You want to put diode(s) in the circuit so the batteries do not discharge into the track, dirty or clean. We were going to keep the batteries up by putting a fixed voltage on the track & limiting the charge current. The final decision is that we don’t want to wire or clean the track at all so we have dropped the idea. You need to limit the charge current on NiCad & NiMh cells and limit the voltage when charging gel-cells. If you want to depend on track power being available, I think you should go with DCC and save yourself the cost & charging requirements of batteries. By the way, if it wasn’t clear, I do like batteries. I put them in the engines and charge them in place. When I finish my A-B-A F-3’s, there will be a 10 amp/hour battery pack in each unit giving me a total of 30 amp/hours on board. I think that will last for a while.
Hi John.
Lead acid gel cells are designed to be kept charged continuously as in an automobile. Continual flattening and recharging kills them pretty quickly.
They are ideally used as a back up to, say, security systems, where they can live quite hahpily on a low float charge.
I can’t speak for Li-Ion & Li-Poly but with NiCd and NiMh it doesn’t matter if they are kept float charged or continually discharged and re-charged. They have a life span in terms of the number of recharges they can achieve anyway.
Generally NiCd cells last twice as long as NiMh cells.
Jon Radder said:
Neat idea Jeff, but if you are going to bother and put batteries and electronics in the loco, why bother with the electrical headaches to keep track power present?I’ve seen similar systems used with DCC outdoors. That seems to make a little more sense to me because of all the cool things you can do with DCC.
Like I said, best of both worlds. We do not clean track (I haven’t scrubbed a piece of track in 4 years) and we don’t have to worry about reversing loops, we cut them dead. Our track power wiring is a simple tree feed 24VDC and it just runs. When track power is there, the system uses it, when not, the battery pulls the load. It really is a UPS, not a battery system, the locos never miss a beat.
We invented it to power our Trainvision on board video stuff, the UPS feature for engine power just came as synergy.
JT
John Bouck said:
Also, From what I gather reading about this system, (Which doesn't add much credence to my reply, being the old fart that I am :) :) ), it is not good for a battery to be discharging and recharging constantly. To make a battery last and also to perform at it's best efficiency, it should be used properly.Jon,
I also think this is redundancy.
You still have to scrub track, maintain wires, etc.
No track scrubbing, the battery deals with the minor dropouts that dirty track and frogs and … cause. I put my wire in pretty industrial strength, 18ga mains and 20 ga stranded feeders, all to rail clamps, wire maintenance is not an issue.
Tony answered the battery question, NiHMs are excellent for this, have no issues floating and are very robust. Our are rated for 500 charge/discharge cycles.
JT
John Bouck said:Uh, no, there is a full wave bridge between the tracks and the float circuit, the battery can only 'see' the float circuit and the motor. As a result of the bridge you can also run it on AC track power (17 - 20 VAC).
What I meant is it looks like the track power is charging the battery and the battery is discharging to back up the dirty track at the same time. A battery should be discharged and when it is low, recharged. But what do I know.
Isolation circuit diagram here: http://www.iptrains.org/mediawiki/index.php/TrainUPS
JT
Let me make one final point and I’ll shut up, 98% of the time you are running on track power, the battery just ‘fills in the gaps’ when needed. Most of even ‘dirty’ track is relatively conductive, the problem comes when you hit enough crud to momentarily lose pickup on all trucks (shoes, whatever you have) and the engine stalls. TrainUPS floats you across the crud and never misses a beat. And of course battery folks already understand what liberation from reversing loop and frog wiring means, I don’t think I need to explain that part.
For some reason we’ve had much greater success in Europe, we’ve sold a ton of these guys across the pond (about 50% run on AC) but for some reason there is a great deal of skepticism in the US. Yes, battery life is finite, it’s a small 2300mah battery and yes, you do need to park to charge. We also offer a fast charger that plugs in if you’re in a hurry.
JT
I think you will find most European garden Railroads are quite small when compared to the USA. Smaller size equals less maintenance. Plus the majority have always been track powered. So it is not surprising to me the concept is well accepted there.
In percentage terms, DCC for example has a much stronger following on the Continent than it does in the USA. So Europeans are used to track power and a progression to a form of battery back up is logical.
Battery only Garden Railroads are much more common in the USA and as such very few Garden Railroaders are prepared to spend the money, and time, setting their RR’s up for both.
Plus, having both battery and track power does complicate the installation somewhat for many LS locos. Much easier to just rip out the pick ups. Or flip the Track - Battery switch. Which incidentally really complicates a track power - battery back up loco wiring.
There is one fairly large relatively untapped market for battery only power everywhere. Live steam enthusiasts. Most of them have layouts that are physically impossible to track power anyway. Battery only is not a problem. Many Live Steamers have acquired battery powered diesels for those times where they need to have a loco up and running quickly. Such as when the grandkids turn up unexpectedly. Battery power keeps them amused whilst the steamers are being fired up.
Battery only run times are no longer a problem. Battery capacity today is more than adequate to give really long run times.
