Making of a Parisien Walk Don't Walk Sign Cycle Through Red Man Green Man Using an Arduino Uno

Now before I start telling you about this project I am ready for a kick in the balls from those with the knowledge base with this as I am an absolute beginner with both the Arduino Electrics and Instructables but I can take it. All advice will be considered.

This is an ongoing Project and I hope to have it completed very soon. The following may be a bit long-winded but I hoped to show my thought process as I have gone on.

Whilst on holiday in Paris one Sunday morning my wife and I came upon a Vide Grenier, or as we call them in the UK a boot fair at which I discovered a Walk Don't Walk sign. Liking this sort of thing I picked it up for 10 or 20 euros between £10 to £20.

It would take a lot to drag around for the day so I took it back to our hotel.

After getting home to the UK I wired it up to a plug and some cable to the mains and found that it was indeed in working order. That was about 8 years ago.

During those years I often wondered how to get it to display as it would on the street, you know Red Man, Green Man.

I researched it online but couldn't really find much that would help someone who knew nothing about electrics and such, so it sat in the garage collecting dust and getting knocked about.

Then during the initial covid outbreak, I found an electricians forum and posted a query and one of the replies was to have a think about Arduinos. Never really heard of it other than in passing so off I went and researched it.

I have always liked IT since the '80s and my first computer was an Amstrad 464. So I asked my wife to get me the ELEGOO UNO R3 Project Super Starter Kit and began playing around.

I then stumbled upon this site Instructable and stumbled on lee_schnitz Arduino Traffic Light Controller project and realised that my initial wish to get this thing cycling through Walk Don't Walk was possible so I worked my way getting this done.

So here we go troops.

Below are the main things I have bought in the process of this Project mainly from Amazon as I didn't know where else to find it.

1x Parisien Walk Don't Walk Sign, You may find these on Ebay or similar.

1x Elegoo Uno R3 Board

1x Yizhet 5V 2 Channel-Relay DC 5V 230V Relay Shield Module Control Board with Optocoupler for Arduino

1x Meanwell Enclosed Type 15W 5V 3A RS-15-5 AC-DC Single Output RS-15 Series MEAN WELL Switching Power Supply

1x pack Jumper Cable Kit 10 cm and 20 cm Male to Female, Male to Male, Female to Female Jumper Wires Breadboard for Arduino

1x pack Drone Screw,300pcs M3 Nylon Black Hex Screw Nut Spacer Stand Off Varied Length Assortment Kit Box PCB Motherboard Assorted Assortment Kit

5m Flexible 3 Core Cable 1.5mm 3183YH BASEC Approved Black PVC

1x 13A 230 V Plastic Plug

1x pack Ideal-32a-3-way-push-wire-connector-100-pack

or 16A 12-TERMINAL TERMINAL STRIPS 10 PACK

1x B&Q Lighting accessories set

1x Digital Multimeter

1x MAGNUSSON MIXED PRECISION SCREWDRIVER SET 6 PIECES

The cost for the part is roughly £10-£20

So in the photos is the inside of the sign. As I mentioned earlier when I got the sign home I was able to wire it up and checked that it worked and the Red and Green Men worked.

From a B&Q Lighting Accessories Set, I fitted the plastic glands that hold the power cable securely into the hole that the original power cable entered the box of the sign. Having done this the 3 core cable was fed into the box and wired up as in the photos and the 13 amp plug attached.

I then switched on and "All Hail the God of Electricity" the fuse box didn't trip and both the Red and Green Man illuminated.

Step 1 is complete.

Cost for the part £6.66

Everything I had read to this point suggested that to power the Arduino and associated was through the 9v power socket on the Unos board and search kept throwing up transformer that you plug into the mains. For me, this was going to be messy. I already had a 240v supply for the light.

Some of our American cousins were suggesting soldering wires to the prongs and using heat shrink to isolate the live ends. This was even more undesirable and in my humble opinion an ugly choice also here in the UK we have three-pin plugs and that would look even worse.

Then by chance, I was talking to a guy whilst having a coffee and he suggested the Meanwell solutions. When I saw it online I thought "That's the answer". 1x Meanwell Enclosed Type 15W 5V 3A RS-15-5 AC-DC Single Output RS-15 Series Switching Power Supply was purchased.

So what this does for those like me who aren't sure, this takes 240v AC and changes it to 9v DC which is what I needed to power the Arduino Uno.

Now, this is a chunky piece of kit, I initially thought it would be no bigger than 300mm x 300mm turns out it's 500mm x 700mm so it makes the build a tad on the Bigger Than I Expected Size. Lesson learnt here is check sizes from data sheet

It is fairly straightforward to wire up when looking at the connectors they are left to right 1/ Live, 2/ Neutral and 3/ Earth 240v. Connectors 4/ and 5/ are Live and Neutral 9v marked V+ and V-. To the right of this is an adjuster which I think is to fine-tune the output voltage.

Below is the Datasheet for this item for more technical detail.

