TIU has stopped working

What revision of TIU do you have? Is it power through FIXED 1 or the AUX power input?

When you power up the TIU does the red light blink 1 to 5 times indicating its address?

How many channels of the TIU do you use? You could try other channels to see if they still work.

Can the remote still communicate with the TIU by checking the Firmware revision?

Sorry to hear about your situation. I had a storm take out a lot of my electronics a few years ago, including the controls in my SawStop table saw.  Fortunately, all of my train stuff was unplugged.  I'm guessing that a big enough spike may have caused your grief.  Leaving my stuff unplugged was just dumb luck, but now I always unplug everything when I'm done.

Suggest that you keep a list of any affected items - might be enough to justify making a claim on your homeowners insurance.

Isn't there a fuse inside the TIU?  If so, maybe you'll get lucky.  Hoping for the best, especially with the current difficulty getting DCS components.

Your switches only switch the hot side of the 120v.  Spikes can travel though the neutral side as well.  I use a whole house spike suppressor that fits behind the electric meter, they are a few hundred dollars at HD.  Our local utility also offers them installed for $300.  There are also units that are easily installed in your breaker box.  Cheap insurance and will worth it these days with all the storms and grid problems.

There are a few things I would try.  If your remote (or app through WiFi) still communicates with the TIU, power it on and try the E-Stop button.  Everything should power down.  That would tell you the TIU is not completely dead and communicating normally.

If that works, go into the advanced setup of your TIU and set each channel DCS to off, exit, power off (unplug) then back on.  Once everything is back up, go back to the advanced setup and turn DCS back on, exit and power off and on again.  If there is no change, you could also try a factory reset of the TIU.

With 9 engines on your layout, I can't imagine you only use 1 TIU channel but if you have a spare, you could switch one track loop to the spare and see if there is any difference.  No difference and the TIU is likely at fault. 

As Dough pointed out, a surge can come in on any of the electric connections, hot, return and even ground if you have an older home.  The surge suppressors he talks about are good insurance but it is my experience lightning will go wherever it wants to so the only way to guarantee a surge won't hurt anything is to be sure it is unplugged.

Another thought; if you use a WIU (WiFi module), disconnect it from the TIU.  The WiFi module will power "some" of the functions of your TIU but it will not function normally.  If you are using the AUX power and the aux power source got whacked, you could be getting TIU power through the WiFi module which will cause undesired results.  I don't remember if there is any difference between TIUs connected with USB only (REV L) or TIUs connected with USB/Serial adapters but disconnecting the WiFi module is easy either way.

Good luck!

Tony

@Dougklink posted:

Your switches only switch the hot side of the 120v.  Spikes can travel though the neutral side as well.  I use a whole house spike suppressor that fits behind the electric meter, they are a few hundred dollars at HD.  Our local utility also offers them installed for $300.  There are also units that are easily installed in your breaker box.  Cheap insurance and will worth it these days with all the storms and grid problems.

The spike that usually kills everything comes in on the neutral, which is not protected. When we lived in BlueRidge Ga the power company offered the behind the meter surge protection for 10 bucks a month. When we had a bad hit the insurance kicked and and everything was replaced.

I now live in FLA when we have a major electrical storm I open breakers to the major appliances, the layout is always in a dead state when not in use. An APC as the go between house (transformer) to layout  will help quite a bit, it will also smooth out the power dips and spikes, from the power company.

I've repaired Tiu's that were damaged, the only safe way is a Univeral UPS battery backup system I had a tiu that came in and would not work, the tvs diode had shorted! after repairs I talked to customer he said he had a brownout, the power voltage was dimming the light power surging. I recommend he buy a UPS power supply he did so and never had a issue again, the way the ups work if your running your trains off a battery which the ups keep charging so you never get the voltage spike hence no damaged to your electronics!

I've had issues where I've had Epson printers die for the same reason ever since I installed the UPS never had any more problems with printer failures!

Alan

@ThatGuy posted

I now live in FLA when we have a major electrical storm I open breakers to the major appliances, the layout is always in a dead state when not in use  

A breaker doesn’t open the neutral, either.

@John H posted:

A breaker doesn’t open the neutral, either.

Thank you doctor obvious, you do it to cut down on issues.

Well he has a good point.  I have my layout wired through a 20 amp circuit with outlets I can access easily.  When I'm not running it or there are storms I unplug it completely.  That gets the neutral, ground, and hot.

@ThatGuy posted:

Thank you doctor obvious, you do it to cut down on issues.

Ya know, there was nothing wrong with John's reply nor your rude response. Not everyone has a background such as yours, and in the context of this thread, it's a helpful comment he made for those who don't.

@EscapeRocks posted:

Ya know, there was nothing wrong with John's reply nor your rude response. Not everyone has a background such as yours, and in the context of this thread, it's a helpful comment he made for those who don't.

I was not being rude, it’s a term we used quite often at work. But since you feel it was I will stop posting from this point forward. I would hate to hurt someone’s feeling by mistake.