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Posted by thimabi 10/23/2024

Never Missing the Train Again(lilymara.xyz)
371 points | 136 commentspage 3
brendannee 10/25/2024|
I made this BART arrival display website designed to just show upcoming departure times for a specific stop. The idea was that this could be used on a wall mounted display so you could glance at it on your way out the door to help you know how fast to walk. https://bart.blinktag.com
bambax 10/25/2024||
I love this kind of observation:

> like most truly useful things we need to build it ourselves

but I was surprised that the author insists on displaying an image on the Kindle. The last third of the post is dedicated to building that PNG file. Is it possible to send text? It would be easier but maybe it's not possible...?

FrecklySunbeam 10/25/2024|
It's the easiest way to display complex graphics on the Kindle which take over the entire screen. Yes, I could use HTML and the browser, but there's a header and footer that I don't want to see (plus I'm not convinced the Kindle would stay awake). I could have sent text, but the renderer available at the CLI is extremely limited. I'm not sure if I could have tapped into a mobi/pdf renderer to make it show up similarly to an e-book, but I'm doubtful if I could have made a mobi file show up in landscape like this. I was also building on several other tutorials that use PNG files, so it just made sense to do this.
pugworthy 10/24/2024||
In truth I rarely ever miss a train, a bus, or a plane. They miss me though because they are delayed.
m463 10/24/2024|
I think travel by bus/train is more friendly when they have "headway".

Instead of a specific schedule, there is a bus/train every "n" minutes.

rsynnott 10/25/2024||
That works when it's high frequency enough. If it's every five minutes, no problem. If it's every 20, this doesn't work quite as well. If it's every hour it's unworkable.
physhster 10/25/2024||
Really timely, I'm currently writing Arduino code to get my bus departure times displayed on a cheap TFT screen. There's so many projects around this, but it's the first time I see it on a Kindle. Awesome!
beeflet 10/25/2024||
its interesting that the author is using rust and is also trans. its kind of a trend with these blog posts
ketzo 10/25/2024|
I say this completely unironically: trans women programmers w/ blogs are a critical pillar of the OSS ecosystem, it rules
userbinator 10/25/2024||
[flagged]
Hnrobert42 10/25/2024||
Given the post's title, I hoped it would work with trains. In Washington, DC, it works with buses but not trains. What help would you need to make it work with trains?
FrecklySunbeam 10/25/2024|
It's really just a question of the transit provider giving you access to the data. My display shows mostly light rail schedules with a few buses. If your transit provider has real-time data for trains you can display it, if not you can't.
meindnoch 10/25/2024||
Why render a PNG when the Kindle already has a perfectly workable web browser? And don't even get me started on using Rust for parsing a JSON...
luxuryballs 10/25/2024||
Feels like a feature Google could make by using the same data they use for traffic monitoring. They know where the train shaped mass of people is.
jessekv 10/25/2024||
Cool! I made something like this on an old netbook in university.

I plotted bus locations in matplotlib, which was what I knew at the time.

The busses would clump up where I lived, so it was helpful to know if I should rush breakfast to catch a burst of busses or just wait for the next wave.

pimlottc 10/24/2024|
The CTA (in Chicago) has a nice customizable “next train screen” web app that’s perfect for this:

https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/diydisplay/

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