 Joined: 28/11/2007(UTC) Posts: 8,243 Location: Montreal, QC
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I was watching a video, which included some footage of night trains.
It occurred to me that most interior lighting kits, including the ones by Maerklin, focus on lighting inside the compartments and often do not illuminate the washrooms or vestibule of the coaches.
What would it take for a company to come up with a LED strip which included LEDs on one side and on the ends to illuminate the open areas and dimmer LEDs for the compartment areas of coaches?
This would be the most realistic lighting for night coaches, as the corridor and vestibule are usually lit, while the compartments are dark or lit by small reading lights. Additionally, the compartment windows are usually shaded by the curtain/screen when passengers are sleeping.
What do you think?
Regards
Mike C
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 2 users liked this useful post by mike c
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 Joined: 08/03/2016(UTC) Posts: 77 Location: New South Wales, Sydney
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Little strip leds from ebay are so cheap and easy to fit it would not take much work at all to add what ever lights you chose to your coaches. Now tht you mention it, it would be nice to have a random generator on the coach that turns the light on and off in some compartments, maybe turns on outside lights when it stops at stations etc. But yes, the leds you seek are cheap and plentiful on ebay. Here are 2 products i recently purchased to make additions to my trains. ebayebayThe wires attached to these things are ridiculously thin, i love them. Also super bright but you can adjust that with resistors etc. Edited by moderator 17 March 2019 08:31:29(UTC)
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LOLOLOL they are just toys, grow up and play with them. |
1 user liked this useful post by lewistrain
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 Joined: 04/02/2011(UTC) Posts: 3,579 Location: Paris, France
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Hi .. Lewistrain? This is surely interesting but I cannot access any of your links. In Europe a 5 m 12 VDC LED self-adhesive tape can be purchased for 5 Euros (enougth to equip a load of cars): - must cut to size - must add a capacitor in parallel to LEDs to stop the flickering - must add a diode and a current limiting resistor (1 to 2 kOhms) in series when in use with digital feed. The result is a very low current draw less than 10mA per train. Alternatively you may pourchse a power supply (5 Euros apiece) anyways the power components are usually hidden in the toilets (IMO)  Cheers Jean |
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1 user liked this useful post by JohnjeanB
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Joined: 08/03/2016(UTC) Posts: 77 Location: New South Wales, Sydney
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Hhmmmm i cannot seem to get my links to work. /* Fixed now  */ |
LOLOLOL they are just toys, grow up and play with them. |
1 user liked this useful post by lewistrain
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 Joined: 28/03/2007(UTC) Posts: 305 Location: Torino,
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Originally Posted by: lewistrain  Now that you mention it, it would be nice to have a random generator on the coach that turns the light on and off in some compartments, maybe turns on outside lights when it stops at stations etc.
Do you mean something like this ? Day mode : all lights off  Evening mode : all lights on  Going to bed mode : compartments turning off one at a time at random. Toilets, service room and vestibule always on.  Night mode : compartment off, but someone still awake at random. Toilets, service room and vestibule always on.   Reversing sequence at wake up. Corridor lights always on. Not so difficult, just a microcontroller, some LEDs, some electronics and programmig skills regards
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6 users liked this useful post by mario54i
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 Joined: 31/05/2011(UTC) Posts: 868 Location: Brazil
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Hello Mario!
Really nice ones!
Could you share with us the details of what specifically was used and programmed?
Cheers,
Walter
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1 user liked this useful post by waorb
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Joined: 28/03/2007(UTC) Posts: 305 Location: Torino,
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Thanks. It's not a commercial product, I made it more than ten years ago. At that time my memory was quite good and I had the bad habit not to take notes, I remembered all details of my designs. Not this way any longer  For what I can remember, the heart is an Attiny84 microcontroller whose outputs are expanded to 32 with the shift-register (HC595) technique. Each HC595 drives directly 8 LEDs. So 32 lights can be turned on/off independently. Up to 28 can be used for compartments, the rest for corridor, tail lights etc. The software knows the position of each compartment (not all 28 LEDs are always used) and controls the sequence of turn on / turn off. regards
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2 users liked this useful post by mario54i
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 Joined: 10/02/2006(UTC) Posts: 3,997
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Originally Posted by: JohnjeanB
The result is a very low current draw less than 10mA per train.
Jean, are you sure? as far as I understand these LED strips are multiple sets of three LEDs each with their own resistor, with the sets of three connected in parallel. Each triplet of three might be brought down as low as 10mA, but each passenger coach probably has at least three such sets.... I know my 5m 12V LED strips can draw 2 Amps at full brightness, so I reckon a 2.5M long train could be expected to draw 1 Amp at full brightness. If we were to reduce that to just 10% we still have 100mA. One of my next projects will be installing lights in my passenger trains and one of my passenger trains is 3.8m long so I need to pay a lot of attention to the amount of current that will be used. I am also wondering if using 24V LED strips would be better suited to the rectified digital signal, as it would result in less power loss to resistors. |
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2 users liked this useful post by DaleSchultz
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Joined: 28/03/2007(UTC) Posts: 305 Location: Torino,
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Originally Posted by: DaleSchultz
I am also wondering if using 24V LED strips would be better suited to the rectified digital signal, as it would result in less power loss to resistors.
Be aware that 24 V strips have a minimum voltage around 16-17 V. Taking into account the voltage drop across rectifier bridge, it is marginal.
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2 users liked this useful post by mario54i
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 Joined: 20/08/2018(UTC) Posts: 157 Location: Geneve, Geneva
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I fitted my wagons with ESU interior lights: http://www.esu.eu/en/pro...ing-sets/ntt-h0-digital/ . They are addressable and fully configurable with all kinds of effects ("neon" or "bulbs", random flickering, individual segments on/off). Moreover the tail lights turn on/off with the direction of the travel, so you can make a nice consist with them. |
JMRI on RPi & DCC++ / C-track / Marklin, Roco, ESU, Bemo locos / Christmas car collector |
1 user liked this useful post by costing
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