Jawbone Branch (Part 29) - One Year Vacation - April Fools!

For those wondering why I've not been publishing much on the Jawbone Branch over the last year or so, in April 2021 I injured my shoulder working on the wiring and LED lighting in my layout room.  

New lighting test photo with 50-50 mix of 4500K and 6000K LEDs - 2022-03-31, we have POWER to light it up!

So I couldn't really continue with the over-head work on the lighting or moving layout sections until the shoulder improved, which it has been for the last 8-months slowly. I had a couple of posts in process, but didn't want to post them until I had done more, which required more lighting or track wiring to be completed.  So back to work!

12V DC Power Supply for LED Lighting

So I tried a cheaper 12VDC power supply "brick" but they didn't cut it in 2021.  The one that I set up and was testing when I hurt my shoulder working over-head on the LED lighting failed by May.  So I went back to the drawing board and picked up a pair of higher power (Amp-rating) power supplies from Mouser Electronics.

Here's the info plaque on the 12V Power Supply in-box.

These power supplies have two outputs.  One is straight 12VDC and the other is designed for variable up to 12VDC with comments about "CV" (I would assume Control Variable or Control Voltage, but it's not a DCC chip, so not sure).

Power Supply - Detailed look with wiring notes.

Because I'm not really sure how that is adjusted, I'll do some testing and I have two dimmer switches, so maybe I run both colors of LEDs from the one power supply and connect each dimmer to one output.

120V Power Cable Modifications

Salvaged standard 110/120V AC Power Cable from PC computer

Because the 12VDC Power Supply doesn't have a wall-plug, I had to get a test rig set up.  I grabbed a second hand computer power cable, cutting off the computer end plug.

The plug had a ground connection to the 120V AC wall, which the 12VDC Power Supply doesn't need.  I found by testing, the yellow wire is the ground wire.  Red/Brown and Blue are the "Hot" wires for the 120V cable.

Splice connection for 120V AC cable

I made the splice by soldering the wires together and heat shrinking tube over the splices.  This is only for the testing to be sure everything works.  I'll make a 'safer' splice or maybe even a terminal box for long-term lighting of the layout.

Dimmer Switch

MicroMark LED Dimmer Switch wired for testing

I set up a test for the new power supply with the Dimmer Switch with output using 18AWG to the LED and input from the 12VDC fixed wires from power supply.

In Closing

The staging yard is blacked out in this view, in a future test I'll be rigging some LEDs under the Owenyo deck to light that as well.  In future posts I'll be showing the plugs and electrical connections between the modules, which will include staging lighting for the Mojave-Owenyo modules.

New lighting test photo with 4500K and 6000K LEDs - 2022-03-31, we have POWER to light it up!

I'll be covering the full installation of the power and wiring of the layout soon in upcoming posts.  After today's "All up test" of both sets of LEDs over Owenyo, the staging yards will need to have their own settings for close-range LED lighting.  So I'm thinking either another dimming switch for just them, or maybe dropping resistors and a simple on-off switch to cut the light down at a ratio from the main lighting.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Jawbone Branch Index Page - Links to all my blog posts on my new Jawbone Branch layout.