (along with solenoids, wire in tube, and hand of God) can all be made to work, I believe it boils down to a matter of personal taste.

 

 

As to being "totally redundant" and a "total waste of money" , it could be argued that the entire model railway is redundant/waste of money, as it is only a hobby and not an essential for sustaining life. But then life is more enriching with hobbies.

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I think Andy prefers stall motors to servos. 

No problem.

I happen to prefer servos.

 

Since both types of control (along with solenoids, wire in tube, and hand of God) can all be made to work, I believe it boils down to a matter of personal taste.

 

 

As to being "totally redundant" and a "total waste of money" , it could be argued that the entire model railway is redundant/waste of money, as it is only a hobby and not an essential for sustaining life. But then life is more enriching with hobbies.

 

robo1.jpg

 

I love servos. Terrific value for money when you need their capabilities. I own dozens myself and happily recommend them for use in model aircraft, robots, or for model railway animations, such as cranes, bouncing semaphores, raising trolley poles, etc., where their extra controllable movements have major advantages.

 

You may have misunderstood my "redundant" comment. When your point motor has a contact output for wiring to the frog, then adding and paying for a juicer to do what is already taken care of by the point motor, qualifies as a specific case of unneeded redundancy.

 

Andy

Edited by Andy Reichert
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  • 8 months later...

Am building a fairly large 4mm scale layout and intend using servos to drive my points. Have done quite a bit of research and, of course, servos are very much cheaper than anything else. Have finally settled on MegaPoints equipment - look up loolee.org and you will find a very useful load of advice. Moreover Dave at Mega is usually available on the phone and is very helpful. He is a Super Geek but he does know what he is talking about. Have been using Frog Juicers for a long time in 7mm scale with complete success. They are more reliable than the switches on Tortoise motors where the copper on the switches eventually wears away. Hope someone finds this helpful. FSB

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Am building a fairly large 4mm scale layout and intend using servos to drive my points. Have done quite a bit of research and, of course, servos are very much cheaper than anything else. Have finally settled on MegaPoints equipment - look up loolee.org and you will find a very useful load of advice. Moreover Dave at Mega is usually available on the phone and is very helpful. He is a Super Geek but he does know what he is talking about. Have been using Frog Juicers for a long time in 7mm scale with complete success. They are more reliable than the switches on Tortoise motors where the copper on the switches eventually wears away. Hope someone finds this helpful. FSB

 

So out of curiosity and to provide general info for the group, what is your very much cheaper price?

 

Andy

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