10 ampere hours in not uncommon.
TonyWalsham said:
I think you will find most European garden Railroads are quite small when compared to the USA. Smaller size equals less maintenance. Plus the majority have always been track powered. So it is not surprising to me the concept is well accepted there. In percentage terms, DCC for example has a much stronger following on the Continent than it does in the USA. So Europeans are used to track power and a progression to a form of battery back up is logical.Battery only Garden Railroads are much more common in the USA and as such very few Garden Railroaders are prepared to spend the money, and time, setting their RR’s up for both.
Plus, having both battery and track power does complicate the installation somewhat for many LS locos. Much easier to just rip out the pick ups. Or flip the Track - Battery switch. Which incidentally really complicates a track power - battery back up loco wiring.There is one fairly large relatively untapped market for battery only power everywhere. Live steam enthusiasts. Most of them have layouts that are physically impossible to track power anyway. Battery only is not a problem. Many Live Steamers have acquired battery powered diesels for those times where they need to have a loco up and running quickly. Such as when the grandkids turn up unexpectedly. Battery power keeps them amused whilst the steamers are being fired up.
Battery only run times are no longer a problem. Battery capacity today is more than adequate to give really long run times.
10 ampere hours in not uncommon.
Reference that track/battery switch, not as much as you might think. TrainUPS goes in series with the track pickups so you just leave it in the track position.
My point was that an installer would still have to locate the AC track pick up wires, cut them and insert the proprietary system you sell.
It is much simpler to merely connect the trail car batteries to the pigtails at the back of AC locos or, if loco mounted, where the pigtail wires join onto the internal wiring. No cutting needed.
Now, if you told us you are also offering pre-wired replacement plugs and sockets for the track pick ups, so that you idea was simply Plug’n’Play, I could understand the enthusiasm such an idea would create.
TonyWalsham said:Ah, ok, I get it, yes, the system is intrusive and does require minor surgery. No real way around that I'm afraid. I suppose we could offer sockets and plugs but given the large number of variations out there, even within manufacturers, that would be cost prohibitive. What we do instead is offer an installation package for the soldering iron impaired. And like your labor rates, we charge what it is worth.
My point was that an installer would still have to locate the AC track pick up wires, cut them and insert the proprietary system you sell. It is much simpler to merely connect the trail car batteries to the pigtails at the back of AC locos or, if loco mounted, where the pigtail wires join onto the internal wiring. No cutting needed. Now, if you told us you are also offering pre-wired replacement plugs and sockets for the track pick ups, so that you idea was simply Plug'n'Play, I could understand the enthusiasm such an idea would create.
Once again, the complexity level doesn’t seem to scare off the Europeans and I don’t think they’re any more tech savvy then folks in the US. It’s really not that difficult, we’ve never had a customer who bought the kit fail at installing it.
JT
PS: Trail cars?!! We don’t need no stinkin trail cars 
Jeff, I love the live video frame on your website link. Also love the locomotive UPS idea. Innovation and new ideas are what make this hobby fun!
Russ McIntire said:Thanks Russ, you guys have certainly done your share of innovation as well, and we are all better off for it. It's good to have choices and little guys like our companies do a lot to provide those choices. The big guys are kind of tied to their base and not as free to do crazy stuff as we are but crazy stuff is where the technology takes us. Our vision at IPTrains is unique I think, we want to crawl inside our locos and view the world from there while driving the train. We've got the video and power parts pretty well covered with our power and video lines and now we're working on the 'control' bits since it seems to make sense to get it all on the computer. Like you we've taken a packetized control approach but we're using TCP/IP.
Jeff, I love the live video frame on your website link. Also love the locomotive UPS idea. Innovation and new ideas are what make this hobby fun!
Also, anytime you see a red frame on either of our sites (the store or the tech reference site), that’s a live frame. We have them scattered throughout.
Not to take this too far off target but I did a little playing with a full interface of my transmitter to a PC. The PC acted as a web server and allowed a fair number of simultaneous browsers to individually control the 32 locos through the transmitter. I may eventually resurrect this but I would have rather done it via Zigbee or TCP/IP as you are looking at. Nothing like having two-way communication and actually doing something with it! Keep up the fun/good work!
Back on topic, does your train UPS always draw power through the batteries or do they actually switch on when needed and back out when track power is sufficient?
Russ McIntire said:
Not to take this too far off target but I did a little playing with a full interface of my transmitter to a PC. The PC acted as a web server and allowed a fair number of simultaneous browsers to individually control the 32 locos through the transmitter. I may eventually resurrect this but I would have rather done it via Zigbee or TCP/IP as you are looking at. Nothing like having two-way communication and actually doing something with it! Keep up the fun/good work!Back on topic, does your train UPS always draw power through the batteries or do they actually switch on when needed and back out when track power is sufficient?
The battery ‘floats’ across the track power and only discharge when it falls below a certain point. The action is controlled by a set of matched Schottky diodes, only one can conduct at any given time, the other will be reversed biased. So yes, the battery only discharges when needed.
