Could desktop departure boards for bars be a lot cheaper?

[Howardh]

I'd like to buy my local one of those display departure boards; as it's right opposite my local station. However the cheapest is around £90 (and it's tiny) and that seems way too much for something a tablet could do for free! I reckon there's money to be made if they could reduce their prices and sell to all pubs/cafes close to stations - I find it a useful tool and save staring at my phone!

Admittedly some pubs that I use (especially outside Preston station) have TV screens inverted and simply display the train times (think off real-time trains?) so I suppose I could go to a charity shop and find a suitable smart TV to do the job. But the issue would be where to put it - these desktops fit nicely on a shelf.

This is an example as advertised on a social media site; https://ukdepartureboards.co.uk shows cheapest board on that site is £184.99

Miniature Desktop Departures® Board​

Rated 5.00 out of 5
SALE!£184.99 Original price was: £184.99.£169.99

 

[Bletchleyite]

If the station is on Tiger (tiger.worldline.global), just get a used Android tablet for next to nothing (maybe even free from Freecycle/Freegle) and show that on it on your shelf.

If it's a Northern station there's also the option of their Web CIS which is what displays on their station screens - this is it for Bolton, just change the 3 letter code in the URL: https://webcis.northern.ketech-uis.com/departures?target=BON

Obviously these things aren't guaranteed to work forever (and some stations that were on Tiger now aren't as they've switched to other systems that don't have this kind of public facing Web display) but neither are those purchased ones.

 

[Howardh]

If the station is on Tiger (tiger.worldline.global), just get a used Android tablet for next to nothing (maybe even free from Freecycle/Freegle) and show that on it on your shelf.

If it's a Northern station there's also the option of their Web CIS which is what displays on their station screens - this is it for Bolton, just change the 3 letter code in the URL: https://webcis.northern.ketech-uis.com/departures?target=BON

Obviously these things aren't guaranteed to work forever (and some stations that were on Tiger now aren't as they've switched to other systems that don't have this kind of public facing Web display) but neither are those purchased ones.

Thanks, a tablet is possibly too small for general viewing, that link's useful and would suit a small TV screen (maybe 24") and I have one going spare that size. Hope it shows the TPE train northbound as well and isn't confined to Northern?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Thanks, a tablet is possibly too small for general viewing, that link's useful and would suit a small TV screen (maybe 24") and I have one going spare that size. Hope it shows the TPE train northbound as well and isn't confined to Northern?

It indeed does, unless Northern have started operating to Euston.

https://webcis.northern.ketech-uis.com/departures?target=MAN shows all TOCs at Manchester Piccadilly. Presumably it's capable of any station but they seem to have restricted it to those served by Northern regardless of who operates the station or what CIS it has.

 

[RAPC]

There isn't the market for them to be mass produced at a reduced cost, mainly because venues near a station can put up train times if they wish for little to no outlay.

They are a nice bit of fun, but the TV screen or large tablet answer is easily used if a venue wants to do something.

 

[hacman]

Anything under £500 isn't expensive for a business if it will be of genuine use to its clientele.

At our last office, we looked to put something similar in, and the budget we allocated was up to £1000. During the fit-out process, we'd actually spend more than this just on equipping the kitchen and break area with all the required items for an office capable of hosting ~50 people to give an idea of how it stacks up in terms of other business costs.

Whilst you can do it for "free", it's not actually free - your time and expertise is worth something, both for the setup and for the support when something ultimately goes wrong.

Given the development time and effort, logistics costs, and ongoing support demands of the product, the site you linked is quite reasonably priced, given the volume of these they are likely to sell.

 

[zwk500]

Thanks, a tablet is possibly too small for general viewing, that link's useful and would suit a small TV screen (maybe 24") and I have one going spare that size. Hope it shows the TPE train northbound as well and isn't confined to Northern?

Any Smart monitor that can connect to a wireless network could use numerous free sites to provide such a display, such as from https://digital-signage.live-departures.info. There's a shopping centre near me which shows the next departures from the nearest station off a web page (I've seen them setting it up in the morning at times). Not sure exactly what site they used, but there's several about. I'm fairly sure my office building uses the website linked in this post.

It can include walking distances as well and has all operators: https://digital-signage.live-departures.info/evocis/4.0/MAN/10/L/departures.v3, as well as two different configuration modes: https://digital-signage.live-departures.info/evocis/4.0/HUD/5/P/departures.v2

 

[Howardh]

Any Smart monitor that can connect to a wireless network could use numerous free sites to provide such a display, such as from https://digital-signage.live-departures.info.

Yeah I get that, but thinking in my local there isn't really a suitable place for such which is within sight lines, however one of those specific departure boards can fit neatly on a shelf! The wall where there is a TV already shows normal programming and I doubt they would want to remove that for a rail display!

 

[zwk500]

Yeah I get that, but thinking in my local there isn't really a suitable place for such which is within sight lines, however one of those specific departure boards can fit neatly on a shelf! The wall where there is a TV already shows normal programming and I doubt they would want to remove that for a rail display!

