John  Did you make this or are they on Ebay? can you give us information on this board?

I made it, this is my prototype that I assembled to test it.  I thought I should test it before I mentioned it here.

They should be available soon, just figured I see what interest there was in something like this.

Thanks John. Just keep us informed and let us know the price for them.   Scot

Looks very good. Could be used for almost anything that needs lighting on a layout.

As always, it all depends your price point.  Cheap enough and even the lazy me would buy a bunch.

Dan

So this takes 18VAC and outputs a contestant but adjustable DC voltage?

Yes, most definitely the addition of screw terminals would be a plus and I'd imagine without their inclusion, a deal breaker for quite a few potential customers, John.

Thanks for the info. LED lighting is something I, if not most people would love to install in our cars and buildings. You have helped me make this happen by building a small board that will do the job. Pleas let us know when and how you will be offering them to us.

Thanks

Rich in NH

I'm currently trying to figure out how to get them assembled.  The problem with starting up is the initial setup for assembly is $200, and then it costs $2 a board to build them.  I have to decide if there's enough demand to justify sinking the money into the project.

Hi John

Would your board work with DCC (I'm a 2 rail O scaler)?  Our voltage on the rails is nominally 16V square wave AC.  I value the ability to adjust/match lighting intensity as all 12v LED strips don't have the same yield.

Ed Rappe

Total electronical ignoramus here.

If I wanted to use DC (either from track or battery) how would you modify this device?

John answered this a few posts above:

"The board will take AC or DC up to around 20 volts and work properly.  It uses a bridge rectifier on the input, so polarity reversals will not affect it's output."

In will buy a bunch when available.

What was that last project, John? MAYBE QUITE A FEW FORUMITES WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN INTERESTED IN IT WERE UNAWARE OF IT.

That is the Super-Chuffer, it was posted in several areas.  There was a lot of interest in the threads, just not a lot of actual sales.

New SUPER-CHUFFER, Smoke & Lighting Board

My New Super Chuffer Board Demo

Super Chuffer Board

I would have tried a Super-Chuffer board, but my layout is all modern diesels, no steam. I am surprised you didn't get much interest though. 

This is the off season too, might be a lot more interest this fall/winter? Even the OGR forum is pretty quiet the last few weeks, not near the number of postings as there was just a few weeks ago.

It also seems to me like there are many more questions about LED lighting around here (you probably know better than I do, as you always end up trying to help most of the folks with the questions).

I don't have any passenger stuff either, all freight, but I bet I could find a place or two or three for some lighting boards.

By DC do you mean command-control with 16-18V DC on the track?

If you mean conventional DC control I don't think there's enough track voltage to drive the 12V LED strips.  Even with battery operation you'd need, say, 15V or more which may be inconvenient if you already have your electrics in-place.  If such is the case, I suggest modifying the LED strips to operate at a lower voltage.  The standard strips have 3 LEDs per 2 inch section.  You can quickly modify the strip so there's 2 LEDs per 2 inches or even 1 LED per 2 inches.  That would lower the strip voltage requirement to 9V and 6V respectively.  GRJ's circuit should operate just fine providing adjustable brightness AND handling the DC polarity reversals for direction change.  There are some considerations that should be discussed if this is indeed what you mean by DC operation.

Here's a re-cycled photo from another thread showing LED strips running with 1 LED per 2" section.   I was showing methods to bypass or remove LEDs which lowers the operating voltage of the LED strips.  Your mileage may vary but IMO even with only 1 LED per 2" section you can achieve fairly uniform-smooth lighting in a passenger car.  Note that while this thread is focusing on the electronics, the real star of the show are these LED strips.  There's nothing magical about having 3 LEDs per 2" section!

John, I will be buying some, just have to wait a bit until I address some other stuff previously committed to before hand.

Laidoffick,

Been following your videos, do you have the plan for your layout that you could share?

I'd buy them for each of my cars and cabooses, as long as they work for conventional and command.  Can you also them to add LED headlights and marker lamps to locomotives?

As for your chuffer board, I plan on buying some, but I need to get some TMCC conversion done first and even before that I need to get a work area together.

