The backend for the Infosystems VFD display that is located in the bar at EMF 2024.
It's from a German tram and made in 2000.
Hostname: vfd.display.crablab.uk
There's a demo available at vfd.display.crablab.uk/demo. This provides a basic interface to interact with the display.
Two endpoints are provided:
/time
- displays an updating clock/message
- takes POST data to display a message
The /message
endpoint takes the following form data:
message
- text to display (up to 48 chars)effect
- chase or splitwipe
- True/False
eg.
curl vfd.display.crablab.uk/time
curl vfd.display.crablab.uk/message -F message=Hello,\ World! -F effect=split
If the display returns a 409 then it's busy serving another request. Keep trying?
pip3 install flask pyfis markdown pygments
flask --app main.py run
Improvements are welcome. I spent about an hour making a very minimal interface.
Huge thanks to Cato who supplied both the IBIS interface and the library to send Telegrams.