LIDECO - Lightdecoder

Ligth controlling for model railways Day and night with dawn and dusk and other lighting effects.
Click here to have an animation
of the features all these features you can realise within three channels:
night/day, illumination of the houses and flashes.
General:
The lighting decoder is an operation decoder which is especially developed
for (room-) illumination of a model railway equipment.
The four programmable lamp outputs with high power are regulated by a commercial digital controller.
Selectively the four outputs can be managed individually or in free selectable groups.
Integrated in the software of a controlling programm it is possible to make a temporal sequence
of day and night, lights on/off, several intensities of light, in accordance with the timetable of the trains, br>respectively with the full-scale clock of the progrmming device.

With some invention you have succes with a lot of features.
Off course the lighting decoder can work independent of a digitally controlled model railway.

Hardware:

• Inputs: DCC Power from a separate power supply.
• Outputs:The most different light sources can be connected to the outputs.
• These are separately programmable by CVs:
• The number of lighting decoders depends basically of the not used addresse in the digital system.
• A lighting decoder needs one train address.
• More digital system can much expand the possibilities.
  
• The CVs which can be allocated the outputs independantly are:
  CV 01: Address of the lighting decoder
  CV 02: Brightness in rank 1
  14, 27, 28 and 128 ranks respectively are supported. Internal 256 ranks of brightness are generated.
  CV 03: Ramp for brightness increasing
  CV 04: Ramp for brightness decreasing
  CV 05: limts the max. brightness
  

Light effects:

• Nearly stepless bright/dark by tunable ramp
• Flashlight F5
• fast rise bright/dark F6.

The lighting decoder is basically programmed to address no. 3 and medium values.

So it is directly for use. The light sources are selectable in much variants :
normal buls of the model railways
Halogen lamps (from Superstore, car components etc., 12 or 24V)

LEDs in many variants and colours LED-lamps

With suitable software equipments more effects are possible.
The change from bright to dark must not be executed in one pass;
it can be interrupted, temporarily shifted and/or be controlled by an internal clock.
Flashing:

Times for on/off are separately tunable Traffic lights:
red, green, yellow (yellow flashing)
gas lantern:
smoothly unsteady
Flash lights:
flashing blue light, warning beacon, flash,
sheet lighting
fire (red, yellow, blue are mixed and projected to an object that there is the impression of burnung fire.)

Technical descripion:

• Input 1:
  Digitalsignals in DCC-format.
  The digital commander is protected by an optocoupler.
  The formats of Marklin/Motorola and SX are only supported in operation mode, but not for CV-programming.
  A mixed operation not provided now.
• Input 2:Power by a Dc-power supply.
  According to the voltage of the lighting mediums the voltage of the power supply is to adapted:
  Input voltages are valid from 9 to 24 VDC. An overvoltage protection swithes off the device at a value above 27 volts.
• Outputs 1 to 4: Four optional lighting sources of the same voltage can be connected.
  Each output supports up to 2 Amps.
  An over current limit is provided and prevents the device from damage.
  The output drivers are protected against shorts and excess temperatur.
  The overall performance is 192 W per decoder.
• Mounting the device you should know that the excess temperatur can become more than 100° C.
• Lighting devices can be connected multiple or serial in groups according to its voltage and power.
• Each of the four outputs is connected to a controll led in order to show an about correct operation without the lighting sources.
  By security reasons all outputs are switched off if the digital input is missing or corrupt.

The needed powersupplies you will find in our product list.

Dimensions of the decoder:
Footprint 80 x 80 mm, Hight 20mm, Wight about 70 g.

Manual (German)

Security advise :
The Supply cables feeding the lightsources must have a cross section of 1,5 mm² up to a distance of 1 meter.
If this exceeds 2,5 mm² is required!
The feed cable between power supply and supply input should be as short as possible to make the device work properly.
You should know that there is the current flow of the entire device!
If you have need to combine several decoders with max. power, ask us; we will help you calculating the wires. 
You should know as well that the high temperature of the halogen lamps may be a source of danger.
Because of heat accumulation the device must not be mounted under the plate of your model railway equipment;

The lighting decoder is no toy and should only be handled by adult and responible persons!