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 all-new WTIU combines a wifi module and a track interface unit into one unit. Featuring four channels, the new WTIU can now control conventional DC locomotives by varying DC power to the track, allowing the user to control command and non-command equipped locomotives on the same track at the same time. The WTIU sets up in seconds and doesn’t require a home WiFi system to operate. It can control accessories and switches when connected to the separately sold AIU Accessory Interface Unit and can receive commands from an unlimited number of smart devices.
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 WTIU Fixed Input Channel can handle either AC or DC power. You can even mix and run one channel with DC power and the other with AC. This makes it easy to run M.T.H. HO Proto-Sound 3.0 equipped trains using the same WTIU you use to run all other M.T.H. Proto-Sound 2.0 or later locomotives.
Each WTIU Variable Input Channels accept AC or DC power from virtually all AC or DC power supplies, including all M.T.H. AC transformers like the Z-4000, Z-1000, Z-750 and Z-500.
Once you’ve got power into the TIU, run the outbound channels directly to the track or to a terminal block for larger layouts. We recommend wiring the channels to the track in 15’ sections to best distribute power and the DCS digital signal. Full details are explained in the DCS User Guide.