At this point, there are tons of apps that let us know when our trains are running late. But apps aren’t nearly as pretty as an LED light strip set up to blink when something’s wrong with your commute.
London-based developer James Singleton used a Raspberry Pi B+ and the London Underground’s API to turn a Blinky Tape LED strip into a combination light decoration/train delay notification system.
Blinky Tape lets you customize the colors on your LED strip, so Singleton color-coded his to correspond to the colors of the Tube.
Singleton published the code he used for the project on Github. And even though it’s London-specific, any train system that has an API like London’s could be measured in this way. It’d be great to see someone use the MTA’s API to create one of these strips for New Yorkers who want a prettier way to see how screwed the L train is.
[Hackaday]
DISCUSSION
hmm... so I am wondering if you could do something like this and translate your standard commute into a visual signal...along the lines of green (all clear) to red (sig alert or some other major disruption) and others in between.
I realize there are 1e6 apps that provide real time traffic data, but the enginerd in me likes the idea of getting ready in my domicile and being to glance up at lights indicating how the commute is looking rather than checking my phone which i don’t normally do while getting ready.