New Digitrax Zephyr model

[David]

It's being called the Zephyr Xtra, and it's $25 extra (for the moment it doesn't seem like a replacement).

 

http://www.digitrax.com/prd_zep_xtra.php

 

The changes don't seem to be very deep - it's 3 amps instead of 2.5 (and 13V instead of 12V), and can now reach up to function 28. It also has a recall and mute feature. Word says it can also program sound decoders like a PR3 (those requiring extra power).

 

At first I was a little disappointed, as I want to get into DCC but all the DCC systems seem to be backwards and expensive. The Zephyr is in many ways an ideal system for Japanese N scale, with the lower amp range and ability to use jump ports, but the poor interface (LCD screens are not expensive these days, and would it kill you to have a PR3 style USB connection) really lets it down. It seemed like this upgrade was little more then Digitrax using a bigger wallwart and making minor firmware changes - given "the economy" this kind of adjustment in place of a tooling a new product is becoming common (see people's complaints about Atlas not releasing a new N scale tooling in 2 years - everything is just a repaint).

 

But then I looked at it - it is almost the same thing, but it now has an extra row of keys (4 buttons in all, 2 for the extra function access, plus mute and recall). That means the casing and circuit board have been retooled - so why couldn't Digitrax have actually upgraded things to this decade? I'm seriously beginning to think that either Digitrax doesn't know about technology (stuck in some 1970s workshop with old Radioshack stock), or they just don't want their customers to know it can be done. Look at the so-called "Utility" throttle, a so-called budget throttle that costs $129, has no display of any kind, and is seems to be just a $0.50 PIC controller in an ugly plastic case. Even at the street price of $79 it still pales in comparison to say, the $79 (MSRP) Zune 4 (released 3 years ago) which has a color screen, battery, Wifi wireless, a processor several hundred times more power (it can play back video) and 4GB of storage. I realise the Zune has lower margins, and higher volume production, but it still boggles the mind just how big a gap there is. Is anyone in the NA train industry aware that there are newer processors then the PIC, that are just as cheap but capable of doing so much more (I can literally buy 32bit ARM Cortex processors in quantities of 10 for under $2 a piece).

[westfalen]

I see you can now have 20 active addresses instead of 10.

 

Several of our club members have, or are getting, Zephyrs, they are a good starter set.

 

The thing I haven't forgiven Digitrax for is discontinuing the DT300 throttle.

[CaptOblivious]

Nitpick: My Zephyr puts out 14V, not 12…

 

But I think you've really hit the nail on the head, David. The case is a standard project box readily available cheaply from a number of suppliers. It is very disappointing to see them put no effort into design. That said, having looked into this myself, fancy custom-made enclosures can be very expensive, unless made in very very large quantities!

 

Having now designed my own booster, looked at various command station designs, and had a look inside Ken's Digitrax boosters, I can say that the difference between Digitrax products at various price points is pretty much all in the firmware, and the mark-up for nearly all of them is quite steep.

 

That said, I think the Zephyr remains a good value, and an excellent entry-level choice, but people who buy it should feel in no way constrained to remain within the Digitrax walled garden, rather branching out once they've outgrown the Zephyr. 'Cause that's all this product is: Your first cheap hit of a very expensive drug!

[railzilla]

I have the Digitrax Zephyr and it is enough for my needs. Biggest plus are the jump ports which allows you to use two analog controllers as a digital throttles. The UT4 does its job although it is quite ugly but most of the time i just turn the knob so appearance is not so important. For me it seems that Digitrax has almost ceased its development. The Loconet is IMHO the best Bus for DCC and Digitrax offers are very economical.

If teh new set can handle 20 locomotives at the same it will be enough for most of us, maybe another booster will be needed. BTW teh voltage can be set with the input voltage of the zephyr.

I agree the could do much better if the use a modern HMI instead of the 80s style one. Some European manufacturers have very nice equipment but at very high cost. At the end the solution will be to use a PC interface and use consumer electronics to control the model railroad. Why use an expensive single expensive purpose device when a tablet pc or smartphone wil do the trick to? JMRI works very well with Digitrax and Loconet.

[David]

I see you can now have 20 active addresses instead of 10.

 

Several of our club members have, or are getting, Zephyrs, they are a good starter set.

 

The thing I haven't forgiven Digitrax for is discontinuing the DT300 throttle.

 

Odd, you're right. I had been under the impression it was 20 all along, perhaps that is only with a booster. Then again I find low end limitations on the number of active addresses entirely artificial in order to justify the higher price of the next up systems (or are they really using PIC controllers with just bytes of ram?).

