The green LED provides useful diagnostic information to help get DAC20 up & running. In normal use it should be constantly lit (but it will flicker a little if a DC loco is being driven on the railway at speed).
The DAC20 can drive many, but not all, point motors "as is". For those others, a small output adaptor can be constructed for which we provide a circuit diagram.
The DAC20 includes many innovative features to enhance operation of your railway that were not available in the DAC10.
MSC8 sequences can be used to create many different effects on your railway. We provide a spreadsheet (which you can get from our downloads page) that does most of the work in calculating the CVs to create a sequence. If you can't use that, this section tells you how to create one by hand.
The MSC8 Scenery animator controls 8 accessory and effect outputs. These can be used to create a range of effects. This example describes how our demonstration module is configured. It controls 8 different functions including 5 lighting effects and 3 servos.
Sequences can be used for many purposes. Here are some examples.
There is a sequence for disco lights. You could set up one cell with a coloured LED, or several cells with different coloured LEDs, that will appear to beat to the music. If you use more than one cell, use the "DCC gate" function to make them come on from the same DCC command and put a small "sequence start position" offset between them (A value of 3-5 would be OK) so they don't come on at the same time.
Radio control servos are very useful for model railway applications. They can be used for many effects including operating points, controlling semaphore signals, animating windmills and cranes - in fact just about anything that requires linear motion. They are low cost and powerful.