Introduction
I’m lucky enough to live close to a few bus stops in London. As is always the case, the frequency and timing of London buses can be temperamental at the best of times. In the way most good projects start, I contemplated a way to save precious minutes, by spending way longer than that designing a solution for this.
I’ve got a spare Raspberry Pi sitting around, and the TFL provides API on all stops so I decided to build a quick display to show bus arrivals the stops closest to me.
The high level steps were as follows:
- Query the TfL API for bus arrival times
- Process the data to show relevant information
- Display it on an LCD screen
- Refresh periodically to keep it current
Bus App
The final application works by:
- Making concurrent API calls for northbound and southbound buses
- Processing the arrival data with proper error handling and data validation
- Formatting the output to fit the 16x2 display constraints
- Updating every 30 seconds with automatic recovery if anything fails
Here’s a photo of the working display:
The application has been running reliably for a few weeks now. I’ve made the repository public for anyone who happens to live near a London bus stop and has a spare Raspberry Pi lying around. While it’s a simple solution to a specific problem, it’s made my morning commute just a little bit easier to manage, but doesn’t solve for the ominous “this bus is on diversion”, I’ll have to figure that one out next time…