 

And of course they needed to get rid of the DT300 - the features and price point clearly ate into the sales of more expensive models, while blocking the introduction of a "bargain" model that wouldn't really be a bargain.

[railzilla]

David, only the central can set the number of slots and in a DCC system there can only be one central unit, adding boosters has no effect on the number of slots. A Empire Builder has 22 slots and a Chief 120. However it is possible to run a Zephyr just as a booster and/or throttle. For N Gauge the Zephyr has a good short circuit protection. With stronger boosters an additional short circuit protection is needed. If i would be the new Zephyr i have two 2.5A outputs, two throttles, four jump ports.

[KenS]

The Zephyr is a good DCC command station.  Not a great one perhaps, but a good one.  I've had one for about eight years. And this change addressed its single largest problem (in my eyes); the artificial limit to 10 "slots" for active trains.  With modern motors, a 3-Amp station can easily run 20 locomotives, and could probably run 20 trains with LED-based passenger car lighting. And three amps is a good size for sectional track (Kato Unitrack is rated for 3 amps max, for example). That limit of 10 trains always struck me as a way to force clubs to step up to one of their more expensive systems. That said, I'm disappointed by how little they've done.

 

BTW, I'm not sure it's any different from the DCS50 (old Zephyr) in terms of power.  That too had a "3 amp" input.  It just had a 2.5 amp circuit breaker. The DCS51 doesn't say anywhere I can find what the output current limit is.

 

It's also nice that they've added more function support, making it a better choice for use with sound decoders. And the "speed limit" feature should be nice for anyone using DCC with kids, although it doesn't work with hand-held or jump throttles, which removes much of its potential value.

 

Something else that I think is new is that if you set up a second Zephyr as a booster, it also can act as a throttle.  I think with the DCS50, if you configured it as a booster, the throttle part became inactive (although I never tried it).

 

Digitrax's real value is LocoNet, and you can't really exploit that in an entry-level system.  It takes a major layout, with occupancy detection, signaling, and a computer, to really see how useful it is.

 

Where Digitrax has always fallen short is the user interface.  You don't get any kind of display even with their expensive command stations; it's all in the throttle, and even their most expensive 400-series throttles have a pretty minimal LCD. You can add one of those to a Zephyr of course (I did), but they cost more than the Zephyr itself (well, almost: $185 MSRP vs $199).  The Zephyr is their place to hook new users who want to grow into a larger system, but need a simple one to start.  And for that purpose, it's surprisingly lacking in features I'd expect for that market segment: no display, no computer interface or software. The Jump Ports and other features were nice ten years ago, but I agree that they don't seem to have moved forwards much at all.

 

Part of the problem here is volume.  There just isn't enough interest in DCC to sell a lot of them; few entry-level sets are DCC, and those that are probably go to packaged train+controller systems. Digitrax has always targeted the "serious" model railroader (clubs, mostly). And there isn't much volume there. Companies have overhead beyond their development and manufacturing costs, and without volume prices will be higher to cover that. To stay competitive they're probably limited in how much hardware cost can go into the systems and still keep the total cost at an acceptable point. It seems like with the Zephyr they're trying to break out of that self-imposed niche, but are still working with the volume limitation on what they can afford to do.

 

But that still doesn't explain their lack of sophistication in things like computer controls.  Even if they can't afford to make an entry-level computer-based control program, charging $85 for the PR3 interface, rather than putting a USB port on the Zephr, makes little sense in today's world, where there are several computer programs out there that interface to Digitrax via USB-LocoNet interfaces.  You'd think they'd be talking those up as a selling point, and maybe even bundling a freeware program with the Zephyr. Instead they're ignoring the whole concept.

 

And at the same time, they've raised the MSRP from $199 (with power supply) to $225.  This feels a lot like they needed to raise the price to cover cost increases, and didn't want to add any new hardware, but needed some excuse for the change so they made a few software tweaks.

 

BTW, the manual says that the max voltage on the track is related to the input power supply voltage (0.5V less), and that's why the input is limited to 16.9 volts ("to protect the layout"). My Zephyr with the standard wall-wart puts out 13.9V DCC (per an RRampMeter), which is close to the nominal "14 Volt" value used for HO DCC (it's not a "standard", just a convention, though widely quoted as a standard) but someone using a different supply voltage would see a different track voltage.

[Martijn Meerts]

I see they haven't hired any new people in the product design department =)

[westfalen]

Just a bit of trivia. As I think I recently mentioned somewhere else, you can take the handles off a Zephyr and put them on a Kato 22-012 DC controller and not notice the difference.

