Do BlueRail boards offer a way to control electrocouplers in basic mode?

Also, would one of these boards work inside of a diecast steamer boiler? 

I know the electro couplers work in my MTH DCC and they should work in the Soundtraxx DCC. 

In basic mode there is an ability to turn on and off a headlight and rear  light. 

I might assume one could just hook up the couplers to those pins and activate them that way.  I never tried it.

If I have time this weekend, maybe I'll do a bench test.

Ron

JD2035RR  I hooked up an MTH proto coupler to a BR board running in Basic Mode.  Using the image below I hooked up the proto coupler to the Front Headlight 2/4 and I also tried the rear headlight 2/5.  I could not get the coupler to fire using the light on/off button or the direction button followed by the light on off button.

I even reversed the wiresx to make sure I did not have the +/- backwards.  I still could not get the coupler to fire.

I can get the couplers to fire using the DCC sound card.  You might try asking Dave Rees on the BlueRail Groups Forum.

  @Ron045 thanks for going the extra mile to check that for me. I’ll check the bluerail groups forum, too. Not a deal breaker, but good to know 👍🏻

TMCC couplers need quite a bit of voltage to fire, at least around 12 V.

I tried a new Lionel coupler, 11 VDC it barely tripped, but you'd want a few more volts for reliable operation.  12 VAC was the threshold for it on AC voltage, again you'd want at least several more volts for reliable operation.

The couplers work as GRJ states. I have experimented with track voltages in my S scale layout as the voltage affects the Lionel S gauge couplers. On my layout at 15V they fire 100% of the time. At 14V maybe 85 to 90%, so two pushes usually results in an open coupler. At 13V I saw maybe 25% success, two pushes of the Cab 2 button did not assure open couplers. At 12V they did not fire at all.

You could put a 3 or 5v solid state relay in the coupler circuit adjust the current coming to the opto coupler on the relay board with a trim pot and then power the coupler off track power.          j

@AmFlyer posted:

The couplers work as GRJ states. I have experimented with track voltages in my S scale layout as the voltage affects the Lionel S gauge couplers. On my layout at 15V they fire 100% of the time. At 14V maybe 85 to 90%, so two pushes usually results in an open coupler. At 13V I saw maybe 25% success, two pushes of the Cab 2 button did not assure open couplers. At 12V they did not fire at all.

That makes sense as the coupler triac drops about 3/4th of a volt, I was testing with bench power supplies connected directly to the couplers.