ctapi (Chicago Transit Authority ("CTA") on a Raspberry Pi)

Overview

This project is used to display the nearest train at a specific L stop, the nearest bus at the Bus Stops, Close By Divvy Bike station status and the latest Tweets from CTA. The project runs on a Raspberry Pi and the display used is the Waveshare 2.13inch e-Paper HAT.

Equipment

The project runs on a Raspberry Pi 4b and the display used is the Waveshare 2.13inch e-Paper HAT.

Display Output

The display shows the following information when the program is running:

• Station or Stop Name - example(s) being "Logan Square"
• Line & Destination of the train - example(s) being "Blue to O'Hare" & "Blue to Forrest Park"
• The arrival time of the nearest trains or buses - example being "7min, 16min"

Installation

• Create API access token on the CTA Transit Tracker developer site
• Create API access token on the CTA Bus developer site
• Create API access token on the Twitter developer site (You will need a Bearer Token, specifically)
• • (You can opt to just use one, or a combination of different ones - but all three are recommended)
• Clone the repository on your Raspberry Pi with the following git clone https://github.com/brandonmcfadd/ctapi.git
• Change into the working directory of the cloned repository cd ctapi
• Install the required dependencies pip install -r requirements.txt
• Create a file named .env in your directory with the following content
  TRAIN_API_KEY = 'YOUR_TRANSIT_API_KEY'
BUS_API_KEY = 'YOUR_TRANSIT_API_KEY'
HOME_LATITUDE = 'Enter your Latitude'
HOME_LONGITUDE = 'Enter your Longitude'
TWITTER_API_KEY = 'Bearer {Enter Your Key}'
• Enable the portions you want to use by changing False to True on the following lines:
• • Train Tracker = Line 48
• • Bus Tracker = Line 52
• • Divvy Tracker = Line 58
• • Tweet Lookup = Line 62
• Run the main program python3 main.py

Configuration

• To change the station being displayed modify the Station/Stop Information in main.py with the station code(s) you want to use. Line 49, 52 and 55
• 'L' Station codes can be found on the following site from the City of Chicago's Data Portal.
• Bus Stop Codes can be found using the API or via the Route Information Page on the Transit Chicago site
• Divvy Station Codes can be found using the following site

Example