I have been working on customizing an Arsito RS3 and after inquiring about a Revo system for it I went and bought one to turn it into a battery powered unit.

It seems pretty simple under the hood with 4 wires to each truck and I think if I unplug the track pickup wires and plug the wires that go back to the motors into the revo board I should be fine. OR do I even need to unplug the pickups if I am bypassing everything with the battery?

I have looked on Greg E’s site and he made a scary statement that the colour coding might mean nothing due to the Aristo questionable manufacturing practices. Maybe I should just trace the wires and not trust a diagram?

My RS3 has a motor switch, a smoke switch and lights. It does not have a battery/ track switch.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to a wiring diagram or do I even need one?

Because you don’t have the track/battery switch it is an early version RS3. If I were you I would trace out the truck wires, clip the power pick-ups to keep from back feeding your track and then wire the motors directly to your Revo. It should be pretty easy to trace out the lighting wires which would also go to your Revo board. The smoke I would just leave disconnected. OR, if you want simplicity (but no light control from the Revo) Leave the motors and lights wired as-is and just clip the pick-up wires, Then feed the pick-up wires going to the circuit board with the Revo Motor output. Lights would operate like they do on track power. Not the preferred method.

Thanks Daktah for the info.

I bought the setup from Don at RCS and he sent me an email with tips and links that I didn’t see until after I made this inquiry about the wiring diagram.

It is all coming together now.

Incandescent bulbs are too much drain on batteries, however LEDs work fine. See Greg’s site for tips that work or ask Don. Being polarity sensitive it’s fairly easy to make them directional…

That’s as much as I can say.

John

What is the current rating of the aux outputs. I understand that a board is used for high current smoke units, but what is the current rating of these for lights. If 10ma then only 1 led can be used per output. I did notice that current limiting resistors are used for bulbs on the headlights.

I ask this as the manual implies that a function can be used for marker lights and I do not want Todd to have a problem that is easily fixed due to current limitations.

I was under the impression that the outputs were good for about 10 ma… I have never seen the spec published.

Dave Bodnar has done some testing, but I’m pretty sure you cannot use a 100ma incandescent bulb.

The function “outputs” were meant to be triggers to sound cards.

Greg

Hi Guys, I have been using Dallee and Evans LEDs that draw 20ma with the Revo. In some older locos the Revo works fine with 18v bulbs. Remember the headlights are connected to the adapter board which passes battery/track voltage.

Today after talking to Stan Ames, I discovered we can trigger the Bachmann smoke unit on/off from trigger number 6. I can confirm, inside the boiler of the K-27 and C-19 there is a smoke control board. Slide the smoke switch to DCC and you can turn the smoke on/off from the Revo transmitter. Solder the brown wire, which is trigger 6 to the Bachmann solder pad label smoke. I need to confirm if the other Spectrum locos with the DCC socket will do this. Stan believes the Revo will trigger the other lights when connected to the Bachmann socket.

Back to more testing. Don

Great info Don, thank you for this.