Logan Arkema's ESP8266-Powered DCTransistor Shows You WMATA Train Positions in Real-Time
DC community organizations chosen as the recipients of a charity auction for the project's very first working prototype.
Maker Logan Arkema has put together an Arduino-compatible Espressif ESP8266-powered circuit board designed to display live Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) train locations using mapped-out LEDs — and is auctioning his first prototype for charity.
"[The] boards work by getting real-time train positions WMATA makes available through its API [Application Programming Interface]," Arkema explains of the project, "and turning on LEDs for the station a train is arriving at or has most recently left from. WMATA provides a list of every train in service, the line it's on, and which circuit (i.e. track segment) it's currently on. For each train, the board checks which stations the train is between, including if it's arriving at a station (currently using two circuits before a station as 'arriving'); and records that the train’s line has a train at that station."
The LEDs, meanwhile, are added to the board in such a way as to form a map — with circuit traces and silkscreening displaying possible routes and labeled stations. Three AA batteries or a USB connection provide the power, with the Espressif ESP8266 connecting to a local Wi-Fi network in order to link up to the WMATA API.
The project is similar in principle to Vonmule's wall-mounted Chicago Transit Authority metro map, complete with the ability to pull in live train time data so the LED positions represent actual train locations at any given time — though aesthetically it's closer to Chai Jia Xun's MetroM series, which simply light the LEDs in a preset pattern for aesthetic purposes only.
Arkema has released design files and source code for the project on GitHub under the reciprocal Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license and permissive MIT license respectively — but is also auctioning off the first prototype board for charity, prior to the release of commercial versions later this year.
At the time of writing, the auction had reached $333 — all of which, Arkema has confirmed, will be donated to Washington DC community organizations focused on reproductive rights and migrant support.
More information is available on the project website.