[David]

Just a bit of trivia. As I think I recently mentioned somewhere else, you can take the handles off a Zephyr and put them on a Kato 22-012 DC controller and not notice the difference.

 

I doubt that without Kato the Zephyr would have ever been conceived, and Digitrax would happily continue to tell people all PIC controlled fuses in a box start at $400. Kato wanted DCC in Japan to give themselves an edge, and there was just no way such an expensive system would get off the ground given how little need the Japanese had for controlling two trains on the same track.

 

The Zephyr is ultimately the fruit of a build to order contract between Kato and Digitrax - in Japan it's called the D101 (Kato 29-119), where the only difference besides the wall wart and manual is that the face plate is Japanese (with a Kato logo), and there are Kato plug adapters on the back instead of bare terminals. The fact that it's almost an exact copy of Kato's blue controller, just with DCC packed in, is not a coincidence. The same agreement produced the 3 "Kato" DCC decoders, which are basically just another lightboard replacement board from Digitrax, just in a very atypical configuration. We should feel lucky Digitrax decided to release the design outside of Japan, they could have decided it was too much of a threat to their more expensive offerings, and I'm sure the contract includes a clause that prevents Kato from selling the D101 version outside of the Japanese market.

[The_Ghan]

Ken,

 

I don't think you can run 20 trains on a DSC-51.  Digitrax estimate around 350mA per N-scale train.  FYI: http://tsd.digitrax.com/index.php?a=1126 ... on a 3A setup I wouldn't run more than 8 trains ... that's allowing 375mA per train.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[David]

Ken,

 

I don't think you can run 20 trains on a DSC-51.  Digitrax estimate around 350mA per N-scale train.  FYI: http://tsd.digitrax.com/index.php?a=1126 ... on a 3A setup I wouldn't run more than 8 trains ... that's allowing 375mA per train.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

 

Those are Digitrax's numbers though - not only is it in their best interest for you to buy a bigger ($$$) booster, they're likely based on the worst case scenario - running 70s era model trains with chunky power hungry motors and bulb lighting. While there are some old Japanese trains like that (my own Hankyu set follows this pattern due to its ancient tooling), most Japanese train models, designed to use small easily hidden motors, are far more efficient. I think some measurements around here where showing what - something like 100mA for a modern LED equiped EMU? What I'm saying is those numbers are based on running one of those old trains that requires you to turn the DC throttle past 50% just to get it started, not todays trains.

[Martijn Meerts]

According to the ECoS power usage graph, the Kato 800 series uses less than 100mA when running with interior light in all 6 cars. Of course, that's on level track, trains tend to require a bit more power when going uphill or even downhill (decoder needs to work harder to keep the train running at an even speed.)

[KenS]

I did some testing on an Kato E231 with an EM13 motor decoder, two FL11 cab light decoders and non-DCC LED lighting in all cars.  A six-car train peaked at 70 mA, and usually drew around 50 mA in motion (steady-state current draw, which is all I can measure, depends on motor speed). A parked 10-car train drew around 30 mA (I didn't try that test in motion). All measurements per my RRampMeter, which only reports in 10 mA increments, and is reportedly less precise at low loads.

 

Older trains may well draw more, and stall current is much higher.  But Kato at least has gotten very efficient.

 

You still need to size decoders for "stall current" (which was ~240 mA on the train in question), as that's what the motor draws very briefly at startup, and for longer periods if the train hits an obstacle.  But normal operation isn't anywhere near stall current.

 

I have a new RRampMeter I'm going to incorporate into my layout's power management board, and with that I'll have measurements for running trains of full size, but it may take a couple of weeks before I get to that project.

[The_Ghan]

Hey Ken,

 

I'd like to see some results of that testing when you incorporate the RRampmeter into the layout.

 

Meanwhile, I guess I'll be fine with my 20A power supply ... 

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[inobu]

It is their customer base. Half of their modeling customers have a 70's mentality while the other half thinks Digitrax is too complicated. I have been on a few train forums and just think wow! These people are really entrenched in their ways. Some are just content with status quot.

 

Just as someone pointed out xtra is a chipset, firmware and power rating upgrade. In any case I would recommend it as a starter set. One can take to the next level with JMRI. When you start running 20 units you need a faster and clearer interface to manage your activities. You need a computer interface. The little black buttons and calculator display with a upside down 4 indicating a h can't cut it. It is 2010!!!!

 

Inobu