Stay Alive and QSI


siderod

Member
I've got a P2K Heritage 0-6-0 steamer that has a factory installed QSI sound decoder and an upgrade chip installed. While I love running this little critter it has a tendency to stall over turnout frogs and crossings. Now that TCS has two different styles of Stay Alive's I'm tempted to screw up my courage and install one. While I'm no electronic guru I do seem to have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. The board has two electro cap's soldered to it side by side. I'm going to assume for a moment that to wire the Stay Alive I would merely replace the electro cap with the Stay Alive + to + and - to - . If that sounds fair enough my next question is would I replace just one of the caps of both and keep all the wiring + to + and - to -?
Any and all comments and/or suggestions would be appreciated immensely.

Siderod
 
The smartest thing you can do is go to the website of whoever manufacturers the keep alive board you want to use and download the manual for it. That manual will tell you exactly how it installs. If you choose to wing it, you risk letting the factory installed smoke out of the board(s). If you let the factory installed smoke out it won't work anymore. I know this because I've looked at these boards up close and there are no little chimneys on any of the components. This means the smoke is not supposed to get out! ;)
 
The main difficulty you're probably going to be faced with is finding space for it. If the QSI board has caps on it already, then they are obviously not being used to store short term current for stay alive purposes. Trying to replace/combine them with the ones on the stay alive is probably incompatible with their original circuitry purpose.
 
Last edited:



Back
Top