Cost for the part £5.29

Now, this is the part that will allow a connection from the Arduino to the sign switching on power to each of the Red Man/ Green Man on command from the Arduino Uno module.

Everything I read says that this is Arduino compatible. This comes with the relays and all the connections that you will need to run this project all on one board. Easy Peesy Lemon Squeezy.

I understand that there are solid-state versions of these relays (£21.86) that run with no resounding click each time the relay switches as is the case with my purchase, but costs were at this stage running away with me.

I had been following lee_schnitz (He's the guy who inspired this build) supplies list and he suggested a four relay module (£6.79), that was until I ran the final script for 2 relays and I realised that I had four and 2 were not being used so, a 2 relay module was purchased (£5.29).

Below is the datasheet for this module.

I decided quite early on in the build that I wanted to have some organisation over the colours of the wiring so that should someone else end up with the final product that there was some logic to it, well as far as I saw it anyway, going on.

So as per UK lighting wiring, we have:-

1. Brown = Live
2. Blue = Neutral
3. Red = Red Man
4. Green = Green Man.

I hope that makes sense.

Not having a project box at this stage I made a project board from some spare 5mm ply and an offcut from the grandchildren's foam craft sheet glued on top. The Arduino is screwed on the left of the board, next to the AC-DC Single Output RS-15 Series Switching Power Supply and finally the Relay on the right (as per picture 1)

In the script,

1/ Relay1 is the Green Man so a green jumper wire goes from pin 5 on the Arduino to In1 on the relay module.

2/ Relay2 is the Red Man so a red jumper wire goes from pin 6 on the Arduino to In2 on the relay module.

3/ Take a Brown Male to Female Jumper Wire and connect the male end to the 5v pin on your Arduino and push the female end onto the Vin of the Relay Module.

4/ Next, take a Blue Male to Female Jumper Wire and connect the male end to the GND on your Arduino and push the female end onto the GND of the Relay Module.

5/ Now Brown Male to Male Jumper Wire and connect the male end to the Vin on your Arduino and connect the other end to the V+ of the AC-DC Single Output RS-15 Series Switching Power Supply.

6/ Take Blue Male to Male Jumper Wire and connect the male end to the Vin on your Arduino and connect the other end to the V- of the AC-DC Single Output RS-15 Series Switching Power Supply.

7/ Cut a 500mm length of the 3 core cable 1.5mm and strip out the Brown, Blue and Green/Yellow wire. This is used to connect the AC-DC Single Output RS-15 Series Switching Power Supply to the Power supply coming into the main Walk Don't Walk Light (WDWL).

At this stage we are not going to connect to the mains supply just yet let to happen for two reasons, firstly I'm in the study about to write the script and the WDWL is a monster of a thing.

Secondly, I found out by chance that with the Brown Male to Male Jumper Wire described in step 5 of this section needs to be pulled from the Vin of this section as with the USB cable for transferring the script and powering to the Arduino with a connection to V+ the Arduino won't power up. I suspect it is thinking that there will be mains voltage coming from two directions (USB one way and Mains from the AC-DC Single Output RS-15 Series Switching Power Supply the other bad things might happen and there's no coming back from that I guess.

The photos above show the wiring as described.

Here I expect a new one ripped for me as I know very little of note about code other than watching tutorials on youtube.

I have on the scripts below-referenced lee_schnitz as the creator, I hope that is the correct etiquette. The script below is the test version.

My understanding any way is that having defined the relays 1&2 to pins 5&6 and told the Arduino in the setup that they are in pinMode, the loop will run them for 2000 milliseconds or in plain speak 2 seconds.

I will be changing this to 10000ms for a 10-second cycle. Both scripts are identical except for the line with 2000 is changed for 10000ms.

I hope that the video of this code running in my study will illustrate that the code is switching the Relays and you may just hear them clicking in the audio.

Here's the Updated Code below PWDWS_Code_V01

If you'd prefer longer cycles then the Arduino-Traffic-Light-Controller_fancy will run for approximately 25 minutes before returning to the start.

I had a few hours with the project yesterday and managed to run the traffic_light_code_testmode_2sec copy from the Arduino and it worked I was totally surprised.

Before that, though I had a spot of bother trying different ways of connecting the project board to the mains by way of spade connectors. Even managed to blow a 3amp fuse in the process. So I reverted back to my old favourite KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, and went for choc block Connectors. You see rather than fight with the sign in the house I wanted to be able to in a few simple minutes disconnect the Arduino Project board bring it into the house and update any code and then take it back and refit it.

Now, rather than bore you all to tears trying to explain the final wiring diagram I have attached a PDF copy below which I hope will be easier to follow.

I hope that you have so far enjoyed my journey so and when I have time over the next few days and real-life doesn't get in the way I will update this some more. Hopefully tomorrow or over the weekend will give me that opportunity.

Please chip in if you have any advice or ideas that will progress this project.

I have some other ideas for this which I hope some of you will advise me on but let's just get the thing up and running in its basic configuration, eh.

I look forward to updating you.