TIU power supply

The brick will provide plenty of power for the TIU. In fact, it's overkill by a couple of orders of magnitude.  

I use old laptop or external disk power supplies.  12VDC at 2A seems to be more than sufficient for any I've tried.

Barry Broskowitz posted:

The brick will provide plenty of power for the TIU. In fact, it's overkill by a couple of orders of magnitude.  

An order of magnitude is a factor of 10.  A couple orders of magnitude is a factor of 100.  Not sure I see how the OP's 80 Watt bricks is overkill by 100 times....suggesting the TIU Aux input needs only 0.8 Watts? 

The DCS manual suggests the minimum power requirement for the Aux Power Input would be 12V at 1 Amp which is 12 Watts.

Barry just overstated the case by an order of magnitude.

By 8.2 dB.

is there a benefit to using aux power for a TIU?    My TIU runs two loops.  1 on Fixed 1, and 1 on Fixed 2.

Each Fixed channel is supplied by its own Lionel 180w brick.

Barry may be right.  I expect on the average () layout, the brick could power 100 TIUs, if no AIUs were connected.  However, I'm not in a position to make that test:  I don't have an 80-watt powerhouse brick.  In fact, I'm not even sure there is an 80-watt, vice 180-watt, Powerhouse; I haven't followed Lionel since the quality drop after the move to Michigan or thereabouts.

EscapeRocks posted:

is there a benefit to using aux power for a TIU?    My TIU runs two loops.  1 on Fixed 1, and 1 on Fixed 2.

Each Fixed channel is supplied by its own Lionel 180w brick.

TIU is powered through the fixed 1 input.  If for some reason you have a fault on fixed 1 output that causes,  the Z4000 powering fixed 1 input to shut down, the other three TIU outputs loose all DCS signal.    The Aux Power input allows the TIU to operate, independent, or without fixed 1 being powered.   We (Fort Pitt High Railers) use Variable 1 and Variable 2 in the fixed voltage mode  Total of (4 outputs for  4 tracks).   We use a Radio Shack Enercell power supply 273-331   There were several threads on this part with adaptor Plug M.  Apparently this(these) part(s) is(are) no longer available.   This high capacity power supply was used in the 18 volt setting.  

I agree with MIKE CT, as we have two TIUs in Super mode, using 6 different channels, all fixed output. The aux power supply for each TIU keeps the TIUs powered, no mater what happens to just one channel, so folks are able to operate on other powered tracks.

Mike is correct.  In case newbies to DCS didn't catch it, " the other three TIU outputs loose all DCS signal"  does not mean the trains on them stop.  Expect that they will continue doing what they have been doing, except they are out of control; even the e-stop button won't function.

Thank you all!    I have all kinds of power supplies in the specified range with all manner of plugs.   I'll find something that works