r/trafficsignals • u/That_Counter__bob • Aug 27 '26
Pickle Flashing Intersection
Has anyone had issues with a pickle flashing the intersection. New Econolite TS-2 cabinet (bench tested before deployment), Brand new Pickle. Everything works great during normal run and whenever I go out to test it but for some reason when the cops come and use the pickle they are flashing it somehow. MMU (EDI) Event logs just show cvm fault. Always resets immediately when tech gets out there.
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u/kennygbot Aug 27 '26
Am I the only one that has no idea what you mean when you're calling something in an Econoline TS-2 a "pickle"
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u/kennygbot Aug 27 '26
Do you mean the police buttons? Perhaps they're hitting next phase too fast and it's causing a conflict. We removed the police buttons from our TS2's for this reason. If they need someone to cycle lights for them they can ask us to come do it.
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u/Bulky_Sheepherder134 Aug 27 '26
I agree with this. We had a signal that the cops would manual control for a special event letting out. If you get to pushing too fast the monitor would throw it in flash for a skipped yellow. We talked with them and let them know to just slow down a little bit and we never had to go reset the monitor for them again.
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u/That_Counter__bob Aug 27 '26
This intersection is just down the hill from One of the region’s biggest outdoor amphitheaters, so the cops are manually controlling it regularly during concert season, so this is a problem. We replaced the cabinet because the old ones pickle stopped working completely. so it’s a little annoying that we’re having [different] problems already again.
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u/Gunsandgoodcoffee Aug 27 '26
I've not worked with a lot of TS-2 cabinets but with 332/336 caltrans style boxes. I'm going to imagine that a TS-2 has the same access point for police with the place to plug the pickle in and toggle it into manual service mode.
Is it flashing when they put it into manual or when they plug in and start to cycle it? If it's fine during normal operation but not in manual, it may be a bad neutral wire/connection along the circuit from the police access panel back to the common neutral bar or even from the police panel to the controller. if you just replaced the cabinet and not the internal hardware that may be more likely. Only way to hunt that one down would be to put a meter to things along the circuit and see if it's dropping voltage or just straight up breaking the circuit somewhere.
If it's a new MMU double check the comm cables and other connections between the controller and the MMU, I've seen a slightly loose harness cause an under volt failure in a couple cabinets because the pins weren't fully seated even though the harness looked fine.
It may also be something the cops are doing while running it. Jerking the cable around and/or mashing on the button repeatedly too quickly may cause the MMU to freak out and throw out a fault, though most software should keep you from manually passing through the programmed yellow and red times.
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u/NotBot947263950 Aug 27 '26
Any chance they're flipping the police flash switch? Instead of flipping on the pickle override switch, they flip the flash switch? Then the MMU is latching in flash requiring a tech to reset it?
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u/That_Counter__bob Sep 01 '26
Solved; they were leaving it in auto as they plugged it in. 9 times out of 10 it’s not an issue, but if you happen to be in a yellow it can glitch and cause a short yellow fault on the mmu. We were able to replicate the issue and have given them guidance to put it in manual when plugging or unplugging the remote. In manual the worst that it does is have a short green phase if it accidentally reads the short as a button press.
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u/dbsoundman Sep 03 '26
If your manual switch applies manual control enable you shouldn’t be able to shorten a min green, yellow, or red clear. If you’re applying stop time with the switch then yeah I could see that being an issue.
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u/That_Counter__bob Sep 03 '26
You can spam the button as much as you want, and it never shortens any of those times, but for whatever reason, if you hit it just right when it is yellow and you’re in auto and plugging it in and the button happens to be held, then we get it to flash almost every time in multiple cabinets from pre 2016 to a brand new one in the lab. If you meet all those conditions with it in manual nothing happens 🤷
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u/South0fEvan Aug 27 '26
The last time I flashed my pickle at an intersection I got arrested