Stay Alives/ Powerpacks - mixing makes

[Too Tall]

To me they would appear they should all be much of a muchness in terms of suitability (performance obviously a different kettle of fish) .. they are all basically capacitors and some circuitry.

So aside from manufacturers just covering their rears, is there a legitimate reason why you can not connect any stay alive designed for DCC to any chip designed to take one ?

I asked the makers if the Zen DCC decoder could use the Hornby capacitor, and the answer was "We don't know if the Hornby stay alive is just a capacitor bank, or if it includes a charge control circuit, so cannot confirm if it will work with our decoder"

And a further line to say warranty invalidated if not using their stay alive.

Surely all comercially available Powerpack/stay alives have a charge circuit ?

[SteveM6]

As far as the HM7K powerbanks are concerned, I believe that they share some of their circuitry with the TXS decoders themselves. Having said that, I have hardwired a couple of them to TTS decoders without everything going ‘pop’ but I would be very wary of mixing with other makes of decoder.

I stand with the manufacturer’s comment “we’ve not tested it so we can’t say one way or the other - but if it goes wrong don’t blame us.”

I have also added home made stayalives to 20+ TTS decoders without anything going wrong (apart from my hamfisted soldering on one) but wouldn’t dream of trying it on anything more expensive unless someone else had prototyped and tested it first.

[Too Tall]

The problem is limited space and a 6 pin decoder, The Zen ones pcb for the powerpack is arbout 3x the size of the decoder, and the other make I can find matching sets for are Laisdcc, which have a 50/50 user satisfaction ... I actually got one to try but mine seems to stutter at low speed before I have added the stay alive (thought it best to test before I changed anything).

To be fair the seller has been fast to respond and I will see if the second decoder exhibits the same issue.

[Too Tall]

Nope, for whatever reason those Laisdcc decoders don't like slow speeds with my TT class 08.

Back to the drawing board !