While these will work for almost any environment, there is a basic restriction.  The input voltage has to be a couple of volts higher than the voltage required by the LED's at the output.  If you have a single white LED, or even two or three in parallel, the circuit will work with as little as 4-5 volts AC on the input.  For the LED strips that typically require around 10 volts for the level I normally run them at, you'll need 8-9 volts AC on the input in order to light the LED's.

PSU1980 you don't have an email address in your profile. You can see the track plan in the build thread, half way down Page 1....

https://ogrforum.com/t...sary-hd-video?page=1

If you have any questions, please email me directly, as we don't want to Hi-Jack GRJ's thread on his new lighting circuit

Sorry John

Not a problem, I've been guilty of plenty of thread redirections.

A bit of nit-picking but to your earlier point about dissipation, if you have 3 parallel whites set at 45mA (max) or 15mA each, wouldn't the drop to ~3V tax the regulator?  As you know for chopped-sine power supplies the voltage available to charge up the cap before the regulator is pushing 20V even a low track voltages.

Reminds me of that discussion about how certain Lionel smoke units work "better" with chopped-sine supplies than the pure-sine supplies.  I think you have a similar situation here where the peak voltage from chopped-sine supplies would provide the extra voltage to run the 12V LED strips at a lower track voltage than a pure-sine supplies.

You're right about power dissipation, I was only suggesting that if the input voltage was too low to support the series connection.  Like you say, to minimize the power dissipation, it's best to keep the input/output voltage differential as low as possible.

At low currents, you're right again, the peak voltage of the AC waveform does charge the cap up to more than the RMS value.

GRJ,

You, like Lee never stop amazing me with your forward thinking.  I have actually been loading a shopping cart at mouser to get moving on a few locomotives that need LEDs.  As I'm medicated (legally, due to chronic pain syndrome), concentration and hand to eye coordination has gone right out the window.

Your board would help me in a big way and clear @ 6 engines off of my work bench.  I would be more then comfortable pre-ordering at least 10 boards (+ shipping) from you whenever you think you are close to moving forward on this.  Once the locomotives are done, I would need a couple dozen more for passenger cars also.  If you do pre-orders and fall short, I'd add to my order.

As often as I've read threads on LED lighting, I know there are many forum members that would probably be interested enough to pre-order as well.   You've done the difficult part, the least we could do to show our appreciation and support is by helping you get this financed.  There is no reason for you to take a hit, let alone two hits just because you are trying to be helpful.

Just my 2-3 cents.

Thanx again for looking out for us, I truly appreciate your time and effort very much.

Richard 

John,

I'm just getting caught up on this, but I'm in along with all the others!

I'm electronically challenged and this will help me significantly!

Great project, Terry

I'm working with the assembly house to see if I can cut the cost of making these so that they'll sell at a reasonable price.  I'm pricing out the version with components all on one side.  It makes the board a bit larger, but not that bad.  The regulator will be a vertical one in the middle of the board, and not one flat on the backside.

John, do you have any images of these boards test fitted into passenger cars?

Nope, but you can see the size earlier in the thread.  I've tested them with the strips, but I haven't done any cars with them.  I have a passenger set of seven MTH Premier cars that I figured would be my first installation.

Well, all I have are 18" Lionel and MTH passenger cars, so I won't be able to demo semi-scale installations.

Ever consider a kit with the board and all the parts?

Ron

I'm still working to get them to that price point.  On the bright side, I think I've found a Chinese board house that will help, pricing wise, but I have to order 500 boards!   I'm not sure I'm ready to make that large a committment.

Trying to actually make quantities is harder than I had imagined.  Turns out the designing part is the easy part!

Yikes, 500 is a LOT! I understand your thoughts about ordering that many. Not sure I have seen that many posts about the subject. On the brighter side, I think a lot of folks have multiple passenger cars. 

Years ago when I was young and ambitious I had an idea for something that required some brass parts. Same kind of deal, only I think it was like 10,000 before the price came down enough to try and make a go of it. Anyway the cost was more than I had to my name at the time. Would have had to sell the house, car and cat. I chickened out.

John,

I have probably 10-15 Cars to have done, not counting about 15 RMT Madison Peeps.

Count me in!

John,  I will buy 25 kits, no led's or wires, of your current boards.  Let me know.

Dan