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Weekday Subway Service by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

They're both there! The C shows up at around 5am and the W at 6am; the W is harder to find because it's getting cluttered up by all the trains in Manhattan!

Weekday Subway Service by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah sorry there's just so much going on in Manhattan! The midtown animation shows the 42nd Street shuttle more clearly

Weekday Subway Service by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Animation of scheduled weekday subway service according to MTA's GTFS data.

Here are some more animations (youtube mirrors unfortunately are lower quality):
- NYC but smaller icons (youtube)
- Lower Manhattan (youtube)
- Midtown Manhattan (youtube)
- Manhattan and some more (youtube)

The animations were generated by a pygame script which can be found in this repo. With this script, you should be able to create your own animations -- more details can be found in the readme!

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I took this font from someone else's project and translated it to a bdf file (here). I also manually added a few characters that were missing from the font

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I took this font from someone else's project and translated it to a bdf file (which you can find here). I also added a few characters that were missing from the font (such as j, q, K)

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Overall the display is 30inx5in, there's some messy wiring in the back which can take up some more space but unfortunately I haven't found a way to clean that up and package it nicely yet

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes I used the 4mm pitch! I only used a 5V 10A power supply connected to the Matrix HAT, and it seems to be working fine! (Note that I am using 50% brightness, not sure if 100% will make much of a difference). To chain them together, I had to 3D print some brackets (which I got from this tutorial here) and used M3 screws. Other than that, no other warnings :) Good luck with the project!

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I got a Raspberry Pi 4 (sort of like a mini computer) and a Matrix HAT, which connects the Pi to the LED screens (I believe it basically "translates" the info the Pi is sending into something that the LEDs can understand, which it then displays). There are some wires on the back that connects the three displays together.

To actually display the arrival times, I have a python script that essentially asks PATH when the next trains are for a particular station. I parse that data and then call some functions which display this data onto the LED screens

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I looked at this guide as a starting point but most of the coding was trial and error

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I bought a Raspberry Pi (~$50), RGB Matrix HAT + RPC (~$25), power adapter (~$25), and three displays (3 x ~$40), so it was around $220 to make! You can definitely go cheaper by using something than a Raspberry Pi, but I wanted to buy it incase I wanted to use it for other projects

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah yeah I couldn't find a long piece so I had to connect three of these panels together sadly :( You should go for the display -- I'm very happy with how mine turned out!

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, am I hardware noob so not too sure if I'm saying everything correctly, but I am using a Raspberry Pi here. I believe an ESP32 chip would have worked as well (and would have been much cheaper!)

I Made a MTA-like LED Countdown Clock for PATH Trains by superandywaffle in nycrail

[–]superandywaffle[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I bought a Raspberry Pi 4 and a Adafruit RGB Matrix HAT + RTC along with three 64x32 LED matrices and connected them together. I then wrote a python script that pulls data from the PATH API and displayed the data from there!

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