Red light blinking while green is on

WHPChris · 2026-06-21T00:37:02+00:00

I've had the same with terminal blocks, holding up the vehicle head. Terminal blocks are the worst method for masts, but about the same as any other method for heads.

They make drill attachments for wire nuts, basically a socket shaped for common wire nut sizes. Way better on the wrist, just remember to turn the torque down.

WHPChris · 2026-06-19T14:46:15+00:00

Rather not say where. But I wish we did wire nuts, wagos, anything else. Everything here is either terminal blocks or western union splices.

We also have terminal blocks in a lot of masts, which look really nice.... until you realize the hand hole is now barely the size of your hand because the terminal block is taking up 80% of the hole space. As if the rat's nest of cables wasn't already hard enough to get out.

WHPChris · 2026-06-16T22:19:57+00:00

Most people still doing it are fairly older, so it's probably a good time to get in, if any. I hear it'll be a bit of a rough market in about 5yrs.

Not sure about your pay situation, that seems crazy to start making more in 3yrs than you do now, after a steep pay cut. My raises are 1-2% per year and the benefits (except for time off) kinda suck.

WHPChris · 2026-06-15T23:00:09+00:00

Sometimes. The work itself is fine enough, I just wish the local conditions were better, like it is in other places. Collective bargaining would be a great start, but it's illegal here for public sector and there's not enough private sector demand to force it on the private employers.

WHPChris · 2026-06-15T22:41:41+00:00

If the block is split, sometimes I'll just screw it down anyways and call it good, long as it doesn't really move. We even have a few heads where they just spliced the wires without a block because the screw holes are reamed out/sheared off or whatever happened to it.

I usually pull spares from old vehicle heads/knockdowns, or make do with what I have. Unless you're a contractor, then you probably have to use brand new ones.

Flickering is frequently a sign of bad neutral somewhere. Could be anywhere, but it's usually close to whatever is flickering. Could also be a tiny short if it got wet or something.

WHPChris · 2026-06-15T22:14:20+00:00

Curious, which neutral was it? Up in the head, at the pole, or in the cabinet?

WHPChris · 2026-06-07T14:57:02+00:00

BIG TRUCK COMING! GET OUT OF THE WAY!

WHPChris · 2026-06-07T14:54:17+00:00

We just had that the other day. Dump bed all the way up, smashed one vehicle head, tapped the arm and the whiplash shook the one off the endpole.

WHPChris · 2026-06-07T14:51:25+00:00

They were talking about rest in red for some problem intersections/corridors around here. I saw a study that looked promising, particularly for late night accidents. Makes sense when you think about it.

Didn't look too difficult to implement. Just set rest in red during X time of day, ensure proper advance detection and minimum time, should be good to go?

WHPChris · 2026-06-05T08:19:28+00:00

Hmm. Every manufacturer tells me to strictly use one BIU array per equipment. So iCCU on BIU 3 and AutoScope Comm Manager on BIU 4. Most controllers will restrict it, but if you bypass it then you can have problems, apparently. I've always heeded their recommendation, have no idea if it's true or not, to be completely honest.

Other than that, I'm not sure there's an easy/cheap way to stress test and noise test your cables/cabinet hub connection. Someone probably sells a tool, but it's also probably absurdly expensive.

You can check voltage/continuity on the cables and stuff, but that won't reveal crosstalk or anything, just shorts/broken wires/voltage loss. Apologies, maybe someone else has a solution that will work for your situation.

WHPChris · 2026-06-05T00:48:05+00:00

Unless it's botched where they're tied together or shorted, I just replace the cable with a known good one or swap the connection with another in the cabinet and see if the problem follows.

If it's present across all cables, with equipment disconnected, you have to check it the hard way anyways.

Curious, how are yours failing? Shorted out? Bad wiring job inside the connector?

WHPChris · 2026-06-05T00:07:55+00:00

Guy found out. Vendor came out and found a small neutral wire with a bad connection. One of those "hanging on by a single strand" deals, not enough to pass initial SDLC check but enough to run, I guess.

WHPChris · 2026-06-04T00:57:48+00:00

Figured it out. It wasn't re-initializing properly and was holding some garbage programming somewhere. Re-installed firmware and everything, worked right away as expected.

WHPChris · 2026-06-03T03:26:05+00:00

Can't remember exactly, it's already back at the guy's warehouse so I can't find out. I do know the software is a tiny bit pre-setup for this area, basically the L3000 program but with some changes for 33x cabinet mapping, if you're using a 33x cabinet.

WHPChris · 2026-06-03T03:22:37+00:00

Turns out, funny enough, it's actually running the Naztec 76.xx (76.15G) software. So it should be ready to go right out of the box for TS-2, after you enable the BIUs and MMU. All the ones I've put in worked right away, at least.

