Basic Stamp Project: Design & Build LED Traffic Lights
Students learn about traffic lights and their role in societyCopyright 2012 Federal Highway Administration http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hfl/innovator/issue32.cfm.
Students learn about traffic lights and their importance in maintaining public safety and order. Using a Parallax® Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, students work in teams on the engineering challenge to build a traffic light with a specific behavior. In the process, they learn about light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and how their use can save energy. Students also design their own requirements based on real-world observations as they learn about traffic safety and work towards an interesting goal within the realm of what is important in practice. Knowledge gained from the activity is directly transferrable to future activities, and skills learned are scalable to more ambitious class projects.
Traffic lights are such a common sight in large cities that their importance is often taken for granted by the hundreds of motorists who travel beneath them every day. Traffic lights are very important for the smooth operation of transportaion routes in cities. (If they don't work, you know about it!) To design effective sequences of traffic lights, traffic engineers model and analyze traffic patterns at many street intersections over a period of time, gathering data that assists them in devising the best order and timing of traffic signals for a particular section of a city.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Explain the importance of traffic lights and safety.
- Explain and demonstrate the use of light-emitting diodes and resistors.
- Discuss the concept of energy efficiency and how it applies to light emitting diodes.
- Describe two Basic Stamp commands and the loop programming concept.