hatman

Most trafic lights work on an inductive loop. I work on these sometimes. It is a simple loop of wire embedded where a cars metal bulk is most likely to chage the inductance. Its fairly simple to build. and even a BMX can set them off if in the right spot. I like the reed switch idea, You would have to put the switch back a fair way from the lights so that the light would go green in time for the vehicles in front of the cop car ect. to pass through and in case of traffic jams where another vehicle may obscure the switch. IR does not have alot of range. But I work on systems all the time that have IR beams as the sensors for gates. They NEVER FAIL over distances of around 3-4m or less. not even in rain and hail. The trick is to have a tiny delay so that you test to see of the beam is broken a short time after it is intialy broken. Becarefull where you place a the beam however as you dont want to miss the car. I have seen a car miss a safety beam on a tank proof gate! The car was crushed almost flat! Nowdays when installing these beams we use two beams that cross eachother.

thanks for that seems http://www.digikey.com is cheaper across the board

If not done right the port talk program can repeatedly crash you system. The program I use with my JDM (kit built cheap!!) is IC-prog. www.ic-prog.com you dont need any prot access programs if you select the windows API option. Its a little slow but works. This program also has an inbuilt program to use the prots but it can create "privilaged" errors. So I steer clear. If you already have the parts and dont want to buy a whole kit, Often you can get just a PCB you will find many of the components needed are the same as what you already have.

Hi All Im after cheap PIC micro's. I cant seem to find a good cheap source. Im after around 100 each 12C509A 16F84A 16F877A in both surface mount and DIL packages. and more in the future? Anyone help?

well that depends on your altitude. Also you could set up a turbine to use the wind currents generated by the heat differences? Or you could by some monkeys and some treadmills.....................

Hi Folks As part of a PIC project I am putting together I need a latching type circuit. Im not sure what logic chips are avaliable to do this. Please help if you can. As the PIC i am useing does not have interupts. I need a latch or flip flop that sits at a logic level (be it hi or lo) And soon as the input changes it latchs in this state no mather what happens on the input until either a master reset is performed (by PIC) or power is switched off. Im sure its simple. Just need 8 latchs that will do this. can any one sugest a Cmos or TTL package that does this. Cheers Ken