You can find traffic signal equipment online @ places such as govdeals.com or ebay.com Many times on govdeals though, you must go and pickup the equipment directly. However, like my setup, I just had to pull the guts out of the signal cabinet and mount it and it was ready for me to have fun (yeah, I know, i'm a traffic geek) 😂
My home cabinet is more basic than what's seen here. It has eight slots on the panel which has room for six vehicle movements, two overlaps and two ped movements. Connected to it is a six channel conflict monitor (EDI-6LE) and an Eagle EPAC M40 controller. The cabinet was originally set up for loop detection, but I removed those panels because there was no detector rack in the cabinet when I bought it. I didn't really think I'd need any kind of detection inputs if I'm running my own signal setup at home.
@@Liam_WaMost of my signals and parts come from people I know that work in the field. I did get lucky and bought 3 brand new signals from an antique dealer in recent years. I also bought parts that were available on eBay.
Here in the Memphis, TN area we’re fortunate to have traffic speed monitors on major thoroughfares and placed usually in the median on divided roadways. That data is sent to a central computer which is also connected to every traffic signal control cabinet located on that particular street. As a result, signal timing is constantly changing from one signal to another. I can’t imagine the complexity of setting this system up but it works especially well during rush hour, unless a wreck occurs which will screw up any traffic flow regardless of any system in place. It is designed for traffic to flow at or near the posted speed limit. When that occurs you can expect green lights for miles and miles. Traffic lights will turn red when there is sufficient minor side street traffic waiting. The central computer try’s to give all side street traffic green lights at about the same time ONLY if there is sufficient traffic waiting on a particular side street. The system seems to be a good solution for very high traffic volume on major streets.
@@BartlettTFD YES!! This is what a well maintained, intelligent traffic signal SYSTEM looks like! Glad to hear Memphis has this and appears to have capable personnel to run the system. I see too often where a system is in place but 1) It's not maintained (set it and forget it) OR 2) There is no capable personnel to understand the system or run it (ol' timers or knowledgeable personnel left the organization and the people left have no clue what to do with it). Thanks for sharing that!
One thing I noticed now is that US doesn't have RY either but instead goes green directly. Sweden has RY to make trafficants aware that its soon going green so they can start revving up the engine and begin engaging the clutch so the vehicle goes as soon as its green. So sweden's traffic lights are R RY G Y R. And as I said in a previous comment, previously sweden had R RY G GY R but GY was scrapped in the 90's to align with the vienna convention. One neat thing sweden has is also the possibility to cancel out a transistion to red, so for example, if you are driving on a road, you might see the light going G Y G, so the controller decides thers no traffic, so it turns on Y to transistion into red, but once the detector detects your car, the controller sees that theres permitted green time left on the main street and possibly no cars on adjacent street, so it goes back to G. Don't know if G Y G transistion is allowed in the US, but in sweden it is.
I recall you talking about the sequence of lights. I'm assuming you would be driving a 4th output for every direction...which seems like you would need alot more loadswitches to do this. I can just picture everyone revving up their vehicle to take off LOL
@@sebastiannielsen ah yes, that makes sense...but I wonder how the conflict monitor allows that combination? Obviously in the non R+Y condition, you wouldn't want the yellow and red to come up...
@@streetsmartstraffic i guess its a configuration option like the GY DIP switch option, but for RY. Maybe your conflict monitors have such a option too to allow for RY dual-indication. And no, its not race-revving, but just so the clutch engagement don't kill the engine. RY is mostly relevant for stick-shift.
@@sebastiannielsenI know on the peek traffic/ Oriux monitor there is an option to allow Red+Yellow on a channel and still check for green+yellow/red. Other country’s to my knowledge don’t have to follow the same standards we do in the US/Canada I wonder what the inside of your areas cabinets look like.
Is that who's signal that is?? LOL I just found a hanging head online, cropped it and pasted it into my thumbnail. I originally had my testboard where the signal head was and realized only the description told the story. Without the head, I think most people would have blew past it when scrolling....Thanks for clarifying that!
New to you. Great job. Would like to learn about the batt. B/U’s, scheduled maintenance, testing, inverter, capacity, charger, exerciser, change over. Thanks
Love the home setup, I’m jealous!Your remote reset panel is interesting I’ve never seen one like that before. I’m guessing you have a central system that you can send voltage to the test reset pin of the MMU. In the new ATC Cabinet standard, EDI as of 2023 allows you to remote reset the CMU (Nema equivalent MMU) ,but only during certain faults.
I've never seen it until I came to my present employer...and I was already in the field with 2 different employers for 20 yrs. Honestly, I didn't like it at first. Sort of a complex panel, with some checks and balances. But I've grown to love what it allows me to do. I used it for the first time about 1 month ago in a live situation. About 5:00 am in the morning, my dashboard indicated signal in flash. Remoted in to the signal and cameras and found it was in flash. I knew there was a storm the night before. Saw it was a one time occurance, no other alarm log entries, and traffic was almost non existent. So I reset it. And there I was, 2 hrs away, with a signal FIXED. Awesome...
