Mini Traffic Light System
Overview
During the Fall 2025 semester, I took an engineering course called “Mechatronics”, where we learned how to implement our programing knowledge from the prerequisite class to code a microcontroller and pair it with all sorts of different electronic components. The beauty of the class were the projects, where we had to combine what we learned in lecture and lab to build something functional and more complicated. The project I am highlighting here was my first project for the class, where we were tasked with constructing a mini traffic light system.
Objective
This project tasked me with designing, coding, and constructing a mini scale traffic light system for a four-way intersection, including left turn lanes. The system should cycle through green to yellow to red LEDs like a real traffic light. Using some sort of sensor, the system should be able to detect a vehicle in the left lane and, when the cycle gets to that light’s green cycle, turn on both green and yellow to indicate a left turn arrow. Finally, the system should use photo resistors to detect when light levels are low and turn on four clear LEDs.
Method
While my professor taught me how to use all the components individually and gave me guidelines for what my system had to do, such as cycle through red, green, and yellow LEDs like a real system and use sensors to light up mini street lamps when it got dark, I was left to my own ingenuity to figure out how to combine all these different pieces to work how I wanted.
Results
My professor had a no-teams policy for the class, and I thank him for it because it allowed me to learn so much, for when a problem came up and something did not work the way I intended, I had to deduce a solution myself. This project taught me the importance of fail safes, because even though this was a mini scale system, all the skills I acquired through the class can absolutely be used on larger scale projects out in the real world where people’s safety must be accounted for. It was a challenge figuring out how to make sure my system was safe and reliable, but learning how to implement fail safes is a very valuable skill that I believe will benefit me wherever I go.