Tuesday 14 July 2020

London Underground Train Tracker

When you want to catch a train in a subway system, there are normally a variety of apps, as well as displays in the stations themselves. In fact, if you’re not familiar with the system, figuring out which train to take can be a bit of a challenge.

If you step back from the hustle of actually trying to cram into a car, however, such a system’s movement is quite beautiful, almost organic. The Traintrackr illustrates this quite nicely, as it tracks trains arriving at stations in the London Underground, using addressable LEDs on a rather large PCB.

Given its “pixely” nature, and its lack of specifics, you wouldn’t want to use it to actually catch a train. Instead, it’s a brilliant display of human movement as a sort of luminescent art piece. As such, it includes a wooden stand on which to show it off.

The device connects to tracking servers over WiFi, using what appears to be an onboard ESP module. Presumably you could use the device worldwide, though it would certainly be more meaningful if you had some experience with the system, or have to catch a train from time to time!

More UK-themed tracking devices can be found on Traintrackr’s Tindie store.



source https://blog.tindie.com/2020/07/london-underground-train-tracker/

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