Hmm. My question is, how sensitive is Blunami to the subtle changes in track voltage encountered in real-world layout conditions?
I've been considering a similar direct R/C technology made by AirWire. Their decoder was originally designed to work with an on-board battery (sometimes known as "dead rail.") The company warned me that the decoder should only be fed smoothed, regulated DC. In other words, the stuff Karl mentioned is needed to modify the track power, and trick it into thinking that it's being fed by a battery.
Perhaps Blunami is more tolerant of jagged waveforms, spikes, and voltage variations. If you want to risk letting the magic smoke out, you could try feeding it directly from the track. If the loco mysteriously speeds up or slows down on parts of your layout, then you would probably benefit from some kind of "helper circuit" consisting of a rectifier, capacitor, and maybe a Zener diode? or some other component(s) to regulate the voltage.
I'm not as excited about Blunami because I don't want to run my trains with a cell phone. (Direct R/C competitors AirWire and RailPro both offer hand-held controllers.) Given the issues with Legacy and DCS in the past year, all of these alternatives are worth considering! Good thread, following!!
