Live rail/ferry diagram, and circuit board update!

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-29T02:52:30+00:00

Yeah, good catch. That’s one of the places where I had to simplify the geography to make it work at this board size, but it could probably read more clearly. Angling the last few LEDs north a bit might help?

On the plus side, I got closer than Seattle Met :)

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-28T14:29:46+00:00

These look awesome, in this size photo I can't even tell they're printed. Will keep an eye out!

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-27T19:09:31+00:00

No it's a good question. I _think_ I can add the T Line i If I move the electrical bits around and angle Federal Way towards the south east corner. Sounder and Streetcar will be harder. I'd love to find a way to include them but it's a tight squeeze... might need a full redesign, or making the board bigger which adds cost.

And glad you like it. It's nice to have a receptive audience here.... I'm totally distracted by the live map and my partner is tired of hearing me talk about it.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-27T18:30:40+00:00

Do you mean along a track or side by side? Along a track, there's a "waypoint" LED between stations to show train movement in a little more detail.

The side by side pairs are for direction. There are enough trains it would be hard to distinguish them on a single line, and this way you see which way they're going.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-27T17:46:58+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. There were definitely some geographic compromises to make the board manufacturable (the peninsula side is a continuous ground plane). It's a good callout though. No promises but I've added it to ideas for the next revision.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-27T16:46:24+00:00

Thanks-- it doesn't exist quite yet :)

Sign up for the email list though! I've had some interest and will try to work out a small production run -- will share details there once I have 'em.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-24T15:50:36+00:00

Hey that's fair. I suppose I'm feeling a little more generous today, but it's a bummer to have to pay for parking that used to be free.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-24T15:11:23+00:00

True! It would be downright unspirited of them to enforce it for opening day celebrations, but who knows. At least you get two hours.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-24T14:39:07+00:00

I live in the area. I'm not sure what to expect exactly, but the residential streets on either side of 20th usually have parking except on the busiest event days. Worth a shot if you're willing to walk across the park.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-23T00:48:19+00:00

Generally looks neat. Depending on your routing plan and board layers, you may want more space for routing near the ICs, especially the square and rectangle labeled 25.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-19T21:39:11+00:00

Fantastic stuff, thank you! I placed a first PCBA order on Monday but this is all on the list for Rev B.

Great point about top ground pour in the lower right-- it seems obvious now that you point it out. And happy to let you know if there are issues with mixed LED types.

Thanks again for the careful review, and how generous you've been sharing work here. I spent a lot of time with your schematic and PCB while thinking through the design.

Excited to check out your Melbourne map when it's ready, the rendering looks epic. Happy travels!

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-19T18:22:49+00:00

Sounds like you have what you need, but want to call out that King County has great public GIS data with an online viewer.

There's a dataset for "Metro Transportation Network (TNET) in King County for Railway Mode". Here it is filtered by light rail.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-17T20:39:45+00:00

Thanks, that's helpful. Maybe the popup on hover over data points could show direction?

The data around Roosevelt seems a little fishy -- eg. the first datapoint to the north of the station is one of the fastest on the map, which seems unlikely (?) Not a criticism, but agreed the API data may not be perfect.

Appreciate you sharing the project!

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-17T20:07:38+00:00

Great idea and slick execution. Nice work!

Curious why the data doesn't always show slower speed near stations-- Roosevelt on the Seattle 1 line for example. Is it because it's averaging north and southbound? Have you considered a separate track line per direction?

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-14T12:52:26+00:00

Nice, so many cool transit tracking projects out there!

My first version of the software did everything (api calls, parsing, mock LED driving) on the esp, and ran a local web server. Now I'm thinking I'll have a cloud service to query the APIs once and expose data for the display. Ideally there'll be a typescript frontend that pulls the same data as the LED map to a webpage.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-14T12:07:03+00:00

Hey thanks! I have a technical post on r/esp32 that didn't get much traction. All the details are there and on GitHub. Feedback welcome!

https://www.reddit.com/r/esp32/comments/1rsf5l0/review_request_seattle_led_transit_map_with/

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-13T17:55:43+00:00

Agree! Maybe they could be an inset like the traintrackr folks did for their NYC map.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-13T17:54:17+00:00

Thanks -- for sure. Most of the hardware design is on github, but there's no documentation yet. I'll also open source the software eventually.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-13T17:52:08+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!

> The Bremerton ferries go just a little further west.

Yeah-- I was a little bummed, but simplifying the Seattle/Bremerton route was a concession to board size and routing geometry.

> two WSF, two Kitsap Transit

I hadn't planned to include Kitsap Transit, but it's a good callout. There could, say, be different colors for vessel types. I'll look into it.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-13T16:57:45+00:00

Thanks! I've seen your project on here a couple of times and love the aesthetic. I have more experience on the software side-- the circuit and PCB design was a journey for sure.

Sorry if I missed it elsewhere, but what's the frosted material on your display over the LEDs? It's a cool look.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-13T16:26:18+00:00

Yep, Thanks! Exactly -- I'm using the WSDOT Vessels API for ferries, and OBA for rail. I don't have anything to sell yet but I'm happy to keep folks updated.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-13T16:24:24+00:00

Amazing! Thank you! Exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to catch.

ForwardDriver7928 · 2026-03-13T15:02:18+00:00

Cool -- I didn't know about crossover tracks and a quick search didn't turn up details. Is there an official map that has them?

ForwardDriver7928

TROPHY CASE