The innate perversity of inanimate objects

o see

Too late. But she has no shortage of things to tease me about after nearly 30 years, and some of her shots are priceless.

Reply to
Don Foreman
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The plexiglass end could be weighted to neutralize buoyancy, say 25 lbs or so. A clamshell grabber could be arranged at the business end to rescue Don's knife and anything else that might appeal. :)

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

Being a technician who runs experiments I've learned to count off seconds quite accurately. The light in question triggered on side street vehicles but always let traffic flow on the main road for at least 30 seconds in between.

I never tried the magnet, though I've seen [something?] advertised to trip traffic lights that didn't appear to need power.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

When I was a kid I made retrieval grabbers out of sticks and string. Split one end of the stick and wedge it slightly open with a twig jammed into the split, then rig the string to pull the ends closed, ie drill a hole through one side with the awl on your Swiss Army knife.

Despite the distortion you can see the stick approach the thing you dropped, guide it into place and pull the string to grab it. It works better on a sandy than a muddy bottom.

There was another version where you pulled or knocked out a prop that held the jaws apart, but it never worked well for me because pulling the string moved the stick out of place. It was in one of those old Boy Scout books.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Or go all out and build a ROV with video camera. Maybe check with the local high school as I know of at least one high school where the marine biology class and the AP physics class built ROV's with 12 volt bilge pump to manuver and a video camera on board.

If you can keep from dropping a computer in the lake, a webcam in a water tight box and a long stick attached to the box would be another option.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Those darn detectors were a pain in the butt when I was riding my motorcycle during the wee hours. Usually had to wait for a car to pull in behind me. Tried moving my cycle so it was setting right over the wire, but it usually didn't help any.

Always found it somewhat amusing to see someone waiting at a demand light, but not pulled up far enough to be in the detection zone :)

What the heck do you drive that has problems getting detected?

Reply to
Leon Fisk

(...)

Rather than build one, I bought the Lexus version of that tool.

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It is manufactured in exotic, inscrutable Sparks, Nevada.

It is strong and light in weight. I like it a lot; I use it much more often than I thought I would.

They even sell repair parts! :)

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--Winston

Reply to
Winston

It's been 30 years since I designed traffic control electronics, but I doubt that much has changed.

The vehicle detectors worked by sensing the change in inductance of a loop buried under the road or street, caused by presence of a large metallic body. A magnet would have no effect. A shorted coil might, particularly if it had a permeable core.

The detectors are merely inputs to the controller. The traffic engineer can set up the controller to respond in a variety of ways. There are several dozen user-adjustable parameters in an 8-phase controller, though much of that may now be automated by AI or something to maximize intersection throughput or something.

In any case, there might easily be a 30-second delay between detection of a sidestreet vehicle and interruption of traffic flow on a more-travelled intersecting street. The controller may also modify this delay based on volume on the opposing phase, or it may use more than one detector on the side street to differentiate between one vehicle waiting and a queue backing up.

Reply to
Don Foreman

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

We have one on Central at the Special Collections Library that the delay must be well over a minute. I've waited it out quite a few times. No longer wear a watch but am reasonable with time periods. ...lew...

Reply to
Lewis Hartswick

The general wisdom around here is that if you stop at a light while on a street legal motorcycle and the light doesn't change after a prudent interval, the light is defective. Proceed through the light with caution.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

It's a Martensitic stainless steel. If it's been hardened, it'll stick to a magnet. May need a good magnet, but it will stick.

Could phone that Tony Hayward fellah at BP, I understand he's got some ROV's. He might not have a lot of luck though, the deities seem to have it in for him at the moment...

Y' all have a nice swim now :-)

Regards Mark Rand

Reply to
Mark Rand

Back at the time it would have been easy enough to ask, just never thought of it when we happened to have a vehicle with officer in for service work. What you're saying makes plenty of sense, but police officers don't always respond sensibly.

Used to happen in my area along a busy street with a left-turn arrows. You wouldn't get an arrow if didn't sense a vehicle waiting for one. Most often my wait was short, busy street and something large would pull in behind me. I would just pull up farther to be sure the vehicle behind me was setting in the zone. There was a time or two though where there didn't seem to be anyone else wanting to go my direction...

Guess I need a bigger motorcycle. Maybe one of those Bombardier Spyders. Of course then I would need a bigger garage ;-)

Reply to
Leon Fisk

Of course, that is not the only kind of detector. I remember at the top end of the street I lived on where it T-intersected with another larger street, there was a demand light using an ultrasonic detector on a pole. There were two cars waiting in the right lane and we pulled up in the left (center) lane. We sat there for too long, and I then got out of the car, walked up closer to the pole, and moved a large (Man Sized) box of Kleenex flat-bottom rapidly towards the ultrasonic detector. I then got back in the car just in time for my father to pull away as the light changed. (The problem was that nothing was moving close enough to it for it to detect. I made up for the lack of surface area of the Kleenex box with speed of motion. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

The detector works, previously the light had been changing as soon as I drove up and then suddenly it didn't, but then it changed when I inched forward. After a few days I saw it turn red as I approached, started counting seconds and found the answer. I figured that if there was a retriggering holdoff it would be some round number and sure enough the light changed after 30 seconds.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Advanced left turn arrows around here are activated by a detection loop under the third car back. I often sit on the loop in order to get the advance arrow to make the turn into the subdivision. I often get strange looks from drivers in the number two lane on my right. One day I looked in my mirror to see the driver of the police car behind me laughing his ass off - he knew exactly what was going on. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

On Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:20:02 -0400, Gerald Miller wrote the following:

Gerry, did you start carrying a sign around with you in case another cop pulls up behind you? "Loan me your strobe unit. This light takes forEVER!"

-- Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. -- George S. Patton

Reply to
Larry Jaques

We have a couple like that on US 10 in Anoka. The traffic engineer can can set them to whatever he wants, and they can vary with time of day, traffic density, and in some cases by command from a central control.

Reply to
Don Foreman

They started to use those in NYC but the traffic engineer there told me they didn't work out well at all. Although they were mounted on cross arms high above the traffic, after someone discovered that they made great tweeters they'd get stolen within days of installation.

Reply to
Don Foreman

The detectors are supposed to respond to motorcycles. A call to your city traffic engineer might not hurt. The sensitivity of the detectors is adjustable on some models.

Reply to
Don Foreman

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