RailPro > RailPro Specific Help & Discussion
Power Supply Question
gregeusa:
I had that one on my HO layout circa 1967
carpediem4570:
Good evening:
I just bought a rolling track to use as a test track, in Ho. I thought one had to use the pwr56 as the power source to program the engines. You are saying one can use a wall wart for power and use The hc2, to program the engine without issue?
To take this one step further, can I solder the leads from the wall wart to my track and use this for power, using the hc2 to run my locomotives?
Excuse my ignorance. At 63, I am trying to broaden my knowledge of electronics.
Kind regards,
Max
G8B4Life:
--- Quote from: carpediem4570 on October 03, 2022, 07:38:12 PM ---I just bought a rolling track to use as a test track, in Ho. I thought one had to use the pwr56 as the power source to program the engines. You are saying one can use a wall wart for power and use The hc2, to program the engine without issue?
To take this one step further, can I solder the leads from the wall wart to my track and use this for power, using the hc2 to run my locomotives?
--- End quote ---
Yes, and Yes. RailPro uses PODC (Plain Old DC) so a wall wart that outputs DC at the appropriate voltage will power your RailPro locomotives, however you need to be mindful of a few things, namely:
* Output capacity. Most generic wall warts aren't going to have much more capacity than 1 to 1.5 amps, you won't control much with that.
* Regulated or not regulated. If you want to use a wall wart for powering RailPro the wall wart should be regulated. This means as you use more power the output voltage stays the same. If it isn't regulated you could expect the voltage to drop quite a lot when you actually run locomotives, or the voltage to be significantly higher that stated without a load present.
* Output voltage. Needs to be in the safe range for RailPro. Again the point about regulation needs to be bought up.I don't know if anyone here is using wall warts for power but certainly some are using other types of (quality) power supplies instead of the PWR-56.
- Tim
gregeusa:
Find a laptop power supply of the desired voltage and current, they are regulated, and can be found cheap.
The improvement in operation using a regulated supply is noticeable in most cases, and often an unregulated supply can cause issues, as this thread dates from 2017.
faithie999:
I think this would be a good choice. should be good quality. you'll just need to snip off the barrel plug and use your multimeter to determine which of the output leads are + and -.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303178417154?hash=item4696d78402:g:DOwAAOSwcaFZH2wT&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA4DRL94%2FZXD3nxj%2BKXAN88CpY88JG8y2VKpvIy8wV%2BFhNaw%2BAZZt1hL8phIlyqS4bhiiI%2Bq8hOzD46bN3vDhWn1rzZXI%2Fq%2FRxXC14%2Fuw%2BjTHsKNJjdl1yv0pHLKK%2Bn%2B7YkWpngZ67imhiynwMEwm10BCfxbe96dcLhDIuYyPkYAhvyGsZPO4ZpORxOccry4C67wiKh%2FmDlprq6e6%2F2R6wNwLXq6uX2VWC%2BhKziuM4wAFY%2F1ztrJ5IRH8krLzvAcDfXl7LK1Bk3ugKN5RHbgi0ga2ncAAzA70RU83oJhGikxbT%7Ctkp%3ABFBM6Li3z_Rg
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