Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

balena.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 146 posts

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#111

Post by leipert »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #73
jonahhorowitz wrote: post #28

I need one of these, but showing my upcoming meetings. Then I need it to start blinking when I'm supposed to be somewhere besides my desk.

Doesn't, like, all software that has anything to do with a calendar already do reminders? I know Outlook and Google Calendar do.

Well, sometimes you are in Do not Disturb mode, so notifications don't come through. Also, this thing would always be on, and you simply need to glance over to see:

Next meeting in X minutes. Also my calendar is kinda full, so seeing conflicts for the next meetings would be super-cool.

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#112

Post by tacLog »

alexandros wrote: post #49
tacLog wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I just had a quick question. I have been looking at building a project on Balena OS and raspberry pi 0 W. I want to deploy it in a hard to get to place and don't want to have to replace the SD card for a good amount of time. I was wondering if Balena OS with Balena cloud managing it puts more or less strain the the sd card write cycles than Raspbian. Chris's application seems to write little or nothing to the sd…

Hey, balenaOS has been designed for long term deployment. As such, we have a read-only partition for the hostOS. We also have a second host partition so we can update the OS remotely and atomically. In general, we've tuned all sorts of elements in this direction as our customers really don't want to run around collecting sd cards from all over the world.

Thanks, Have you done any testing on the effect of something like leaving persistent logging on vs off. I know that writes to the state partition which is not read only.

Is there a way to push device logs to another service to keep track of them long term?

How did you come up with the pricing model of essentials vs micro-services?

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#113

Post by taude »

guptaneil wrote: post #9
supernova87a wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be really amusing. Those are called Solari boards, by the way, after the manufacturer (Solari di Udine). Maybe someone enterprising might (or has?) created a character flipping routine that mimics the search through the tiles and set it to the authentic sounds? The attempt by that company to create their own digital version is really bad. (search youtube for it)

Looks like https://www.vestaboard.com is that enterprising company. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/1/11/16876582/v... I've never used it, but it does look interesting.

They are coming summer 2020, for about $2200. (I think it's been delayed a few times). They look cool. But for my personal use, not $2200 cool.

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#116

Post by fermuch »

mainlineman wrote: post #67
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 :)

I haven't used balena but I have worked with other IoT SAAS companies in the past. All these services seem rather expensive for what you get. Other than creating an easy way to push OS updates to field devices what would I get from your service?

Note: I am in no way affiliated to balena, only a happy customer.

As a long time customer of balena, I can assure they are a ton for what you pay for.

* faster development times: git push and your code is built and compiled in their cloud (with real ARM servers), and downloaded from your devices. Doing CI/CD for iot is a great experience with balena.

* the support is tremendous: several times I found very specific use cases that failed or wasn't what the balena APIs where expecting, and after contacting the support, they even put me directly with the developers in charge of those areas to discuss if it makes sense to add it as a feature to balena, or if they can provide me a workaround

* again, the support: I have around 10 years of experience with Linux derived systems, but some things still are black magic to me (like debugging problems with aufs partitions). The support of balena goes to the deepest level possible to solve your problem, even if you aren't in the private support tier. You just enable access to your board to support and they get inside and try to find the problem. It's truly amazing. They are even open to discuss how to improve what they are giving you or the tools.

* total control of your fleet: need to set a flag for a client? Just set an environment variable from the api or the dashboard and each device will update its state when they come back online

* amazing tools: the balena dashboard feels as polished as their other projects, like etcher, if not even more. Any kind of need you have (remote access to the device? Proxy to a port in the device? contact the supervisor of the device from a proxy inside their VPN?) they give to you.

And even more, but this is already a long post.

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#117

Post by jedimastert »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #19

This is really cool! One thing that always annoys me with those signs is when they try to put too much information on them. You have all of the stops, fine. You then have all of the information about the train splitting which you might well need. But then they start adding information about short platforms etc. It takes several minutes for it all to scroll past. Which is super annoying if you're trying to work out if…

I know it's a lot less complex, but on the MBTA all of the signs only show next two trains and how long they'll take to arrive. The extra information comes in where each of the displays are.

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#118

Post by zrobotics »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #88
hemantv wrote: post #54

Why I can't use my old phones to do this is beyond me. I have one windows phone lying around and a few android phones. Everything is there in a neat package but the manufacturer make it so hard to tinker with them.

Blame the rise of the app store. The old Windows Mobile phones were fully open and work just fine for what you want; write your app, load it onto the phone, and just launch it.

For a one off project, why wouldn't an old android phone work? It isn't that hard to sideload an app onto the device, and apps can be developed to comm with external devices through USB OTG adapters.

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#119

Post by asteli »

asteli wrote: post #87
harpastum wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a great Github project for building your own Splitflap/Solari displays from the ground up for $20 each https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap Right now it's focusing on 40-character flaps (not super convent for clock-making), but it's open-source so I'm sure you could modify it for your purposes with some effort.

That's just for the enclosure. It looks like it comes out to 60-70$ depending on how you build it. I'm targeting sub $50, but it's tough. Good resource though, didn't know about those cheap geared stepper motors.

followup: actually I went to the the builder's youtube video and they're claiming $25~$30 per module. so pretty good.

Re: A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

#120

Post by asteli »

kickopotomus wrote: post #30
asteli wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're really cool! The original Solari board modules are mega expensive though. I looked at getting some to make a clock, and it probably would have cost me in the thousands. As an indirect result I now have a project in the works to make them. The concept is simple, but building them to be inexpensive is a challenge. Every extra bracket or fastener gets multiplied by _n_ modules.

I too have been wanting to make a split-flap display. I would be interested to hear more about your project if you have any posts or resources somewhere.

I've been taking notes as I go, going to put together a slide preso at some point with stuff I learned in the process.

I'm a lazy engineer, so I avoid doing tedious hand-crafted stuff. I'm using 30pt museum board for the flaps currently (I was going to use plastic, but found that matte paper types of material work really well).

Thus most of the work has gone into designing something that's highly repeatable with minimal labor. All the cards are printed and then laser cut, the bracketry will be CNC waterjet and has a single bend, the center hub is 3D printed. I'm making it DIN rail mountable for easy installation and maintenance.

Here's a sneak peek. https://imgur.com/a/2ROn6Nd

Post reply on HN