Busy Bar community app

NYC Subway

Live next-train departures for any station in the system, on the 72×16 LED matrix of a BUSY Bar.

Generated route bullets for every NYC subway line: 1-7, A-Z, shuttles, SIR — Every line, generated at startup in official MTA colors.

Pick a station. That's it.

Station, direction, lines. The app does the rest, straight from the MTA's realtime feeds. No API key, no account.

The whole system

1–7, A–Z, the shuttles, the Staten Island Railway. A 496-station directory is baked in; multi-line stations like Canal St just work.

Real MTA bullets

Route bullets and departure animations are generated for exactly the routes your station serves, then uploaded to the device once. White letters sit on the firmware's baked drop shadow, and rush-hour expresses (<6> <7> <F>) get their diamonds.

Departures at 60 fps

When a train leaves, a compiled .anim sweeps the line's color across the display, played by the device itself. Smooth over USB, Wi‑Fi, or cloud.

Polite by default

Shows when the Bar's switch is on OFF and yields to everything else. The dial scrolls upcoming trains; each position dot takes its train's line color.

Yellow N bullet with NOW on the BUSY Bar — Next train, minute-accurate

Yellow N departure flash on the BUSY Bar — White letters over the firmware's own drop shadow

Blue A departure flash on the BUSY Bar — Generated for every other line

When service breaks

Suspensions, planned work, delays, held trains. Read live from the MTA's alert and vehicle feeds, drawn in the Bar's own screen language.

The departure card with an amber corner dot, then an amber flash sweeps in a red ALERT page where the real MTA headline scrolls — **Delays.** An amber dot on the card, then the real headline sweeps in.

Red page reading DELAYED, with how long the train has been held scrolling beneath — **Held train.** How long, and where it is stuck.

Deep red page with the route bullet, NO TRAINS, and the suspension notice scrolling beneath — **Suspended.** The route and the reason take the screen.

Yellow page with hazard stripe edges, PLANNED, and the work notice scrolling beneath — **Planned work.** Hazard stripes and the notice.

Blue page reading REROUTED with the track change detail scrolling beneath — **Track change.** Said plainly, in blue.

Configured in seconds

Environment variables, or CLI flags. In busybar-manager, make each station a variation and switch from the dashboard.

# finds the Bar over USB, Wi-Fi, or cloud
pip install requests websockets
STATION="Bedford Av" DIRECTION=downtown python app.py

Var	Meaning
`STATION`	Station name, fuzzily matched
`DIRECTION`	`N` / `S` / `uptown` / `downtown`, or a label like `Brooklyn`
`ROUTES`	Optional filter like `N,Q`
`STOPS`	Exact GTFS platform ids, for full control
`BUSYBAR_PRIORITY`	`1` shows only when the Bar is OFF, `30+` shows over the clock

Manager setup and the full reference live in the README.

Two silver New York City subway cars signed for the 7 Flushing Local

Busy Bar community app

CATA Bus

Live CATA bus departures for State College & Penn State — the campus-bound V and VE at Vairo Blvd out of the box — on a BUSY Bar.

Get it on GitHub CATA open data

Generated route plates for the V, VE and NV CATA routes — Route plates in CATA's colors — two-letter routes included.

It knows the timetable.

Avail's realtime predictions merged with the semester's GTFS schedule by trip identity — so the board is honest about late buses, last buses, and Sundays. No API key, no account.

Vairo by default, any stop by env

Out of the box it watches the campus-bound V and VE at the Vairo Blvd/Oakwood corner and Vairo Village. --list-stops finds any other stop id in the system.

Realtime + schedule, merged

Live predictions cover the next ~90 minutes; the static timetable pads the rest, so a 32-minute headway still fills all eight position dots. Scheduled entries hand off to realtime the moment a trip is dispatched — same trip, same identity.

Knows when service ends

The day's final departure carries a LAST tag. After it leaves, a calm plate shows the next scheduled bus (“NEXT BUS V MONDAY 6:41A”) instead of a blank screen.

Sundays covered

V and VE rest on Sundays — the board automatically falls back to the NV loop at the Vairo Village stops, which runs to 11:54 pm.

VE route plate with 20 min on the BUSY Bar — Two-letter route plates from the Bar's own fonts

Orange V departure flash on the BUSY Bar — Departure flash in CATA orange, 60 fps on-device

V route plate with 68 min and an amber LAST tag — The last bus of the day says so

When service breaks

Detours, construction closures, late and held buses — read from CATA's alert and vehicle feeds (plus InfoPoint's explicit detour flags), drawn in the Bar's own screen language.

Red page reading DELAYED with RUNNING 6 MIN LATE beneath — **Late bus.** The shown bus is running six minutes behind — the plate says exactly that.

Blue page reading DETOUR with the reroute detail beneath — **Detour.** InfoPoint's detour flag, said plainly in blue.

Deep red page with the V route plate, NO BUSES, and the suspension notice beneath — **Suspended.** The route and the reason take the screen.

Yellow page with hazard stripe edges, PLANNED, and the notice beneath — **Planned work.** Hazard stripes and the notice.

Calm slate-blue page reading NO BUSES with NEXT BUS V TOMORROW 6:41A beneath — **After hours.** Service ending on schedule isn't an emergency — a calm blue, and when the first bus comes back.

Configured in seconds

Environment variables, or CLI flags. Works with busybar-manager as a library app; --preview renders every screen to PNGs with no hardware at all.

# finds the Bar over USB, Wi-Fi, or cloud
pip install requests websockets
ROUTES=V,VE STOPS=504,506 DIRECTION=campus python app.py

Var	Meaning
`ROUTES`	Route short names, default `V,VE`
`STOPS`	GTFS stop ids, default `504,506` (Vairo/Oakwood + Vairo Village)
`DIRECTION`	`campus` or `outbound`
`FALLBACK_ROUTES`	No-service fallback, default `NV` at `503,507`; `off` disables
`BUSYBAR_PRIORITY`	`1` shows only when the Bar is OFF, `30+` shows over the clock

The full reference lives in the README.

A CATA bus in the white and red CATABUS livery, powered 100% by clean natural gas