Turnout Turmoil - Part II

So the Tam Valley Depot products came in yesterday and it seemed a little overwhelming at first.  Lots of electronics.  The first thing I noticed was that the "power supply" I bought looked like a standard laptop charger and the end connection would not fit into the Octopus III Controller.  The Octopus needed 2 DC wires.  Hmmmm.....  As I've mentioned, I'm not really an electronics, or even electrical whiz.  I quickly posted to N Scale Net and started using the vast resource known as Google.  After about an hour of searching, I found out that there is a way to add a connection to the end.  A quick run to Radio Shack and I ended up with this configuration:

Not to blow my own horn, but I dove right in and soldered the wires to the connection.  I ran a quick test using a regular Atlas Turnout Controller and one of my still motorized turnouts.  No sense in frying the $32 Octopus before I knew I was basically configured right.  Success!!  I added the wires to the Octopus and it fired up, ready to go to work.  As a side note, I saw a later post that said I could have just cut off the "charger" connection and had 2 wires to use.  Live and learn...

I had ordered one Tam Valley Switch Wright Servo Bracket, along with one servo and one Bi-Color Fascia Control button.  In looking at the servo bracket, it's a nice product and certainly holds the servo where it needs to be.  On the down side, it's $4.25 each and I have 14 turnouts.  Not to take anything away from Tam Valley, just not sure I want to invest the $55 on brackets.  I will say that the instructions were excellent and included a full size wire bend guide.  One option might be for Tam Valley to sell the bracket pieces for do it yourself assembly, thus reducing the cost.  They do that with their fascia controllers.  Here's the sequence showing the assembly process as I got the servo ready:

This is what comes in the Switch Wright Bracket package

SG-90 Servo in Bracket

Servo Horn with Music Wire (0.032")

So, here's the completed Servo, Horn and Wire mounted into the Servo Bracket:

One note about the servo and Octopus Controller.  I have never worked with servos before and I have to say, it took a little work but I think that was mostly my lack of knowledge and failure to read through the entire process before diving in.  With my order, I bought the Servo Centering Tool (battery operated device that will center the servo - OK, that was obvious).  I also bought the Remote Aligner which will allow the servo to be calibrated while installed in the final location and with the Octopus mounted to it's permanent location.  It comes with a 7' connector cord, which will be handy once everything is in place on the layout, especially since I have a couple turnouts that will be nearly 4' from the Octopus.  I spent about an hour last night learning to get the servo aligned and adjusting the left and right limits.  Servos can move up to 70 degrees each side of center.  With the turnout requiring only about 1/8" of travel, I need to really tighten up the range of motion.  The Tam Valley instructions for the Octopus II were excellent.

At the end of Turnout Turmoil Part I - I had installed a small extension on the turnout activator bar and planned on using the side wire mount method.  I reread Duncan's (owner of Tam Valley) article in the July 09 Model Railroad Hobbyist (great FREE online magazine - with every issue online).  I saw a section about having the servo wire in the middle of the activator slide bar.  It occurred to me - that's the way to go.  Those plastic extension were going to be nothing but a potential problem down the road.  I moved out with my test turnout and drilled out a small hole in the center of the activator bar.  Serious lesson learned - drill from the top not the bottom.  As the drill bit (hand drilled with a pin vise) came through the activator bar, it pushed off the top cap and completely trashed the turnout mechanism.  Great.  One turnout sacrificed.  Second attempt worked great and it was on to the test bed.  In order to mark the hole to be drilled, I cut the head off a push pin and ran it through the small hole.  This way, when I pulled the turnout off the layout, I still had something to show me where to drill.  Then, I just marked a circle around it with a Sharpie:

I pretty much knew better than to take the power drill to the cork and foam bed.  I used a 1/4" bit and just spun it in my fingers to get through those two layers.  Once I had the hole through the cork and foam, I used the drill to go through the 1/2" plywood base.  I used the included double stick tape on the bracket and lined everything up.  Once that was done, I still had about 5 - 10 minutes of fine tuning to get the throw distances correct.  Overall.  I think this is going to be an excellent system and it will look much more realistic than those damn chunky surface motors.  The Bi-Color LED lights on the fascia controller are really cool!  Red shows the "route" closed and green shows the route open.  Here's a not so great quality video but it still gives a good idea on how everything works:

Thanks to all for the great encouragement I've been getting.  I recently discovered the N Scale Model Trains group over on Facebook and have had some great suggestions.  I just added a Follow Me by Email link to the Blog.  If you like what you see, and want to see future updates, go ahead and add your email address.

One last detail I just remembered - if I ever decide to get really advanced, the Octopus III is adaptable with a DCC decoder.  Not sure I'm up to running DCC turnout control - but the option is there.