BART Route Tracker

This lets me track the ETAs of Bay Area Rapid Transit train lines at the stop nearest my home. I can more efficiently plan walks to the station using this information. Watch a brief demonstration video here

What are the different components?

1. A simple server hosted on Render.com (written in Python), and
2. A route visualizer using a Raspberry Pi Pico W with a Pimoroni Pico Display Pack (written in Micropython, specifically Pimoroni's distribution

Why not just use Google Maps?

I don't like to keep glancing at my phone and computer. This is a similar experience to a train/plane/bus ETA board at a transit hub, which I prefer.

What's with the server?

The server wouldn't normally be necessary, but the BART API is behind Cloudflare; Cloudflare seems to block requests that originate from the Raspberry Pico W. The server is just middleware to make a request on behalf of the Pico W, perform a bit of cleanup with the response, and then send back the relevant response data to the microcontroller.

Links:

• Documentation for the Pimoroni Pico Display Pack here

Acknowledgements

Thanks BART for maintaining your Legacy API