As the title said, I'm due for something dumb to take up my time and patience. Currently it's this 1980s/90s vintage traffic signal cabinet which I'm working on getting wired up to run a few signals in the back yard. Currently I've got most of the components in however the main power is being a bit of a PITA. It may be the controller that is bad (got it for free from a signal shop who didn't know if it worked) or something in the panel itself. We shall see. Currently waiting on a couple more parts that will help me determine for sure.

Jeebus! When I had to put an intersection on flash or just red all around, there was nothing like that inside. One black box the size of a large lunch box.

On-normal operation
Off-4 way red flashing
Flashing-The main road would go to flashing yellow and the cross to red flashing


And maybe a laptop if the dot guys were playing with the lights and times...

Holy Analog Nightmare, Batman!

I hope you have access to a manual.

You Sir have patience and skill (or optimism) that is foreign to me.

And all done with a Raspberry Pi and a relay board nowadays.

Good luck with the project.

Neat project! I'm a controls geek and I love to tinker with old school stuff like that.

What's with the poop on the floor in there? Looks like somebody needs to chew their corn more thoroughly.

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Originally posted by Dan the man:
Neat project! I'm a controls geek and I love to tinker with old school stuff like that.

What's with the poop on the floor in there? Looks like somebody needs to chew their corn more thoroughly.

Hah, it's dirt showing through the conduit holes.

And most of the newer cabinets don't look much different than this. The controllers just look more modern.

The Perot sticker really sets it off.

Cool project, but this line grabbed my attention....

quote:

...I'm working on getting wired up to run a few signals in the back yard.

quote:

Originally posted by mbinky:
Cool project, but this line grabbed my attention....

quote:

...I'm working on getting wired up to run a few signals in the back yard.

Go on

Well, uh, it's just there ain't no traffic back there.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Well, uh, it's just there ain't no traffic back there.

You don't know!


Haha

True, true. Anything's possible.

I hope it's set up as a toll road so you can recoup some of your costs.

Trust me I wish. It butts up against a golf course so there would certainly be money to be made. I've contemplated setting up some sort of used golf ball vending machine to sell balls back to the golfers. I get a couple hundred a year.

Years ago a friend gave me an old traffic signal light that had been replaced with newer units. It was a bit rough, but I restored it to it's natural beauty and hung it in my workshop.

I found a guy on ebay that builds and sells controllers for these old traffic lights, and installed one. It works perfectly, and I can control the timing etc. of the lights.


Good luck with your project. That would be waaaaay above my head on repairing.

That what I love about SF. No matter how obscure your interest or hobby may be, someone on here is in it with you. And often way deeper into it that you are, thereby causing you to dive even deeper.

Last time I actually worked a traffic post, the box had the old rotary timer that had a few circuit's that would switch the lights. About as intricate as a home light timer.

It had a cord with the manual bottom that out Chief has shortened so we couldn't sit in the car and operate it during inclement weather. Apparently it worked better if you stood outside in the cold rain. We kept adding cord on and he took it off. It was a game.

Make a nice rack for a ham repeater.

Now you know why they invented PLCs.

quote:

Originally posted by ryan81986:
Trust me I wish. It butts up against a golf course so there would certainly be money to be made. I've contemplated setting up some sort of used golf ball vending machine to sell balls back to the golfers. I get a couple hundred a year.

As kids we used to sit by the tee box with a cooler (beer on the bottom) with cokes and golf balls in a bag for a 50 cents....we got the balls from the pond in front of the tee box in the evenings.

We made plenty of money, and my dad was constantly replacing the beer for us...we used the money for gas for our three wheeler

quote:

Originally posted by rscalzo:
Last time I actually worked a traffic post, the box had the old rotary timer that had a few circuit's that would switch the lights. About as intricate as a home light timer.

One of these?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiFslP2bLnk