- Custom Hardware
- Amazon Web Services
- Serverless Functions
Summary
In order to help communicate these service adjustments to customers, Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) has recently invested in a digital signal project to display BRT information (and other service alerts) at train stations.
We partnered with DzineSigns (an Upper Hutt based signage company) to produce a certified New Zealand made passenger information sign that automatically retrieves and displays service alerts from GWRC Open Data APIs.
The Solution
Octal developed a bespoke control unit that
is installed in each sign. This communicates with our management system and controls the LED panels
on the sign.
Many off-the-shelf signage management systems require an operator to log in
to a portal (or worse, each individual sign!) to update the message displayed. To reduce the
management overhead of this system, we developed a custom integration with GWRC's open data
APIs (implementing the GTFS-RT standard) that automatically displays the service alerts relevant to
a particular station. This requires no manual intervention beyond the existing process to add a
service alert across the network.
Complicating matters, the signs are generally attached
to a street light lamp post, which means the device only receives power at night time when the light
is switched on. The device runs off battery power during the day and charges at night, and the
solution provides for automated monitoring of battery health.