Beacon and Gyralight electronics non DCC

[JanesCustomTrain]

I am looking for a simple circuit or circuits to simulate a beacon and a gyralight for an analog DC model. I know we have some electronic wizards ( @peteski ) in TRW which probably could shake such a circuit out of their sleeves ? Or a link to a good tutorial would be appreciated as well. Would I need a keep alive as well ? Who can help ? Thank you.

Jane 

[peteski]

All you will ever need is at https://www.ngineering.com/ and https://www.richmondcontrols.com/
You could roll your own, but why, when you can pick up a super-tiny microcontroller-based circuit for few dollars?

[JanesCustomTrain]

You could roll your own, but why, when you can pick up a super-tiny microcontroller-based circuit for few dollars?

Well NZ $61 (two modules plus shipping) vs. NZ $10 max for parts (for several circuits) including shipping from China is why. Richmond Controls is even more expensive and to find the right modules on either website is a nightmare IMO. I really rather roll my own. Never mind, will have to do more research on my own then.

Jane

[peteski]

Well NZ $61 (two modules plus shipping) vs. NZ $10 max for parts (for several circuits) including shipping from China is why. Richmond Controls is even more expensive and to find the right modules on either website is a nightmare IMO. I really rather roll my own. Never mind, will have to do more research on my own then.

Jane

Like I said, I'm not going to bother spending multiple hours researching designing, and producing my own flashers when ready-made boards are available and IMO affordable.  They are all based on small PIC microcontrollers.  Since those are micro-computers you have to create and upload programming to.

You could also design a purely analog flasher, but to accurately simulate beacons or Gyraligths the components night get a bit bulky to fit in N scale model.

Ngineering website is quite easily browsable, but I agree about Richmond Controls site - not very friendly at all.  That is why I recommended Ngineering first.

Good luck - I hope that once you design your own flashers (or find assembled modules for sale cheap), you'll post info about them here.

[John]

I am looking for a simple circuit or circuits to simulate a beacon and a gyralight for an analog DC model. I know we have some electronic wizards ( @peteski ) in TRW which probably could shake such a circuit out of their sleeves ? Or a link to a good tutorial would be appreciated as well. Would I need a keep alive as well ? Who can help ? Thank you.

Jane

Please take a look at this site .. there are a lot of circuits for model railroad apps ..     http://www.circuitous.ca/xConstLight.html

[JanesCustomTrain]

Please take a look at this site .. there are a lot of circuits for model railroad apps ..     http://www.circuitous.ca/xConstLight.html

Thank you John, very appreciated.

Jane

[mmagliaro]

For the record, I use the NGineering MARS light module ($15, US) and it is splendid.  I did not need anything special in front of it in a pure DC locomotive except a little bridge rectifier and filter cap, just so that it would work in forward and reverse. 

 

[peteski]

For the record, I use the NGineering MARS light module ($15, US) and it is splendid.  I did not need anything special in front of it in a pure DC locomotive except a little bridge rectifier and filter cap, just so that it would work in forward and reverse.

That's why I recommend one of those.  It is difficult to simulate the Gyraligth's light pattern using a purely analog circuit.  It is possible of course, but the circuit would be fairly complex and large.  Yet, it is very easily emulated using a tiny microcontroller circuit.

The website John pointed to has a lot of very useful circuits, but no Gyralite.

[skent]

I agree with that sentiment.   There is probably a world where a very simple circuit could be designed with an ATtiny or similar microcontroller such that you could tune the light's behavior via the standard Arduino IDE...  Some of the ATtiny's come in really small QFN packages that are a pain to solder by hand, so I usually just have my pick and place machine make quick work of that.

That's me just thinking from an open sourced, easy to use perspective.    Really any small MCU would probably work.

-S

[tehachapifan]

...Richmond Controls is even more expensive and to find the right modules on either website is a nightmare IMO...
Jane

With regards to Richmond Controls and figuring out what you need, Jim is exceptionally responsive to inquiries and can help figure out what you need with an email description of what you're after. Before I switched th DCC they were my go-to. Their gyralight effect was top notch.