©2004 Digitrax, Inc
www.digitrax.com
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5.2 Wiring the BDL168 for Whole Layout Common Rail Wiring
Whole layout common rail wiring cannot independently monitor whether zone
power is on or off so it can't tell whether occupancy detection is working or not
in any given detection section. The BDL168 can be easily configured to over-
come this disadvantage by using detection section 16 to monitor track power--
if track power is on in section 16 then detection is working in sections 1-15.
1. After mounting the 44-pin connector to the board (see section 4.0), label the
connector Using the zones and detection section numbers for easy identifi-
cation of the pins when wiring. (See hint on labeling for wire tracing and
troubleshooting under 5.1.1 wiring for direct home wiring systems.)
2. Solder one wire (AC1) from a 12-16V AC or DC power supply to the pin
12 and the second wire (AC2) from the power supply to the pin N on the
BDL168's 44-pin connector. This powers the BDL168. Multiple BDL168
units can be supplied by a single shared supply as long as you provide at
least 100mA for each BDL168. This power supply should not power any
devices other than BDL168s.
3. Solder the ground wire from the Digitrax booster ground or common (case)
to pin 11 of the 44-pin connector. Nothing is connected to pin M.
4. The end of the wire from each detection section and zone common should
be stripped approximately 1/4” and inserted through the holes in each pin
pair on the connector as indicated in
Table 1 and Figure 4.
Solder the wire
to each pin. The zone common connections to the booster should be as short
as possible and relatively heavy gauge, since they are common to all four
detectors in the zone. For example, a 12AWG zone connection to the boost-
er should be less than 10 feet for best performance.
5. Wire a 10K resistor from detection section 16 (pin 22) to the detection com-
mon return for the whole BDL168 (
Figure 2
). Detection section 16 will be
active when the BDL168 sees track power and you will be able to tell
whether detection is actually available in detection sections 1 through 15.
6. Plug the BDL168 board firmly into the 44-pin connector.
7. Connect LocoNet via one of the BDL168's LocoNet jacks.
8. The first time you apply power to the unit, hold down the switch located
behind the red LED on the BDL168 to set it up for whole layout common
rail operation. The red and green LEDs will light up as power is applied to
the unit. The red LED will go out and the green LED will stay on and
“wink” off twice, approximately every 2 seconds, indicating that it is set up
for common rail wiring and that it is connected to LocoNet and seeing DCC
packets.
The BDL168's option switch 10 is set to
“c”
(closed) to allow detection section
16 to be used to monitor zone power on a whole layout common rail wired sys-
tem. You can fine-tune the BDL168's characteristics using its option switches
which can be set using a Digitrax compatible throttle or a PC with LocoNet
compatible software that can control turnouts. See Section 7:
"Customizing
your BDL168 By Setting Up Option Switches.
”