replacement led bulbs and ERR boards

You need a small capacitor across the light wires to trigger the cruise commander triac

You also need polarity correct, TMCC outputs only half sine wave not full like track.  And it is the negative half for C08 and up.  Which means Ground is high voltage.  G

Rogerdodger posted:

You need a small capacitor across the light wires to trigger the cruise commander triac

The ERR products include the capacitor on-board, you don't need to add them.  If you add LED lighting to a factory TMCC installation, then the .01uf caps are required to trigger the triac. 

See the graphic below, the row of capacitors are connected across the lighting and smoke outputs.

My understanding of the electronics is rusty at best so please forgive the dumb questions but If ground is High then does that mean I would connect the ground wire from the bulb to the hot pins on the cruise commander and the hot wire to ground?  This is a bit confusing because the bulbs have a rectifier and resistor built in shouldn't it work the same as a regular incandescent regardless of polarity?

It simply means that if you are connecting a polarity sensitive light (plain LED) to the lighting outputs, the positive lead would go to frame ground and the negative lead to the switched light output of the Cruise Commander.

If the bulbs have a bridge rectifier, polarity won't matter.  However, if it's just a diode and resistor, then you need to heed the above polarity connections.

GRJ     If the bulbs have a bridge rectifier, polarity won't matter.  However, if it's just a diode and resistor, then you need to heed the above polarity connections.

I did not think of that, Town and country hobbies does not specify what is in there bulbs so they may only be a diode and resistor I will have to investigate. Thank you for clearing that up That will solve several of my lighting problems.

Again Thanks 

Gary 

old_toymaker posted:

I've searched the forum and can't seem to find an answer. I replaced all the incandescent bulbs in my passenger cars with replacement led bulbs from Town and Country hobbies and they work great and easy to change but when I put them in my engines equipped with a cruise commander board they only blink once when power is applied and then go out and stay out. They are the 1445WW bayonet base bulbs. When I put the incandescent bulbs back in they work fine.

how long did you buy the kit??? Does your board have the Caps "gun runner" was showing above??? there was a small batch that got out that may not have the caps on them during the transition. Also even with the caps with on the board i still some times have a hard time getting Leds to light. Some of the triac  on the R4lc can fall off spec and require a little more current to trigger correctly. let me know 

I had one Cruise Commander where the smoke output didn't always come on as there was a diode before the smoke element (my smoke intensity adjustment board).  I changed the cap from a .01uf to a .1uf to give the smoke triac a bigger "kick", and that fixed it.

The kits are I guess new I just ordered them from 3rd rail and received them about a week ago. I installed one in a williams EP-5  and one in a williams budd car. Both are acting the same way, They work fine with incandescent bulbs but not with the led bulbs. They blink once when power is applied then go out and stay out. I will try to get some time to open them up this weekend and look at the boards. 

Thank you for the advice will let you know what I find.

Gary

Reverse the polarity of the LED's.  I'm guessing you have the positive lead of the LED going to the light output.  The positive lead has to go to frame ground, the light outputs are negative in respect to the frame.

Try firing it up without the command base connected in conventional mode.  My guess is the LED's will light as conventional mode outputs full-wave AC and polarity won't matter to the LEDs.

Said that back on 2Feb but we want to investigate the design of the LED and board  Do you really think they put a full wave bridge in an LED?  Lionel didn't. Just a single diode and 1K ohm resistor.  G

George, some of the Evan's LED's do indeed have a full wave bridge in the little "bubble" on the wires.  Since we have no information about what kind of LED we're dealing with, I mention both possibilities.  In his case, I'm pretty sure it's just a diode given the indications.