Yes, but the conflict monitor controls those transfer relays. The relays only switch the reds. The load switches lose power via the Solid State relay( the blue one) which kills the yellows and greens from showing in the field.
When I first started my career in the traffic field, we had a lone electro mechanical signal. I prayed it never malfunctioned LOL Neat system though...I've come to appreciate the ingenuity that went into signals back then Thanks for sharing!
GREAT questions. 1) How I have seen it setup = There is a setting in the traffic controller for AWS (Advanced Warning Signals). If you put an entry into that line item, it will turn on an output at that time BEFORE that direction goes yellow. Example: an entry of 5.0 will turn ON that output 5 seconds before it goes yellow. That output is wired to a loadswitch input, the loadswitch converts it to 120V, then sent out on a cable to the warning signs. There is a flasher unit in the signs, that when powered (120V), starts to flash. 2) Yes, peds have their own loadswitch...unless it's a signal that have 'scramble walks', meaning all peds come up at the same time, then you can drive all of those heads off of one loadswitch. It's extremely inefficient to do that though...but its done!
Great questions. Most signals these days are LED's. Back in the day, signals were outfitted with incadescent bulbs. Those blew out on a regular basis. The traffic signal doesn't know this UNLESS all reds or all yellows or all greens for one direction go out. If this happens, the conflict monitor will place the signal into flash. The bulbs were more of a maintenance nightmare than anything. Now with the long life of LED's and redundancy of signal heads, that is not as much of an issue anymore. New ATC cabinets I believe monitor current. But I have limited experience working on those cabinets
I don't have a basement but I want this in my basement 😂
You can find traffic signal equipment online @ places such as govdeals.com or ebay.com
Many times on govdeals though, you must go and pickup the equipment directly. However, like my setup, I just had to pull the guts out of the signal cabinet and mount it and it was ready for me to have fun (yeah, I know, i'm a traffic geek)
😂
My home cabinet is more basic than what's seen here. It has eight slots on the panel which has room for six vehicle movements, two overlaps and two ped movements. Connected to it is a six channel conflict monitor (EDI-6LE) and an Eagle EPAC M40 controller. The cabinet was originally set up for loop detection, but I removed those panels because there was no detector rack in the cabinet when I bought it. I didn't really think I'd need any kind of detection inputs if I'm running my own signal setup at home.
Nice, I’m guessing based on your profile picture you are even running traffic signals. How did you get your hands on all that equipment?
@@Liam_WaMost of my signals and parts come from people I know that work in the field. I did get lucky and bought 3 brand new signals from an antique dealer in recent years. I also bought parts that were available on eBay.
Here in the Memphis, TN area we’re fortunate to have traffic speed monitors on major thoroughfares and placed usually in the median on divided roadways. That data is sent to a central computer which is also connected to every traffic signal control cabinet located on that particular street. As a result, signal timing is constantly changing from one signal to another. I can’t imagine the complexity of setting this system up but it works especially well during rush hour, unless a wreck occurs which will screw up any traffic flow regardless of any system in place. It is designed for traffic to flow at or near the posted speed limit. When that occurs you can expect green lights for miles and miles.
Traffic lights will turn red when there is sufficient minor side street traffic waiting. The central computer try’s to give all side street traffic green lights at about the same time ONLY if there is sufficient traffic waiting on a particular side street.
The system seems to be a good solution for very high traffic volume on major streets.
But wouldn't it be fun to have detection anyway?! LOL
@@BartlettTFD YES!! This is what a well maintained, intelligent traffic signal SYSTEM looks like!
Glad to hear Memphis has this and appears to have capable personnel to run the system. I see too often where a system is in place but 1) It's not maintained (set it and forget it) OR 2) There is no capable personnel to understand the system or run it (ol' timers or knowledgeable personnel left the organization and the people left have no clue what to do with it).
Thanks for sharing that!
One thing I noticed now is that US doesn't have RY either but instead goes green directly. Sweden has RY to make trafficants aware that its soon going green so they can start revving up the engine and begin engaging the clutch so the vehicle goes as soon as its green. So sweden's traffic lights are R RY G Y R. And as I said in a previous comment, previously sweden had R RY G GY R but GY was scrapped in the 90's to align with the vienna convention.
One neat thing sweden has is also the possibility to cancel out a transistion to red, so for example, if you are driving on a road, you might see the light going G Y G, so the controller decides thers no traffic, so it turns on Y to transistion into red, but once the detector detects your car, the controller sees that theres permitted green time left on the main street and possibly no cars on adjacent street, so it goes back to G. Don't know if G Y G transistion is allowed in the US, but in sweden it is.
