Thank you. I am in public work GIS and am responsible for know about all of our asset. I had NO IDEA about these components and quick searches were not bringing the parts together. This has helped me to begin to grasp what the assets are and how they work together.
That's a pretty old controller for 2020. Nice explanation of a cabinet and the basics of of they work. We put our loop detectors in a detector rack. We've migrated over to TS-2. At first I didn't like them as they can be somewhat harder to diagnose and there's no real good way to test the BIUs associated with them. They also seem to go into flash more often as the MMU checks for and is more sensitive to voltage fluctuations. I see you've got a spare load switch in the cabinet. Good to have a spare but it'd be better to leave it on the shelf rather than the bottom of the cabinet.
They made good work organizing wires in the cabinet, but still it looks messy. Appropriate TLC has all the wires inside, only ports and wires coming from street are visible.
If there is in fact 120 volts present, why don't traffic/signal technicians where shock protection (hot gloves) as required by OSHA when workers are exposed to greater than 50 volt to ground? On of the biggest problems I see in electrical safety is that employers and safety personnel look at electrical safety like it's electRICIAN safety. Are electricians the only workers recorded by the BLS that are dying from exposure to electrical hazards? Short answer, NO. These techs are also required to have shock protection and be trained to recognize electrical hazards with electrical safety (NFPA 70E) training. Your thoughts?
Glad i'm in the UK, we mainly use Siemens or Telent or Peek, much better looking and easier to work on, everything on one rack...bar the detector cards. New ones even have a wireless web browser to interface to the controller so you don't need to get out of your vehicle to interrogate it!
That is an older TS1 cabinet with an older Siemens controller. With a more modern controller you can communicate through the SDLC or SIU interface to the controller. You can also access the controllers remotely as well as long as their is communications to the intersection. This is not really indicative of what most traffic cabinets look like in the USA.
I always thought they used PLC for traffic signals like a SLC500 something newer. I thought this because one of my assignments was to program a four way traffic signal with walk signals and loops.
I'm glad I'm a signal tech in Australia. Much prefer our controllers. On board conflict monitoring via the prom and logic card (dual conflict monitoring) Inbuilt detection on the rack and direct output to the fields strips. We have Sarasota detection here like in your video but not much anymore thank God. They can be problematic here and often need to be retuned or just die altogether. That controller you're showing us here is extremely messy to me.
Hi Archie, is there any documentation on how controllers work here in Australia? I'm Aussie as well and am trying to find more info on SCATS, specifically how timers / phases work. Would be great to chat with you.
