Free Public Wireless???

livEwirE

Hi all,

Have been driving through Maynooth In Kildare a few times recently and have noticed a lot of wireless antennas on traffic lights in the town. Is this some kind of initiative by NUI Maynooth to provide free wireless to the residents?

~livEwirE~

godskitchen

No its for the lights to comunicate with the control centre/eachother.

livEwirE

Are you sure mate? They've only appeared recently and they look exactly like wireless antennas, surely if they were for communicating with each other they would be everywhere and not just on some sets of lights

Can anyone from the Maynooth area shed some more light on this please?

Apologies if I'm wrong godskitchen;)

godskitchen

I can not say for sure that the ones in Maynooth are for comms between traffic lights.

What I can say for sure is that the ones in the UK are for communicating with each other and a control centre.

They also receive signals from approaching emergency services so the lights can be changed accordingly.

It normally works in tandum with pressure sensors embedded in the surface of the road. This is useful if you have a que of traffic at one set of lights, and free flowing traffic at another. If the pressure sensor indicates to the control unit that the traffic is not moving, then sends a signal to the next set of lights (Via the wireless antenna) to change their state, thus in theory moving the back log of traffic.

Add to what I have said above, the fact that placing wireless antennas on traffic lights for the internet would be a bad idea. They are not high enough. If a bus or lorry went past the signal gets weak. I am sure there are more reasons but the hight issue would kill the idea off.

livEwirE

good points there godskitchen, you make a lot of sense:D