Experience with Peco Smartswitch

[John Max]

What you need is  TAM VALLEY - FROG JUICERS absolutely brilliant. I got mine from Coastal DCC, There are other U.K. stockists.

[down the sdjr]

Had a look at the Tam Valley product, seems to be for DCC only not DC. I am trying to use these on the Peco EM gauge track. I have the insulated joiners on the v, the switch blades are not sprung on these points and i think the back of the wheel is touching the blade causing the short. I will try some more fiddling and not give up just yet.

[John Max]

I only have experience in DCC on this subject, suggest send a eMail to stockiest for advice most are very good at giving Good advise and replies.

[Guest Half-full]

2 hours ago, down the sdjr said:

Had a look at the Tam Valley product, seems to be for DCC only not DC. I am trying to use these on the Peco EM gauge track. I have the insulated joiners on the v, the switch blades are not sprung on these points and i think the back of the wheel is touching the blade causing the short. I will try some more fiddling and not give up just yet.

You probably have, but I'd check your back to backs to try eradicate this

[jcredfer]

You could use one of the Servo arms to operate a SPDT micro switch.

 

Julian

 

[down the sdjr]

I have been having a go today, tried all different varations of the wiring and i am back to where i started. The jinty has Alan Gibson FS wheels and will run through the straight turnout 6 times or so in either direction but on the next pass will just stop. I have checked and no wheels are touching the blades, i can hear the frog switch activate as the train goes over, really odd.I think making my own frog switch as @jcredfer mentions might be where im going to go but will carry on trying over the weekend. Frustrating.

The photo shows the spot the train stops in reverse direction.

 

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by down the sdjr

[jcredfer]

Just a thought, is it possible the points are in some small way not flat across the top?

 

Another small test would be to wait until it's dark and run the loco back and forward across the points, to check if there is any arcing.

 

Julian

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by jcredfer

[John Max]

I agree with that comment, it as been reported many times that some Peco point work is not flat across the Frog area.

[John Max]

Have you checked the back to back wheel measurements 

[down the sdjr]

1 hour ago, John Max said:

Have you checked the back to back wheel measurements 

Hi John,

I checked the B2B and checked the point is flat, both are good.

I do seem to have a short somewhere on the layout that might be a problem. Going to spend the weekend trying to sort it.

Thanks for all the advice/ sugestions.

Paul.

[John Max]

Happy hunting and good luck

[Bagpuss]

Bit late to this one but I have bitter experience of the Peco SmartFrog. After many fruitless hours trying to get them to work, I gave up and went with a much simpler solution. I swapped the single pole switch used to operate the servo for a double pole switch and use the second pair of contacts to change the frog polarity. It needs a few more more wires to the panel but it's much cheaper and, importantly, totally reliable.

 

The SmartFrog appears to be a relay that uses an input from the servo controller to determine which way the point is set and changes the frog polarity appropriately. This makes it DC compatible as well as DCC.

After connecting the many wires (7 for each SmartFrog), I tested the installation with a meter and verified that it was changing the frog polarity correctly when the point was thrown. However, a loco running through the point would stall. After much head scratching the penny dropped when I realised I could hear the SmartFrog clicking when the loco hit the frog. Testing with a meter verified that when the loco hit the frog, the SmartFrog changed the frog from the correct polarity to the opposite! 

Cue much cursing.

 

Temporarily replacing the SmartFrogs with a Frog Juicer got everything running beautifully and with a lot less wires.

I wanted DC compatibility as well as DCC so I've fitted auxiliary switches as described above. I would have used micro switches but the servos are buried in 2 inch deep foam.

 

I tried reaching out to Peco for help but all I got was the wiring diagram supplied with the SmartFrog.

I did wonder whether it could have been a power supply issue. The Peco instructions only specify the supply voltage not the required power capacity. I didn't have time to test that theory.

 

On reflection though the SmartFrog appears to be an expensive and unreliable solution to frog switching. Other solutions are more elegant, more reliable, simpler and usually cheaper. Anybody want 6 barely used SmartFrogs?

 

Apologies for the rant. It caused a lot of tearing of hair at the time. Hope you managed to solve your problem.

[John Max]

I sold my Smart Frogs on eBay a while ago, Peco tried to help but after a few exchanges they gave up. The current ones seem different from when I bought the original produced ones. I changed to juicers as we use at the Calder Northern Group at Crewe. Never had a problem since, except for the odd loose wire as I use plug in’s