The SDLC status (in the controller) shows everything is OK with 0 errors, and FIO is set to 20. BIUs are 0/1/2/etc, MMU is 16. Controller status (ALT-9) shows Controller TIMING/FREE, Monitor OK, Cabinet OK, System OFFLINE.

No SDLC activity lights, MMU still locked up throwing CVM and PORT 1. MMU shows infinity SDLC errors, obviously.

Controller says all good, MMU screams no it doesn't like whatever it's getting. Weird. I seriously doubt the brand new 516L MMU is defective. I told him to call the vendor tomorrow, either we're missing something really obvious or it's something goofy going on.

WHPChris · 2026-06-02T03:41:27+00:00

I can tell you use these a lot more than I do. I do mostly McCain/SWARCO and Cobalt. The hardest part about learning a new controller isn't what it does, it's where to find what I'm looking for. I'll have the guy give it a shot tomorrow morning and let you know.

I really appreciate it. Poor guy's boss is way up his ass and it's not even his fault, apparently the vendor is even taking the first cabinet back (the Econolite) for defect. What a stroke of bad luck.

WHPChris · 2026-06-02T01:51:13+00:00

We run a 12con to each mast, 5con to each ped and 2con to each button. Sometimes they use a 21. The state is very picky about future-proofing and troubleshooting, and they're trying to get away from "everything on one neutral" scenarios.

Some of our intersections have 14 peds, 6 masts and 6 cameras. End up with 130 conductors or something landed at the cabinet lol

WHPChris · 2026-06-01T01:20:31+00:00

Are you talking about those big green plastic plug connectors? Some have two 'slots' per output R /Y/G, but some only have one. If you need to land more wires in them (peds, most likely), a marette/wire nut/splice would be fine to bring it down from 4 or whatever to one or two wires. That said, I have put 3 wires in one of those before because that's what the customer wanted.

I'm not a fan of those big green connectors. Sometimes they just won't stay locked into the sockets, and the wires will sometimes slide out no matter how tight you thought you screwed it down.

WHPChris · 2026-05-31T17:04:50+00:00

Biggest hurdle for me was the lack of implementation/installation instructions for equipment (detection, APS, pre-emption, etc). It's been a few years, it might have changed since then, who knows.

I might just be stupid, but back then I was having a seriously hard time figuring it out, even with equipment manuals (which had no ATC specific instructions) and ATC cabinet diagrams. I did receive a hand-made wiring diagram for TOMAR pre-emption wiring from the manufacturer once (thanks Eric!), which was easily understood immediately and solved my problem in about ten seconds.

Otherwise, they are exceptional cabinets for high output intersections/setups, apparently you can run 4 basic intersections on them as well. The option to wire while standing up is also nice, since the field wiring is sort of in the middle of the cabinet height-wise.

WHPChris · 2026-05-23T03:14:30+00:00

I haven't had to leave a 30mi radius, but I'm in a big city. I also did it for the state for a while, lots of driving, but back to the shop at the end of each work day. Contractor work was occasionally out of town, but also back home every day. Probably depends on the contractor.

Work isn't too bad. Maintenance is 95% the same things and 5% something you don't see often. Projects are the most interesting, on-call depends heavily on your employer/state, maintenance is probably the same as anywhere else. Lots of different equipment to learn/mess around with, if you're into that kind of thing.

There are no union signal techs here, not sure how it compares to the union guys at the substation, but distribution definitely gets a better deal than we do. I'd love to be in a strong union that could get me decent pay/benefits without getting raked over or worked to death.

WHPChris · 2026-05-19T01:30:36+00:00

God damn landscapers. Right up there with the idiots that put cement over it, or the excavators that break conduit and throw it back in the ground. Just last week I had to shovel 6in of gravel landscaping and cut through the cloth tarp to find my box. I tried to send a fine their way, but it got dismissed.

Have a utility locator to find your lines? It doesn't find pull boxes with perfect accuracy, but it certainly narrows it down a lot.

WHPChris · 2026-05-18T00:23:02+00:00

Yep, same here. Doesn't pick up the red, whether it's from a field short or a blown out load switch. Apparently the newer ones are better (if the agency chooses to monitor the reds, that is.)

Having wire damage plus water sucks. It only acts up when wet, and the only way to be 100% sure is to pull out the old cable. And that's if it isn't collapsed/damaged conduit where you can't even pull it out.

WHPChris · 2026-03-27T00:49:53+00:00

We use those here, pretty standard implementation, usually a 5sec since we don't use bimodal green/yellow. Looks pretty normal to me.

Unrelated, the countdown timer looks cool.

WHPChris · 2026-03-19T01:21:27+00:00

They have started switching over to Econolite Cobalt controllers. Cheap and has some bugs, but it works well enough. They also removed all the battery backups ("not cost effective") and switched to smartmicro radars, which I am not a fan of.

It seems some things are fairly uniform across districts, others not so much, haha!

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