DCC stay alives

[Walkingthedog]

I’m amazed in what you are fitting into such a limited space, however, so much jammed together is surely crying out for a fault to occur and be a right bugger to trace. Shouldn’t there be ventilation around so many components?

[Steve M]

I’m amazed in what you are fitting into such a limited space, however, so much jammed together is surely crying out for a fault to occur and be a right bugger to trace. Shouldn’t there be ventilation around so many components?

Going back to my original foray into these where the components got very hot, so that was a big concern. However, now I have gone back to the 'standard' version, they run quite cool now.
You can see in the photos that I'm using a two pin plug between stay alive and decoder making them easy to separate should anything go wrong. I can then test the decoder in isolation and/or plug in an alternative stay alive.

[Walkingthedog]

I suppose the problem is that capacitors have to be so large. You are proving that almost anything can be done with a bit of ingenuity.

[Steve M]

That was one of the things that frustrated me at the start - I had a wiring diagram for five capacitors that works but I also knew that the Hornby pwerbank only used three - but I couldn't find out or work out what combination of other components would be needed for the smaller version. I couldn't read the part numbers and got no real response to questions on a number of forums so had to go with the larger version.
At least when I can't get my homebrew to fit I can fall back on the Hornby version and just change the plug. They are small enough to hide in the cab if necessary.

[Steve M]

I have settled on this as the most compact method of packaging the components for the stay alives - sometimes trial and error takes time to get there.

20230724_104356 by Steve Mumford, on Flickr

[Steve M]

I had to split the capacitor pack in this Hornby 61xx but I just managed to get it all to fit.

2023-07-26_10-29-01 by Steve Mumford, on Flickr

[Steve M]

Not a particularly inspiring photo but it does mark the end of this phase of fitting stay alives to the sound locos.
The green dots (12) indicate the locos with HM7K sound decoders, blue dots (3) are factory fitted sound so I probably won’t mess with those. The red and yellow dots (22) are TTS decoders now fitted with stay alives while the red dots on their own (9) are TTS locos that will either be upgraded to HM7K or are TTS but need to be fitted with a smaller powerbank.
And then there are the ones with no coloured dots at all. There are around 20 that may get HM7K upgrades but that is a significant investment that will have to be made over an equally significant period of time.
And that only accounts for just over half of the collection - probably will never touch those.

2023-07-26_11-45-13 by Steve Mumford, on Flickr