OpenBenches Train Sign

Displaying the most recent bench from https://openbenches.org/ on a 96ⅹ26 train sign.

Picture of a train sign, repeated several times. Each has a message on it which is from the memorial plaque of a bench

There are three parts

(transformer) a script to turn the OpenBenches RSS Feed into the text for the most recent bench
(fetcher) an ESP8266 microcontroller to fetch the latest bench, and push it over I2C
(controller) an Arduino to control the text on the sign, and listen on I2C for new text to display

Transformer

These are a few CGI scripts in `./transformer/, which I host on a server, currently at these endpoints:

This is code to flash an ESP8266, in ./fetcher/.

To program the ESP, use Platform IO for VSCode or another method. To use PlatformIO, you must use VSCode.

Copy the example secrets file (./fetcher/src/secrets.example.h) and enter your Wi-Fi details, and the URL of the file to fetch (i.e., http://server.alifeee.net/bench).

This is code to flash an Arduino Uno, in ./controller/.

It uses Serial communication to listen for messages, which are then displayed on the train sign.

For more information on this see the train sign repository.