As the weather is warming up here in Norway — my kids have gotten their bikes out. To make it more fun, both for them and me, I figured I’d build a series of traffic signals that they could play with.

I first started with a traffic light, simple — red, yellow and green. To control it I am using a Raspberry Pi Zero W, this will allow me to make it communicate on Wi-Fi and MQTT later.

My twins and I both like LEGO, and LEDs. I figured I’d make some simple LED street lights that we could use to build a LEGO scenery.

My twin boys are, like their dad, fascinated by switches and flashing lights. I needed an excuse to use the Raspberry Pi Zero in a project, so I built them a WiFi MQTT controlled alarm module. With a couple of switches, some panel indicators, a buzzer, and a blue LED strobe.

I built a garden playhouse, for the kids, and of course it needed some LED lights.

A while back my kids got this SOS station toy, it came with a few emergency cars and the boys quite liked it. My girl friend and myself however; hated it, it had a speaker and made a high siren sound and an annoying voice would shout things like “all cars respond”. So I modified it; ripped out the speaker and mounted a few LEDs instead, so now it flashes but no sound.