DCS is a system for controlling your entire layout — multiple sound-equipped engines, switches, and accessories — from one or more smart devices with the DCS App installed. DCS is compatible with all M.T.H. Proto-Sound 2.0- or 3.0- equipped locomotives. In O gauge, it is also compatible with locomotives equipped with Lionel® TMCC® and Legacy™, as well as conventional AC-powered engines.
The full DCS Digital Command System is an all-encompasing network of components that brings true interactive wireless control to a model railroad. Users utilize their own smart device — iOS or Android — and an intutive app to run multiple tracks, hundreds of trains and control switches and accessories. Bi-directional communication between locomotives and the system’s WTIU WiFi Track Interface Unit makes adding and programming locomotives simple and easy. No more ID numbers to remember and no complex icons to decipher. It’s fast, it’s easy and it’s fun!
The AIU Accessory Interface Unit is essential a box containing a bunch of relays that are triggered from either a DCS Remote Handheld or a iOS or Android smart device loaded with the DCS App. The AIU is connected to either the DCS TIU Track Interface Unit or WTIU WiFi Track Interface Unit and is used to operate track switches, lights, accessories and more. Essentially any model railroad component that can be controlled with a physical switch can be controlled with an AIU.
Accessories and switches are wired into the AIU in the same manner that they are connected to a physical switch. The AIU Operator's Manual details all the common accessory and switch hookup combinations. You'll have a layout wired in no time.
WHAT IS COMMAND CONTROL?
In conventional model train operation, an AC or DC transformer varies track voltage to adjust engine speed and direction. Command systems such as DCS, however, put a constant voltage on the track (around 18 volts for DCS) and vary speed by telling each engine how much of that voltage to use.
Unlike conventional control, command control allows different engines to do different things, even when they are on the same track — like run at different speeds, go in different directions, or make different sounds. You can even combine several engines into a “lashup,” working together under a single throttle.
How it works: In the DCS system, commands such as speed, direction, and sound control are sent as radio signals from a smart device or handheld controller to a receiver, which translates those radio signals into digital information. That digital signal is sent through the rails and picked up only by the appropriate engine — telling it to go, for example, 37 miles per hour, blow the whistle, or smoke more heavily.
SIMPLE, EASY SETUP!
The DCS System is simple to hook up. You’ll have trains running in just minutes using the handheld or the App!
Each AIU can handle up to 10 switches and 10 accessories. You can even configure the accessory inputs into switch inputs to allow up to 14 switches to be controlled by a single AIU. AIU's are connected to a TIU or a WTIU by the included special 6 pin harness cable and up to five AIUs can be daisy chained together and plugged into a single TIU or WTIU giving you control of up to 75 switches or 50 accessories for each TIU or WTIU.