I recall you talking about the sequence of lights. I'm assuming you would be driving a 4th output for every direction...which seems like you would need alot more loadswitches to do this.
I can just picture everyone revving up their vehicle to take off LOL
@@streetsmartstraffic no, its not a 4th output. Its just a dual-indication, but a permitted such. So its just R, then R+Y, then G, then Y, then R.
@@sebastiannielsen ah yes, that makes sense...but I wonder how the conflict monitor allows that combination? Obviously in the non R+Y condition, you wouldn't want the yellow and red to come up...
@@streetsmartstraffic i guess its a configuration option like the GY DIP switch option, but for RY. Maybe your conflict monitors have such a option too to allow for RY dual-indication.
And no, its not race-revving, but just so the clutch engagement don't kill the engine. RY is mostly relevant for stick-shift.
@@sebastiannielsenI know on the peek traffic/ Oriux monitor there is an option to allow Red+Yellow on a channel and still check for green+yellow/red. Other country’s to my knowledge don’t have to follow the same standards we do in the US/Canada I wonder what the inside of your areas cabinets look like.
Based on your thumbnail, I thought you'd have signals hanging as well, but I see now that's Nick B's signal.
Is that who's signal that is?? LOL I just found a hanging head online, cropped it and pasted it into my thumbnail. I originally had my testboard where the signal head was and realized only the description told the story. Without the head, I think most people would have blew past it when scrolling....Thanks for clarifying that!
New to you. Great job. Would like to learn about the batt. B/U’s, scheduled maintenance, testing, inverter, capacity, charger, exerciser, change over. Thanks
Noted! I have a few videos on my channel that show some of this!
Love the home setup, I’m jealous!Your remote reset panel is interesting I’ve never seen one like that before. I’m guessing you have a central system that you can send voltage to the test reset pin of the MMU. In the new ATC Cabinet standard, EDI as of 2023 allows you to remote reset the CMU (Nema equivalent MMU) ,but only during certain faults.
I've never seen it until I came to my present employer...and I was already in the field with 2 different employers for 20 yrs.
Honestly, I didn't like it at first. Sort of a complex panel, with some checks and balances. But I've grown to love what it allows me to do.
I used it for the first time about 1 month ago in a live situation. About 5:00 am in the morning, my dashboard indicated signal in flash. Remoted in to the signal and cameras and found it was in flash. I knew there was a storm the night before. Saw it was a one time occurance, no other alarm log entries, and traffic was almost non existent. So I reset it. And there I was, 2 hrs away, with a signal FIXED. Awesome...
Very interesting and informative! So the transfer relays choose whether the field lights get the program or the flash?
Yes, but the conflict monitor controls those transfer relays. The relays only switch the reds. The load switches lose power via the Solid State relay( the blue one) which kills the yellows and greens from showing in the field.
@@metalbill thanks! as an electrician i figured the other colors had to be removed from the equation somewhere
@@metalbill Thanks for answering that! Much appreciated!
a->r time should be the same applied to R->G
I'm misunderstanding---explain further please!
I just have an old eagle electro mechanical timer for my traffic light setup in my basement.
When I first started my career in the traffic field, we had a lone electro mechanical signal. I prayed it never malfunctioned LOL
Neat system though...I've come to appreciate the ingenuity that went into signals back then
Thanks for sharing!
Why does the "flash mode" unit work when it's not flashing the signals? Seems like unessessary "wear and tear".
I have two questions. How do flashing stop ahead signs work with traffic signals? The second question is do ped heads use individual load switches?
GREAT questions.
1) How I have seen it setup = There is a setting in the traffic controller for AWS (Advanced Warning Signals). If you put an entry into that line item, it will turn on an output at that time BEFORE that direction goes yellow. Example: an entry of 5.0 will turn ON that output 5 seconds before it goes yellow. That output is wired to a loadswitch input, the loadswitch converts it to 120V, then sent out on a cable to the warning signs. There is a flasher unit in the signs, that when powered (120V), starts to flash.
2) Yes, peds have their own loadswitch...unless it's a signal that have 'scramble walks', meaning all peds come up at the same time, then you can drive all of those heads off of one loadswitch. It's extremely inefficient to do that though...but its done!
@@streetsmartstraffic Thank you sir.
So do the signal light bulbs ever burn out? And how does that info get back to the controller? Are each line to the bulb monitored for current draw?
Great questions. Most signals these days are LED's. Back in the day, signals were outfitted with incadescent bulbs. Those blew out on a regular basis. The traffic signal doesn't know this UNLESS all reds or all yellows or all greens for one direction go out. If this happens, the conflict monitor will place the signal into flash. The bulbs were more of a maintenance nightmare than anything. Now with the long life of LED's and redundancy of signal heads, that is not as much of an issue anymore.
New ATC cabinets I believe monitor current. But I have limited experience working on those cabinets