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Tam Valley Depot Singlet Servo Decoder PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 20 July 2010 15:33
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Tam Valley Singlet Servo Decoder
Over on the Railwire Lee Weldon started a thread in the DCC forum with a link to Tam Valley Depot and their Singlet Servo Accessory Decoder. Duncan makes a decoder that powers servos to move turnouts, crossing gates, and just about anything else you want to make move. What made these interesting was how quiet they were, and even more so their price. At $20 each you get the servo AND the decoder. Hell compared to the about $36 for Tortoise and respective decoder thats a pretty damn good deal. Even more of a deal was that if you buy 10+ the price drops to $16 each. Heck, they even work on straight DC too for the non DCC users.

 

Checking out some of the videos that Duncan and others has posted on YouTube of the Singlet in action I decided to pick up a couple to test on the layout. I also purchased a mount ($2.50 ea) for the servos just to make hooking them up easier.

The package arrived from CA in about a week and I quickly got down to opening the package to look at the contents. The Singlet package contains the servo, decoder and wire to throw the switch. The servos were much smaller than I thought which was a plus as the majority of my layout is 2" foam with 1x4" every 4' as cross members for support, which gave me some concerns on using Tortoise machines. The very light and small servos will not cause me any worry in their own weight pulling them down.

 

Bell crank setup
The instruction manual is a 4 page document that explains in detail the installation and set up of the decoders. The servos just press fit into the mounts, and hold pretty tight. I decided to go with the crank method of throwing my turnouts so I bought some K&S 1/16 brass tubing to run the switch rod through. I put two bends at the top of the rod to crate a hook to go into the Atlas switch rod and then ran the rod down through the benchwork in the brass tubing. The brass tubing goes through the foam and the servo mount. From there the rod comes out of the tube and two bends form a crank and the rod then goes through the arm of the servo.

 

Straight out of the box the decoder, which also acts as the control panel, is set to address 1 and the servo speed is set to 5 (out of a 1-40 range). Per the instructions I set the jumper switch to pins 12 to have the decoder automatically find the throw range for the arm. Once the throw range is found, the LEDs stop flashing and you set the jumper to pins 23. Don't forget to move the jumper as I forgot at first and every time the layout powers up the decoder will search for the point throw!

You can throw the switch using the press buttons on the decoder or via the switch command on your DCC system. I found that the 5 speed setting gave a realistic handthrown speed to the points, but I may end up slowing it down to 3 just to see how that looks.I mayalso change the rod to a smaller size.

The decoder board includes 2 pinouts for hook up of a SPST normally ON momentary switch so that you can throw the switch as well. For my local control panels I plan on using this option as well as replacing the large yellow LEDS with panel mounted small bi-color LEDs.

Overall I am very impressed with the Tam Valley servo decoders. At $20 each or $16ea in 10+ packs they are a hell of a deal. The price point has made the decision for me on installing machines on every switch on the layout where I had origionally planned only to power the mainline switches. The ability to automate several other things such as crossing gates, industry gates, warehouse doors and derails makes these decoders a useful tool for our layouts.

Video of them in action:

Tam Valley Depot
4541 Hidalgo Ave
San Diego, CA 92117
Website: www.tamvelleydepot.com
Email: Dr. Duncan McRee

Rating (out of 10): 10
Purchase?: thumbup
MSRP: $19.95ea - $15.95 10+
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