https://old.bill.dev/tags/project/ Recent content in Project on Bill Glover Hugo en-gb hello@bill.dev (Bill) hello@bill.dev (Bill) Sun, 28 Sep 2025 22:27:35 +0100 https://old.bill.dev/2022/05/01/diy-traffic-lights/ Sun, 01 May 2022 17:32:04 +0100hello@bill.dev (Bill) https://old.bill.dev/2022/05/01/diy-traffic-lights/ <p>The imagination of a child can bring a Lego city to life. I can still remember my dad helping me build an automated &ldquo;Mind the Gap&rdquo; announcement for the 12V Lego railway system. It was a classic case of over-engineering; completely unnecessary but so much fun.</p> <p>A microswitch carefully placed at the end of a station platform joined two pins on a parrallel port cable (the wide ones that we used to use to connect printers). A BASIC program running in an infinite loop handled switch de-bouncing and then started a sequence of beeps accompanied by text on an orange display to warn the little Lego figures they needed to Mind the Gap when leaving the train. I loved it.</p>