Home made Departure board

[russell pirie]

Finally got round to turning my virtual departure board(see below) into a real one :)

http://departure.homeip.net/?orig=RDG&dest=NLS,BPW

It is 192x32 built using a raspberry pi as controller (running same script as above but in nodejs) This talks i2c to a DMD controller board running the display update firmware on a PIC32 micro controller. The Pi has a WiFi dongle to get the departure updates from Darwin API.

The whole display is completely standalone (Given it has access to WiFi and power) Just plug it in and it will boot and start showing the departures for a set station.

Below are some videos of it in action. The colours show up very badly :( In real life its a really nice yellow for the main text with red for 'delays' and 'expected' and a nice for 'on time' and calling at times.

It looks a bit jumpy this is due to refresh rate of my phone camera is not quite in sync with the display in real life it is very smooth.

http://youtu.be/DEwDWlZowLk 

http://youtu.be/gtZFiRWk_Vo

http://youtu.be/MbygNOh5m2c

I soon realized after building this that the real departure boards do not use 8x8 matrix block but single 3mm or 5mm amber LED's. So I am going to build a new version from scratch using 3x (192x9 3mm LEDs). This new version will be identical to the real ones.

Regards

Russell Pirie

[Tom Cairns]

That is seriously cool.

What kind of cost was it for the parts to do that?!

Tom

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Tom Cairns

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[James Singleton]

Awesome stuff! Do you mind if I use this as an example in the event [0] I'm running tonight?

[0] http://www.meetup.com/Cleanweb-London/events/219930060/

[russell pirie]

Thanks :)

Now to persuade my gf to let me have it running 24x7 in bed room so I can wake up and see if I can stay in bed any longer in-case of delays :D

As a one off costs was about:

1x PSU £12

3x Dot Matrix £150

1x DMD Driver board £15

1x Raspberry Pi £22

1x WiFi Dongle £5

2x Metal Work £10

Something along those lines :)

Regards

Russell Pirie

[James Singleton]

You should write this up on a blog or something like https://www.hackster.io/raspberry-pi.

Got any pictures? Or can I just screen-grab/show the videos for a presentation tonight?

[russell pirie]

Hey James sure you can :)

I only have these photos on me at the moment.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwEoyDFwowU3ZWQ5MHZnZUxscFk/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwEoyDFwowU3T3dPejlDcnNHOTQ/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwEoyDFwowU3REsxcTJIRzlpQlE/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwEoyDFwowU3bG1kWXJOTWJ4VzA/view?usp=sharing

Regards

Russell Pirie

[James Singleton]

Cool, thanks.

Pretty sure the Raspberry Pint meetup tomorrow would be interested in this too: http://www.meetup.com/Raspberry-Pint-London/events/219071225/

Cheers
James

[Douglas Lima]

Very cool indeed! I've playing around Pis and Rail Data, so seeing your stuff made me want to do it!

Would you tell me what kind of led matrix did you use? I'm willing to use a smaller version, but adding more info like current weather and time.

Cheers,

Douglas

[russell pirie]

Hello

I used these displays:

http://www.embeddedadventures.com/led_matrix_display_LDP-6432.html

My next version I will use actual amber 3mm LED's like the real ones do.

Regards

Russell Pirie

[russell pirie]

This video shows off the colours a bit better :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkg2aJA21rs (set hd)