Watch the London Underground With This Traintrackr Display
TrainTrackr's London Underground live tracker is a fun product for any transport enthusiast. The premise is simple: the board connects to your home Wi-Fi — or any other network with wireless access — to display train arrival data from London's vast tube network. It does so in real-time by harnessing Transport for London's (TfL) live APIs to update over 300 LEDs.
Pictured below is the large variant. Its dimensions are 40cm by 30cm, taking up quite a bit of room to pack in all those LEDs. It is definitely not subtle, with the bright lights on a green PCB. In the box are some wooden supports that can be used to prop up the tracker with minimal effort. Also included in the box is a USB power cable, a neat TrainTrackr logo sticker, and the set-up instructions.
Enabling your tracker should be a straightforward process. Alas, this was not the case for me. My tracker did not want to connect to my Wi-Fi network. Fortunately, TrainTrackr supply an alternative procedure on their website, which worked for me. I connected directly to the tracker and configured network access from there. On the one hand, it ideally would have connected first time, but it is good that there is more than one way to get set up. Maybe this is a known issue?
After getting the tracker a connection to the Internet, it just works. I find it amusing just to watch the LEDs begin to flash with activity as all the data from the network floods in. There is an LED for each station and they are visually connected by white lines. The outline of the Thames has also been etched into the board, too. This is a nice addition because it makes the tracker look like a map and not just lots of lights in particular spots. Upon the arrival of a train, the station LED is illuminated in the colour of that service's line.
This works incredibly well for the majority of lines, but not all of them. As you might have guessed, it is a tad difficult to represent the colours of the Bakerloo and Northern lines with an LED module. Traintrackr opted for alternative colours to get around this. The Bakerloo line, for example, uses a bright orange colour instead of the usual brown. The impact of this is minimal once you have adjusted to the changes.
The tracker can be connected to the Traintrackr website with a unique code. With an account, you can check the status of your board and configure its settings. I have found the night mode to be particularly useful. With night mode you can reduce the brightness of the LED modules or simply turn them off between specified hours. Though it doesn't hurt to just turn it off at the plug at night.
Traintrackr advertise the product as being maker-friendly. The makers being referred to here are enthusiasts with programming and microcontroller expertise. There are instructions on the Traintrackr website to change your board's firmware, but I would advise against doing so unless you seriously know what you're doing. That said, the makers among us might have noticed the ESP8266 Wi-Fi module on the board. And, yes, you can upload your own code to the board with the Arduino IDE.
This does give me some comfort about what might happen if Traintrackr closed in the future. I should, in theory, be able to keep the board going with my own code (or someone else's). Either that, or this could end up being an expensive paperweight. It is a different story, however, if TfL stop publishing live service data via their API. I see that being less likely, mind you, but not impossible.
I would not say this board is a must-have, but it is certainly a very-nice-to-have for any transport enthusiast. I think it is also something that could be recreated, albeit likely on a smaller scale and in a less polished package, by someone with time on their hands. Regardless of whether you buy one or do it yourself, it is quite fun to watch the LEDs light up while the Underground keeps London connected.
London Underground tracker (large)
Displays arrivals of tube trains at London Underground stations in real-time with over 300 LEDs.
Note from the editor: This article received minor updates in April 2024 to provide a more balanced perspective on the product. The bulk of the article remains unchanged. You can still read the original version (which at times reads like promotional material and not representative of the quality we strive for) and compare the changes for yourself.
