Each standalone traffic safety blinker (the units that sit atop barriers, safety barrels, etc.) would be equipped with a WWV receiver and a rotary selection switch that would select a blinking pattern. In simplest form, there would be an ten-position switch which would select a delay from 0.0 to 0.9 seconds off the WWV time signal. If a row of ten barrels had the switches set from 0 to 9, the lights on the barrels would flash once per second in sequence.

Using this approach, it would be possible to offer motorists additional information in a using blink sequences. Some conventions would probably have to be invented, but blink sequences could be used to distinguish between barriers that mark the right edge of a road, a division between lanes travelling in the same direction, the left edge of a lane and road, or a division between lanes travelling in opposite directions.

Although some places have permanently-installed road signs that blink in synchronized fashion, I am unaware of any wireless units that do so using a global synchronizing signal.
-- supercat, Feb 10 2005

WWV? http://www.grc.nasa...WWW/MAEL/ag/wwv.htm
[half, Feb 10 2005]

Synchronised Indicators Synchronised_20Indicators
[joee, Feb 11 2005]

[Unabubba]: //As I pointed out elsewhere, this is partially baked in Italy, on the Autostradale.//

Are those WWV-synchronized, or permanently installed hardwired? This idea was in response to that, but designed to allow for easy temporary installation.
-- supercat, Feb 10 2005


Thanks for the link [half], that'd be the WWV I'm thinking of. Pretty cheap and simple receiver hardware would be all that was needed; something like a Cypress PSOC could probably handle the radio receiver and blinker control quite nicely.
-- supercat, Feb 11 2005



random, halfbakery