Would something like this fit: https://thepihut.com/products/11-9-...VYdBHPNqZkj7IhzUFB9MTTRJSm7oAaRRoCh0QQAvD_BwE

You could connect it to a Raspberry Pi running the website relatively simply (I say, not that I have any experience with Raspberry Pi).

 

[MrJeeves]

I also run Rail Dot Matrix, which emulates a dot-matrix departure board in your browser.

UK Rail Dot Matrix

See a virtual railway dot matrix for any UK station.

raildotmatrix.co.uk

UK Rail Dot Matrix

See a virtual railway dot matrix for any UK station.

raildotmatrix.co.uk

 

[David Goddard]

I also run Rail Dot Matrix, which emulates a dot-matrix departure board in your browser.

UK Rail Dot Matrix

See a virtual railway dot matrix for any UK station.

raildotmatrix.co.uk

UK Rail Dot Matrix

See a virtual railway dot matrix for any UK station.

raildotmatrix.co.uk

Looks good, well done, but I cant find the platform numbers?

 

[russdx]

The product in the OPs post is our product, we found 99.9% of customers just want an off the shelf plug and play solution which just works. There are quite a few DIY clones now but all require time and knowledge and skill to build the product which very few customers have. The other main reason our product costs a lot more is because is just does a lot more and we have lots of business overheads to cover as well, accountants, insurance, storage, server cloud services, website plugins, our wage, pensions, marketing, new products and software features deployment costs the list is endless. Its a huge jump going from 1 or 2 DIY route to mass producing them in the many thousands and then having to maintain the many thousands of online boards.

- We don't just support one rail feed but multiple different rail feeds (inc Irish rail & Northern Ireland & Heritage railways), and then Bus, Tube and Tram & Metro and even Freight and ECS now as well. Full list here

- We just released Non-stopping services support as well which has been a real hit with customers and is a lot of fun.
- We also invested a lot of time and $$$ in real audio announcements using real well known transport announcement voices.
- The boards are incredibly customisable you can tweak every aspect of them to how you want it.
- We don't also talk to the feeds directly but to our servers so can fix / update / add API changes very quicky. The boards also automatically download the latest firmware with bug fixes and new features which we are constantly adding.
- Model rail integration is being worked on now and next to be released via RFID tags/readers.
- The product themselves are made using a proper injection moulded case which was not cheap to get developed, but gives it the proper professional consumer product feel you would expect from a high end product. We use custom PCBs (not just glued together wires and off the shelf dev boards etc..) Everything about the product has been properly engineered to be mass produced.

There is a HUEE difference between DIY route and selling the odd board and mass producing these things in the thousands, and that difference bumps the price!

If you can build it yourself that's fantastic! But if you cant be bothered or don't know how and just want to buy / plug & play the best board available, that's what our products are for!
Hope that helps explain a little bit why they are more expensive than others.

 

[Cambrian359]

The product in the OPs post is our product, we found 99.9% of customers just want an off the shelf plug and play solution which just works. There are quite a few DIY clones now but all require time and knowledge and skill to build the product which very few customers have. The other main reason our product costs a lot more is because is just does a lot more and we have lots of business overheads to cover as well, accountants, insurance, storage, server cloud services, website plugins, our wage, pensions, marketing, new products and software features deployment costs the list is endless. Its a huge jump going from 1 or 2 DIY route to mass producing them in the many thousands and then having to maintain the many thousands of online boards.

- We don't just support one rail feed but multiple different rail feeds (inc Irish rail & Northern Ireland & Heritage railways), and then Bus, Tube and Tram & Metro and even Freight and ECS now as well. Full list here
View attachment 187667
- We just released Non-stopping services support as well which has been a real hit with customers and is a lot of fun.
- We also invested a lot of time and $$$ in real audio announcements using real well known transport announcement voices.
- The boards are incredibly customisable you can tweak every aspect of them to how you want it.
- We don't also talk to the feeds directly but to our servers so can fix / update / add API changes very quicky. The boards also automatically download the latest firmware with bug fixes and new features which we are constantly adding.
- Model rail integration is being worked on now and next to be released via RFID tags/readers.
- The product themselves are made using a proper injection moulded case which was not cheap to get developed, but gives it the proper professional consumer product feel you would expect from a high end product. We use custom PCBs (not just glued together wires and off the shelf dev boards etc..) Everything about the product has been properly engineered to be mass produced.

There is a HUEE difference between DIY route and selling the odd board and mass producing these things in the thousands, and that difference bumps the price!

If you can build it yourself that's fantastic! But if you cant be bothered or don't know how and just want to buy / plug & play the best board available, that's what our products are for!
Hope that helps explain a little bit why they are more expensive than others.

The level of support when needed and huge amount of options and features make the price of your boards worth the cost!
And the new passing services feature is a particularly great feature! I often set one of my boards to harrow & Wealdstone so I get underground,overground and national rail services showing at the same time! Absolutely brilliant!

 

[russdx]

The level of support when needed and huge amount of options and features make the price of your boards worth the cost!
And the new passing services feature is a particularly great feature! I often set one of my boards to harrow & Wealdstone so I get underground,overground and national rail services showing at the same time! Absolutely brilliant!

Thanks for the kind feedback, Yeah support is a huge part of it as well (think I missed that from my original reply)