raspberryNS
An information screen using the NS API designed as a small Raspberry Pi web app.
Developed by vdveen. This local web app will fetch departure information from any NS station in the Netherlands and display it realtime in the browser.
Features:
- Responsive web app compatible with all screen resolutions. Designed for the 320x480 Adafruit 3,5" TFT screen.
- Displays up to ten train departures from any train station in the Netherlands
- Updates every minute, with a loading bar indicating the next refresh
- Displays departure time, departure platform, major calling stations and train type
- Displays delays, changed platforms and non-NS operators flexibly
- Can highlight trains that go to a specific destination
- Can 'skip over' trains that depart in the next X amount of minutes
- Official NS colors used
Installation guide:
The app runs on NodeJS and two NPM packages. Some Raspberry Pi's might need node-semver as a dependancy for NodeJS.
$ sudo apt-get install nodejs npm node-semver
$ npm install express ns-api
It also requires an API key. This can be obtained from https://www.ns.nl/ews-aanvraagformulier/.
Open the ns.js file and edit the following in the 'User Configuration' part of the script:
- Add your username and API key after the var username and var password. Make sure they are between quotation marks.
- [Optionally] Change the station that you want information to be displayed from.
- [Optionally] Change the 'timedelta' variable. Setting this to 5 will make the information screen skip over all trains departing in the next 5 minutes.
- [Optionally] Change the highlighted station. A departing train is highlighted if its destination or route text contains the combination of letters defined here.
How to run: basically, run this file in the terminal using node. CD to the correct folder:
cd ~/[yourpath]/webapp
Then, run the ns.js file in Node: node ns.js
Then, open any web browser and go to 127.0.0.1:3000. Alternatively, you can run the command chromium-browser --kiosk --new-window to open the web app fullscreen.
If you want to have the server run when starting your Raspberry Pi, you can append a line of code to your rc.local file.