RailPro > RailPro Specific Help & Discussion

Rp accessory module

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Dodgezilla04:
evening gang. g scale outdoor rr running Railpro/battery
i have 4 turnouts that i am thinking of making remote control.
i was looking at the piko motors(for their waterproof design) and the accessory module.    does anyone have experience using either?

i would be powering the accessory module with a battery, installing the module into a waterproof box so i dont have to run power to my RR.  any thoughts on the idea?

JRad:
The Turnout program for the accessory module was designed around HO Snap or Tortoise switch motors.  I did some experimenting with one trying to figure out if I could use it with Aristo motorized turnouts.  I never came up with a connection method that I thought would work before I blew up the AM-1 by trying unsupported things.

After the AM-1 was repaired I ended up changing the program to the straight Accessory program, and used a simple On/Off output to trigger a home brew driver that powers a servo to move the points. This is on an indoor portion of my RR.  I think there is a post documenting how it was done here: https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,1286.msg9704.html#msg9704

One thing to consider; Switching back and forth from the loco screen to the accessory screen takes numerous steps during which you have no control of the loco. My solution to that on the indoor is to run a PC with the HC Simulator program that is controlling the AM-1.

What I can't answer is if the Piko motors will work with the AM-1 turnout program.

Dodgezilla04:
Well thank you for the informed answer.  I guess I'll just get off my butt and manually throw them.   Thank you again

G8B4Life:
Some info (specs / manuals) on the Piko units would be good before we completely write the idea off. While JRad is correct the AM-1 is designed around small scale point motors (snap ,Tortoise etc) that doesn't mean the AM-1 can't be used to drive something than can handle large scale, eg instead of AM-1 -> snap point motor you could have AM-1 -> Capacitor Discharge Unit -> snap point motor.

Update: After finding the specs for the Piko switch machine it runs at 18 to 24v so you wouldn't be running both an AM-1 and the switch machine off of a single battery and you wouldn't be driving the switch machine directly from the AM-1.

 - Tim

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