Project log · Departure board
The hobbyist
departure board.
A working desk ornament built to look like the amber dot-matrix boards Transperth ran before the LCD upgrade — not a mockup, a real model of a real object, right down to the dial.
01 · Display
A real dot-matrix display.
128×64 amber LEDs at 2mm pitch, laid out to the same 2:1 proportions as the real Transperth platform boards — header bar, big destination, stops list, ticker line and all.
02 · Control
One dial, total control.
A single machined rotary dial drives every setting on the board — nothing buried behind a touchscreen, nothing that needs a manual.
03 · No app required
Every setting, right on the board.
A small onboard OLED screen is the entire control surface — brightness, stop ID, Wi-Fi, row count. No account, no download, no app.
04 · Materials
Built like it means it.
CNC-machined aluminium base and mast, an engraved wordmark you can feel, a cast-plastic housing around the display, powered over a single USB-C cable round the back.
05 · Mixed mode
Bus and train, one board.
Split the display and it stacks a bus departure over a train departure — route, bay and platform, minutes to each, on the one screen.
Spec sheet
FAQ
Is this for sale?
Not yet — this is a personal build, made to gauge whether it should become a real product before any of that gets figured out.
Does it show live departure times?
Not right now. The routes and times shown are a fixed demo layout to show what the display looks like, not a live data connection.
Would this work outside Perth?
Right now it’s built specifically around Transperth’s routes and styling, with no plans yet to generalise it to other cities.
What happens when I click "Say you’d want one"?
It just opens an email to Rabbit Loop directly — there’s no formal waitlist yet, just a genuine way to register interest.
Your desk buddy, if enough people want one.
This is a personal build, not a product yet — a hobby project made to find out whether it should become one.
Say you'd want one →