wtf is esp32departures?

ESP32Departures is a small device project that shows live UK train departure times on a tiny color screen. It is a rewrite of an earlier version the same author built for a Raspberry Pi, redone to run on a much cheaper ESP32 microcontroller board instead. There is no computer, server, or Docker container involved: the small board connects to wifi on its own, fetches the current departures for a chosen train station, and draws them directly on its built in screen. The display shows the next three departures in large text, including the destination, whether the train is on time or delayed, and which platform it leaves from, with long station names scrolling across the screen. It also shows a clock rendered in a dot matrix style font that automatically adjusts for daylight saving time. If the live data feed cannot be reached, the screen keeps showing the last known departures along with a "no signal" warning rather than going blank, and it can also be told to turn its screen off during certain hours to save power. Setting it up does not require any programming for most people. There is a self contained Windows installer program that walks a user through connecting the board over USB, entering wifi details, a free rail data API key, and which station to show, all without touching any code. Anyone who wants to change the firmware itself instead needs PlatformIO, a common tool for building code for small hardware boards like this one. The whole project is built around one specific piece of hardware, a LilyGo T-Display-S3 board with a built in 1.9 inch color screen, and the author estimates the parts cost around ten pounds. The train data itself comes from National Rail's official free data marketplace. The project credits an earlier dot matrix train board design by another developer as the original inspiration for the layout and fonts.