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A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

balena.io

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Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#91

Post by jsingleton »

alexandros wrote: post #18

Hey folks, balena.io founder here, just chiming in to mention that Chris is one of our Hardware Hackers in Residence, and if you think that doing HW projects with all sorts of cool technologies and writing them up for the world is your dream job, we're hiring! https://balena.workable.com/j/27A101659C Happy to answer any balena (or train station sign) related questions, of course :)

Hey, been a while. Glad things look to be going well.

This job looks awesome. Is it full time? I assume it is but worth asking.

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#92

Post by jsingleton »

kevan wrote: post #48

Pretty cool. When I took the train to work I made a simple stop-light with transit data. Trains ran every 10 minutes and it took me a few minutes to walk to the station. Green meant I could definitely catch the next train. Yellow meant I'd make it if I walked fast, and red meant I'd miss this train and need to wait for the next one.

I also found that a binary notification is all I needed. I just want to know if everything is running OK or if there are delays. So I built this a few years ago: https://unop.uk/train-disruption-indicator-with-a-blinky-tap...

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#93

Post by modsiw »

kevan wrote: post #48

Pretty cool. When I took the train to work I made a simple stop-light with transit data. Trains ran every 10 minutes and it took me a few minutes to walk to the station. Green meant I could definitely catch the next train. Yellow meant I'd make it if I walked fast, and red meant I'd miss this train and need to wait for the next one.

Idk where you live, but it ain’t Boston.

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#94

Post by roland35 »

sschueller wrote: post #8

Very cool but I find a pi is overkill for something like this. ESP8266 or ESP32 would work just as well.

If this is being designed as a consumer device that may be true, but the ESP devices have their own issues and the pi makes for a great proof of concept!

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#95

Post by tda »

jrockway wrote: post #85
tda wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year maybe, but I just bought a few for €3.80 each and €0.40 shipping from aliexpress.

Dev boards, or modules to solder onto a circuit board? If you are printing your own board, then yes, the ESP32 is way cheaper. If you are just making a one-off, though, I'm not sure where it wins except in power consumption.

this are dev boards. Just look here for example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32656775273.html, the nodemcu dev with USB for 3,55. You can even get a fully working board with a webcam for under 5 bucks (though that does need a UART bridge, no usb included). Unmounted esp32 chips are going for as low as 2,10

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#96

Post by benj111 »

fapjacks wrote: post #50
dwyerm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Solari Split-Flap Display? I love that they're making new ones! Starbucks has been putting them in their Reserve Roasteries. I'm also sort of happy with the 'modern' ones that are actually LCD screens with speakers making the noises. It's cheating, but it's a nice tribute.

There is something to be said for these kinds of vestigial remnants of technologies past. I've always been fascinated by them, and in fact this kind of thing in computer folklore -- for example parts of the docs that explain something exists "for historical reasons" -- are one of the things that got me into programming. For example the "size_t" size has pretty funny origins which I'll leave as an exercise to the read…

>"size_t" size has pretty funny origins

"Yep. Its origins lie in the old header we developed at Whitesmiths, Ltd. in the late 1970s. We used the typedef BYTES as the type of sizeof, to be sure we could count all the bytes in the largest declarable (or allocatable) object. X3J11 chose size_t to follow the *_t convention that had begun to creep up in Posix."

https://bytes.com/topic/c/answers/221996-origin-size_t-curio...

Do we have different senses of humour, or have you heard something different???

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#97

Post by roland35 »

alexandros wrote: post #18

Hey folks, balena.io founder here, just chiming in to mention that Chris is one of our Hardware Hackers in Residence, and if you think that doing HW projects with all sorts of cool technologies and writing them up for the world is your dream job, we're hiring! https://balena.workable.com/j/27A101659C Happy to answer any balena (or train station sign) related questions, of course :)

Cool project thank you for sharing it! I was checking out BalenaCloud and BelenaOS and noticed you support more advanced embedded devices (such as the pi) but are there any plans on supporting lower cost IoT devices? Similar to Azure IoT hub, Amazon FreeRTOS IoT, etc?

In either case I can completely see the value in these IoT SaaS services. A lot of companies I see which want to get into IoT are experts in their own field - not networking. It is very easy to underestimate how much work it is getting everything up and running which is required for a product. You can always roll your own cloud solution later on once you gain the expertise and market fit.

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#99

Post by alexandros »

roland35 wrote: post #97
alexandros wrote: post #18

Hey folks, balena.io founder here, just chiming in to mention that Chris is one of our Hardware Hackers in Residence, and if you think that doing HW projects with all sorts of cool technologies and writing them up for the world is your dream job, we're hiring! https://balena.workable.com/j/27A101659C Happy to answer any balena (or train station sign) related questions, of course :)

Cool project thank you for sharing it! I was checking out BalenaCloud and BelenaOS and noticed you support more advanced embedded devices (such as the pi) but are there any plans on supporting lower cost IoT devices? Similar to Azure IoT hub, Amazon FreeRTOS IoT, etc? In either case I can completely see the value in these IoT SaaS services. A lot of companies I see which want to get into IoT are experts in their own…

We're currently focused on devices that can run Linux. The smaller devices are a different kind of challenge, and while we do have some ideas about how to achieve the same level of developer experience for them, it's not out yet. :)

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#100

Post by alexandros »

jsingleton wrote: post #91
alexandros wrote: post #18

Hey folks, balena.io founder here, just chiming in to mention that Chris is one of our Hardware Hackers in Residence, and if you think that doing HW projects with all sorts of cool technologies and writing them up for the world is your dream job, we're hiring! https://balena.workable.com/j/27A101659C Happy to answer any balena (or train station sign) related questions, of course :)

Hey, been a while. Glad things look to be going well. This job looks awesome. Is it full time? I assume it is but worth asking.

Yup.
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