Tam Valley DCC Booster for Accessories and Track Power Districts

 

This DCC Booster was designed to solve two issues that putting a lot of DCC accessory decoders on your layout brings up. 1) They are a drain on your precious loco amps and 2) When a loco causes a short all the accessories lose power.  To solve this problem we have made a DCC booster that can be used for accessories on any brand of DCC system.  It can provide about 5 Amps of power to run the DCC accessories independent of the track power from your command station.  During a short on the layout, when the DCC signal dies, the booster continues to deliver full power.  This is a so-called "dumb" booster in that it does not need a cab bus - it connects directly to the track output of your existing command station. You can also use the booster as a "powered circuit breaker".  It fills all the functions of a circuit breaker but provides its own power.  Each of your power districts puts no load on the command station as it is fully buffered.  I use several of these with 16 V power supply which gives about 14.5 Volts on the track to power my own layout with just a single NCE PowerCab. Auto- shutdown - the unit shuts down after 5 minutes of no DCC signal (accessory mode) or immediately (power district mode).  When the DCC signal returns it wakes up immediately.  Just plug the booster in and forget about it. The booster has protection against shorts and overheating.  The input is optically isolated. Efficient - this booster uses the latest in efficient power electronics and as such it does not get hot in normal operation - the power supply is a highly efficient switching power supply that also stays nice and cool.  A heatsink is provided although in normal use it never becomes warm unless the track is continuously shorted. To use the booster with Loconet you can connect it to the railsynce lines (the outer pair in the loconet cable) or to the rail outputs of your commend station.  The Loconet method has the advantage that the signal can be sent farther without significant degradation in quality. Download the Manual

Due to parts differences board may look slightly different

5 Amp Trip / 3 A Continuous Duty DCC Booster Board DCC Booster board without the power supply.  These boards can be used to make locomotive Power Districts or an Accessory District with a shared power supply.  A jumper is used to set either Accessory Mode or Power District Mode.  Each board can supply up to 3 Amps continuous duty and 5 Amp peak with a suitable power supply.  These boards work very nicely with the Hex Frog Juicer. Max power supply voltage: 40V Power Connector: 5.5 mm (outer)/ 2.1 mm (inner) barrel plug, center positive DCC input: optically isolated, 5-24 Volts (voltage level on the DCC input pins has no effect on output voltage level), 25 mA load typical. DCC Connectors: Screw blocks Max output: 5 Amps for short periods, 3 Amps continuous Peak-to-peak output voltage: Power Supply voltage minus 0.8-1.4 volts (decreasing with load and independent of voltage on the DCC input) Short Trip Point: 5.6 Amps Short Trip Off Time: 1 microsecond Short Trip Recovery Time: 200 microseconds No Auto-reverse Board Size: 3" long x 2.5" wide x 0.5" deep (including heatsink) (76mm x 64mm x 12mm).  Green blocks extend another 0.3" (8mm).