My dot matrix bus display is finally in alpha testing

After what it felt like an eon jn the pipeline, my bus time dot matrix was finally deployed (to my living room).

It’s been working super well and it does exactly what I intended it to do: give me the wait time for my bus at the stop of my choice, which is incredibly helpful for myself and my partner on weekday mornings. I’m elated to have seen this project through to this milestone.

Here’s a peek:

Taking this little personal project on was a really cool experience: it allowed me to start working with a new programming language (Go) that I like A LOT; let me find a lot of pleasure in using electronics to solve day-to-day problems (I already know what the next project is); and taught so much about programming overall (by shooting myself in the foot a few times during this project, one of them pretty much granting a full rewrite).

But enough with the good news. There is also plenty to improve. A couple init time bug is really annoying me and I need to dig into the logs to figure out what the heck happens there. Sometimes, after connecting a device, it takes the broadcaster (that's what I called the program) a few attempts to be receive actual data.

I also need to change the board I'm using to something that I can use over wi-fi. An ESP32 is probably what this is calling for.

I'd also love to turn this thing into an actual device, with proper wiring of the components and a cool case. Time to put my soldering and 3d-printing on (I've never done any of those, but y'all know I love a challenge).