As a fun fact, given I once worked at TFL I happen to know that the url https://now.tfl.gov.uk/ provides the reactive status page used on their boards.
If you fire up headless chrome, navigate, then screenshot (I believe there are query params you can use as well (although can’t remember the server side ones)) then raster with PIL+dither mode you get quite a good status board. Can provide the code if needed when I get home.
Reminder to put the bins out on Wednesday?
Do we have a smart meter? Maybe how much electricity has been used so far each day (might help us to think to turn things off)?
The person who’s is hosting and what time they are hosting till?
Messages from the directors (not everyone reads discourse)? E.g. Announcing an upcoming volunteer day.
I think it would be really cool to display which tools are tagged in for folks closing the space! There’s an up to date JSON object in Discourse that tells you the tools (but not who) that are tagged in.
We are already at the feature creep part of the project, I see 
It’s taken some time because I was off on holidays, but I’ve now deployed a “beta” version in the space:
It currently sits on top of one of the wall-mounted component boxes in the electronics area, the “enclosure” is very rudimetnary and there’s a sensitive ribbon cable going to the display, please don’t try to move it anywhere else.
The QR code leads to a tool page I’ve made Bus & Train Departures Display - I’ll leave more instructions there.
I was not seeing the 37 bus on it. Would it be possible to add? There’s a few of us on that line.
Oh yes, the 37 is at another bus stop. I’ll add it next time I’m at the space (and maybe think about how to make this display configurable remotely).
It’s very likely that that area will be changing soon, perhaps it should be by the door?
Yeah, I definitely need to find a better place for it. I’ll come in next week and finish the enclosure, and then I can put it somewhere else.
Very cool project @futureshape!
A couple of observations so far - it seems to get hung up and stop updating from time to time, probably need to look at the logs etc…
Also - maybe add the last update date in addition to just the time, because when it does stop updating it unfortunately could be last updated yesterday not today!
Thanks!!
it seems to get hung up and stop updating from time to time, probably need to look at the logs etc…
I need to find a way to get it to save some logs somewhere first … it’s Micropython, so the onboard thing is pretty lightweight, but maybe there’s a way to send some “heartbeat” and some logs to the cloud somewhere. Or to at least set up an onboard watchdog that auto-restarts it more reliably than my current exception handlers.
when it does stop updating it unfortunately could be last updated yesterday not today
What do they say about a stopped clock? It’s still right twice a day 
(or once, if I remembered to use 24h time). Yes, I’ll add the date too 
I’ll come in on Monday (or Tuesday, if nobody is hosting on Monday) to work on this, and also play with another option that uses a VGA display.
@asander1 This has now been updated to show the last updated date and more importantly to have a watchdog timer which should automatically reset it if it crashes.
@Kyle I’m also adding the bus stops for the 37 bus … and this is where I realised that my approach to organise screens around bus stops isn’t ideal. For example the bus stops for the 37 next to Hern Hil station also show buses that stop just outside the space in Brockwell Park. So there’s a bit of duplication, and you probably wouldn’t go to the bus stop further away to catch your bus.
I’ll look for a way to better organise this, probably by bus and then by direction, but I’m probaby not finishing this today.
Nice work! Will check it out!
I’ve left it to sit near the front door for now, until I can come back again to build an enclosure and find a more permanent place.
If it does get stuck again, please let me know, it would be interesting to find out why.
Very useful thank you
Definitely a plus
I really want to build a case for that board just flapping in the breeze…
If you want to finish the case, go ahead I was going to come in and finish it off but I’m currently down with a cold, hope I’ll be better over the next couple of days and I can pop in
FYI, it looks like the e-paper display may have been a poor choice for frequent refreshes, as it’s already faded away. I’ll see if I can resurrect it but in the meanwhile I’m also trying a different approach to output this to a VGA monitor.
I’m going to mark one of the monitors that were destined for recycling with my username and ask that it’s not thrown away so it can be used for this project. I might take it home temporarily while working on this, if that’s OK.
Do they only have a set number of refreshes before they become useless?
