Need ideas for light board control

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bpk

Senior Member
I am looking for some good ideas on re doing a lighting control board. The board is mounted on a post outside and used to signal semi truck drivers. It is similar to a stop light but with 6 lights (incandescent) and each light is labeled with directions underneath it (stop, back up, inch forward, ect.). Inside the building the employees have 6 switches to operate each light. The whole thing is a mess, original from the 1960's and has a gob of old wires, some have went bad and been abandoned, running from the building underground to the board. The switches inside are all low voltage and operate another mess of relays that have been altered over the last 40 years. We are takeing the board down to paint and put new graphics on it. I would like to tear everything old out and start over. At first I was thinking along the lines of a remote IO plc or 6 channel lighting controller but then thought it would be way overkill. Possibly just pull a multiwire SO cord out to it and reinstall new switches ? Any good ideas, money isnt a problem but needs to be reliable in all weather (especially really cold) Thanks in advance
 

G._S._Ohm

Senior Member
Location
DC area
6 lights (incandescent) and each light is labeled with directions underneath it (stop, back up, inch forward, ect.)
If only one light is on at a time use a SP6T rotary switch.

Depending on how many lights have to be on at a time and which ones they are, there is probably a truth table that shows the minimum implementation of switches and wires to meet the design goal.
 
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Fulthrotl

~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
I am looking for some good ideas on re doing a lighting control board. The board is mounted on a post outside and used to signal semi truck drivers. It is similar to a stop light but with 6 lights (incandescent) and each light is labeled with directions underneath it (stop, back up, inch forward, ect.). Inside the building the employees have 6 switches to operate each light. The whole thing is a mess, original from the 1960's and has a gob of old wires, some have went bad and been abandoned, running from the building underground to the board. The switches inside are all low voltage and operate another mess of relays that have been altered over the last 40 years. We are takeing the board down to paint and put new graphics on it. I would like to tear everything old out and start over. At first I was thinking along the lines of a remote IO plc or 6 channel lighting controller but then thought it would be way overkill. Possibly just pull a multiwire SO cord out to it and reinstall new switches ? Any good ideas, money isnt a problem but needs to be reliable in all weather (especially really cold) Thanks in advance

depends on the functionality you want.... LED's are great, but may be iffy in really cold temps.
check the specs of the LED's if you go that route.... i'd be looking at traffic signal grade LED's.

after reading a post on here about freezing water in conduits breaking conductors,
i'd be pulling nine #10 THHN's. that'll give you 36% fill in a 3/4" conduit, with a spare wire.

if you want simple and bulletproof, i'd just use oil tight pushbuttons and switches.
i'm guessing, but you want to position different trucks for bulk loading off a chute,
so you need to jog them as they are filling?

my thought is, you'd want the green "pull forward" on, until the truck was where you'd
like it, then the red "stop" light on continuously, except when you were jogging the truck
back and forth.

so, have a HOA oiltight operator that goes from red to green..... leave it in the
green position tlll the truck is where you want it, then switch it to red. then, you have
two buttons, inch forward, and inch reverse that when pushed, break the red and green
light power, and light up the inch forward or inch reverse lights until you released
the button, then it'd go back to "stop" until you flipped the toggle switch to "green".

oiltight pushbuttons are as close to indestructible as you can get, and you can make
any logic you want with N.O and N.C. blocks on them.

the other two lights? same wiring scheme, add two more pushbuttons....

i'm wondering what directions you'd need to give the operator besides, stop, go, back up,
and pull forward, unless he's dumping product. that could be the fifth light, and save the
sixth light for instructing the driver to run screaming naked across the parking lot and
jump into a snow drift........
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
What was there has worked since the 1960s, do you think a PLC based installation will last 40 or 50 years?

I would be inclined to just re-do it as it was.
 
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