As to the rest, we though long and hard about Zigbee but settled on 802.11 as we already use WiFi for our video and it made little sense to put two radios in the same unit and Zigbee hasn’t got the BW for video in any case. Our development model for the full control cab uses a 802.11b/g/n two port radio on board. One port goes to the on board video server and the other to the control card which handles the motor controller and accessories. Our production video stuff uses the same video server but with a WiFi dongle plugged into a USB port. So the eventual full control cab will have a small network on board. People should be able to do all sorts of interesting things with that Like you, we are an open architecture and plan on staying that way.
Hello everyone, I would like to correct something that Tony said…
Tony said; “Generally NiCd cells last twice as long as NiMh cells.” That is incorrect! Nimh cells last nearly three times as long as NiCd cells. NiCd cells are made to be rapidly charged (up to 3amps) and rapidly discharged and are mainly used in Cordless Drill Battery-Packs. NiCd cells will last around 500 cycles or 250 usages, but Nimh cells are made to give you alot of power for a very long time. Kinda like a Diesel engine, it takes a long time to warm up the engine but when its warm it runs for a very long time. That’s just like charging Nimh battery-pack, Nimh cells like to be charged at a low amperage, (2amps or lower) and it takes longer to charge a Nimh battery then a NiCd flash charger (AKA DeWalt), but when it’s charged it will last for a long time. Generally, Nimh cells will last between 700 - 750 cycles or 350 - 400 usages. Plus, if your using Sub C cells…the highest capacity you can get from a NiCd SC cells is the Sanyo CP2500SCR Japanese cells not China (Lime Green shrink wrap comes from China, Dark Green shrink wrap comes from Japan), and the highest milliamps in a Nimh SC cell is SC5000mah; twice the runtime and twice the capacity.
Thanks for your time,
Rick Isard
Cordless Renovations, LLC
I am afraid not Rick.
Bear in mind I did say generally.
This site http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000352.htm claims NiMh have a max of 500 cycles.
Wikepedia claims that NiCd last longer in terms of cycles than any other. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-cadmium_battery
This site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechargeable_battery puts the advantage of NiCd over NiMh as being 1500 cycles for NiCd compared to 1,000 for NiMh.
I have been using both types for many years and have found from my practical experience NiCd outlasts (in terms of the number of cycles) NiMh.
If you really want me to I will dig up the Sanyo statistics for you.
Tony is right… the cordless drill battery example is not how we run our trains, heavy load and abusive charging.
There’s tons of manufacturers sites that confirm what Tony has said, and I mean manufacturers that make batteries, not people who package them for drills and try to charge them in nanoseconds.
Regards, Greg
I’m still on the fence on this one.
I started out with Nicads.
They worked fine for about three years, and started to fail this year, with only 10 or 15 re-charges.
Now I’m experimenting with Nihm’s, but on my first year, with excellent results.
I have three sets of Liths (or whatever they are called) and can’t report on them, either, other than they run a train for a long time. But take a reeeely long time to re-charge.
How long NiCd batteries last does depend a lot on how they are charged.
If you try and fast charge a partially discharged pack they can develop the (so called) memory. In layman’s terms this means they will only accept a partial charge.
If you need to fast charge partially discharged batteries you should use a conditioning/cycling charger. This first discharges the batteries to the correct level and then recharges them back up.
You should only fast charge NiCd cells that have been designed to be fast charge.
All NiCd batteries are designed for a standard 10% charge rate for 14 hours. This prevents a memory developing and is safe for all size cells.
The drawback is they take 14 hours.
Nicads were long the mainstay in consumer devices, and I’m talking ones that are not a huge power draw, like a drill.
With the poor techniques of charging, and the fact many electrical engineers did not understand the proper charging techniques and designed poor chargers, NiMih was touted as a great replacement… with “no memory”.
Well, it’s true that the “memory” situation is different, but the bottom line is that we are now in 2010, not 1990, and we have intelligent chargers for all chemistries.
Properly charged, NiMih batteries have fewer cycles than nicads. Nicads are heavier, and larger for the same amp hours.
Shortly after the introduction of NiMih, LiIon batteries came on the scene with greatly reduced volume and weight. They have their own problems, needing a more sophisticated charger, and the inability to be able to be drained as low as other batteries. They are also only good for 300-400 cycles as compared to nicads of up to 1,000, and nimih which might make 500-700 in my experience.
But look at the consumer devices today in 2010… nimih is basically gone, try to find a product with it inside. It was a short lived “popularity”…
This is not to say they are no good, but let’s keep to the facts and tradeoffs. I don’t use them anymore… If I have room, then I use nicads, since they will last forever and can really pump out current when needed.
If I need space or light weight, then I use Liion…
Let’s keep the “what I sell is the best” out the discussion, and keep to facts Rick. There are pros and cons to every chemistry, but don’t disparage one chemistry with incorrect information.
Regards, Greg