Question about tomix sensors

[Yavianice]

As I am preparing to make the plunge with TNOS, one thing that confuses me are the many different sensors Tomix has to offer and recommends with TNOS. I am not familiar with finetrack. Can someone help me with these questions?

 

-  Tomix sells different sensors, such as Tomix 5559, 5573, 5567, 5558. But I am unsure why there are so many. Is it better to use one sensor or the other, or does it not matter and is it purely something cosmetic?

 

- Tomix 5567 seems like it is a part that you affix to Tomix finetrack somehow. But how do you attach it to the track? Do you just place it on top? If anyone has pictures that will be very helpful.

thanks!

 

[brill27mcb]

10 hours ago, Yavianice said:

As I am preparing to make the plunge with TNOS, one thing that confuses me are the many different sensors Tomix has to offer and recommends with TNOS. I am not familiar with finetrack. Can someone help me with these questions?

 

-  Tomix sells different sensors, such as Tomix 5559, 5573, 5567, 5558. But I am unsure why there are so many. Is it better to use one sensor or the other, or does it not matter and is it purely something cosmetic?

 

- Tomix 5567 seems like it is a part that you affix to Tomix finetrack somehow. But how do you attach it to the track? Do you just place it on top? If anyone has pictures that will be very helpful.

thanks!

 

 

The Tomix 5559 has a sensor permanently built into a 70mm long straight. with a side box attached to the roadbed. A bit clunky...

 

The Tomix 5573 is the same thing, with concrete sleepers while the 5559 represents wooden sleepers.

 

The Tomix 5567 is an unmounted sensor. Many pieces of Wide Rail track (with the wide ballast base), straight and curved, have an area between the rails that can be cut out to insert the sensor. The cut-out is scored  on the underside. If you do it right, the sensor unit will snap in at the correct height.

 

The Tomix 5558 is a self-contained sensor. It can slide into almost all Tomix track pieces (except very short pieces and track switches) from the side, where the track power feed normally goes. That makes it very flexible to locate.

 

There is also the Tomix 5568 for Wide Tram paved track, mounted in a 37mm straight. It is the most well-hidden of them all - if you have street trackage.

 

They all perform the same function. Hope this helps!

 

Rich K.

[Yavianice]

Amazing, thanks!

 

Just yesterday, youtuber Shigemon posted a video about TOMIX sensors, and also showing how to modify TOMIX wide rail to have the sensor in it (at 4:35 in the video below). And I discovered that some pieces of WIDE track already come with a removable piece of ballast that perfectly fits the sensor. (specifically, only, # 1761 wide PC rail S140-WP (F) and # 1047 slab rail S140-SL (F)).

 

Why TOMIX did not make this removable piece in all tracks wide is a complete mystery for me.

 

 

This also makes me think it might be easy to modify KATO unitrack to have a hole that fits this sensor. KATO Unitrack has almost the same dimension "line" on the bottom. When I get the sensors, I will of course sacrifice a KATO track piece to try it out. Because that might be a gamechanger.

 

 

[Kiran]

I am wondering if the this sensor track can be hooked up to something like the NCE Auxiliary Input Unit (AIU01). I think I have a couple of these lying around somewhere.

[bill937ca]

There is always the Kato 20-045 conversion piece that could be placed on either side of Tomix track section.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10003037

[Kiran]

17 hours ago, bill937ca said:

There is always the Kato 20-045 conversion piece that could be placed on either side of Tomix track section.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10003037

Those pieces are very handy. I have quite a bit of Tomix track left over after switching to Unitrak and I can use them on my temporary layout for storing trains.

 

If there is a way to use these sensor tracks with something like NCE AIU or even Arduino, they could be easier than using current based detection on DCC.

[Madsing]

You will find a description of the Tomix sensor tracks here: http://rtmrw.parallel.jp/laboratory4/lab-report-86/lab-86.html#

It's made of a switch driving two optocouplers. These optocouplers will make contact between either pin #1 or pin #3 (one for each direction) and GND on pin #2 of the connector. This can easily be detected by an Arduino.

 

[brill27mcb]

I guess they have no de-bouncing function within them, to clean up the intermittent wheel contact, or does the optocoupler do that?

 

Rich K.

[Kiran]

On 4/20/2020 at 5:57 PM, Madsing said:

You will find a description of the Tomix sensor tracks here: http://rtmrw.parallel.jp/laboratory4/lab-report-86/lab-86.html#

It's made of a switch driving two optocouplers. These optocouplers will make contact between either pin #1 or pin #3 (one for each direction) and GND on pin #2 of the connector. This can easily be detected by an Arduino.

 

Thank you. This is very helpful as I start to look at the Arduino. Do you know if the Kato sensor tracks part of the automatic crossing gate have similar outputs that can be used?

[Madsing]

On 4/23/2020 at 7:53 AM, brill27mcb said:

I guess they have no de-bouncing function within them, to clean up the intermittent wheel contact, or does the optocoupler do that?

Correct. I don’t see any de-bouncing. Optocouplers are rather slow devices (their switching time may be a few microseconds), they will clean up the signal a bit but not much. I guess it’s the receiving device that will de-bounce the signal. 

[Madsing]

On 4/27/2020 at 11:11 PM, Kiran said:

Do you know if the Kato sensor tracks part of the automatic crossing gate have similar outputs that can be used?

Sorry, I don’t know. I have never used Kato tracks. 

[brill27mcb]

On 4/28/2020 at 7:55 PM, Madsing said:

Sorry, I don’t know. I have never used Kato tracks. 

 

I don't know about the Kato crossing gate sensors either. It's an interesting question, especially since I do have a used Kato 2-track crossing gate setup that my son brought back from Japan for me, and it has one bad sensor out of the four.

 

Rich K.

[Tyraforce]

Has anyone tried using third party sensors with Tomix Tnos?

These guys managed to replace the Kato level crossing sensors. It SHOULD work with tomix, right?

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Tyraforce

[Yavianice]

Maybe, but why would you want to do that? The KATO Infrared sensors are much more expensive and harder to come by than the TOMIX sensors, and you can easily place the TOMIX sensors in KATO track by cutting a hole in them.