I live near San Diego Bay and look out my window wondering, "What's that ship?" Inspired by TheFlightWall's air traffic display (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46066640) on an LED screen, I figured I'd try something similar with maritime traffic. So I built LumiBridge.
I put together seven 64x64 LED panels driven by a Raspberry Pi with an RTL-SDR dongle and VHF antenna to receive AIS broadcasts from ships in the bay. I chose 7 panels because that's what fit over my fireplace.
The absurd 7:1 aspect ratio made for a fun UI design challenge. With all that real estate, I started creating a whole bunch of other apps: earthquakes in the area, bird sightings, trending new music -- there are a ton of free feeds out there perfect for display in the living room. That led me to add support for a prioritization scheme and remote control so the most important thing would be visible, and navigable, and down the rabbit hole of adding games and other content. Obviously that includes DOOM :-)
I posted schematics, BOM, and details on the 40+ apps in case anyone wants to try something similar. Yes, some of these hardware choices are overspec'd; you can probably do it cheaper. I erred on the side of caution because I'm new to the hardware side and didn't want to burn the place down.
This was a ton of fun to build, and I keep finding interesting new apps to add. Happy to answer any questions about the setup.
I live near San Diego Bay and look out my window wondering, "What's that ship?" Inspired by TheFlightWall's air traffic display (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46066640) on an LED screen, I figured I'd try something similar with maritime traffic. So I built LumiBridge.
I put together seven 64x64 LED panels driven by a Raspberry Pi with an RTL-SDR dongle and VHF antenna to receive AIS broadcasts from ships in the bay. I chose 7 panels because that's what fit over my fireplace.
The absurd 7:1 aspect ratio made for a fun UI design challenge. With all that real estate, I started creating a whole bunch of other apps: earthquakes in the area, bird sightings, trending new music -- there are a ton of free feeds out there perfect for display in the living room. That led me to add support for a prioritization scheme and remote control so the most important thing would be visible, and navigable, and down the rabbit hole of adding games and other content. Obviously that includes DOOM :-)
I posted schematics, BOM, and details on the 40+ apps in case anyone wants to try something similar. Yes, some of these hardware choices are overspec'd; you can probably do it cheaper. I erred on the side of caution because I'm new to the hardware side and didn't want to burn the place down.
This was a ton of fun to build, and I keep finding interesting new apps to add. Happy to answer any questions about the setup.